People's Alliance folds for good in New Brunswick
Populist party de-registers — again — after a 15-year run on right of political spectrum
The People's Alliance has once again de-registered as a political party — but this time, it's for good.
"It's heartbreaking," said Michelle Conroy, who was first elected as an MLA with the party in 2018. "It kind of brings up some old memories, and it pulls at the heart strings."
The populist party on the right of the political spectrum folded and restarted in the past, and it recently attempted to rebuild under new leadership and a shifting view of what the right looks like in New Brunswick.
"It was an up and down battle from the beginning," said Conroy, who is now the Progressive Conservative MLA for Miramichi East.
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The party submitted the request to de-register on June 23 but asked for an official date of June 30 to "allow them time to wind up their affairs," according to an email statement from Elections New Brunswick.
The party only put 13 candidates forward in the last provincial election and didn't elect any MLAs. Support for the People's Alliance had been dwindling for years.
"It was an experience of a lifetime," said Conroy, who had never imagined a career in politics before Austin approached her to join.
"It was this party and it was Kris and what he stood for that got me into this at the time."
When Austin founded the People's Alliance in this province more than a decade ago, he wanted to distance it from both the PCs and Liberals who, he believed, had become too close on the political spectrum at the time.
Austin, who is now the PC MLA for Grand-Lake Fredericton, declined to comment for this story.
In 2022, Austin told CBC News that his objective when he started the party was to "offer that third alternative."
"If the public saw the two as kind of one meshed party, to me, that's a problem with democracy."
At that time, he had just lost a bid for the PC nomination to run in the 2010 provincial election.
The People's Alliance was built on — and gained voter support for — criticizing how the province offered bilingual services in the health-care system and in the school system.
It was based on Austin's own agenda, according to J.P Lewis, a political professor at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. The party platform focused on a "specific issue that fit into a larger theme, which is anti-Francophone policy."
The party went on to hold the balance of power under Blaine Higgs's minority government in 2018, after winning three seats. It's a time Conroy remembers as a constant learning curve.
"We were trailblazers in a lot of different ways," she said. "The legacy would be the changing of the legislature and the stature at the time."
To Lewis, the party's ability to build something from nothing and gain influence was "a major disruption in our electoral…system."
In 2022, Austin and Conroy, who were the party's only remaining MLAs by that time, jumped ship to join the PCs.
"That was kind of the end for me," Conroy said. "People didn't see the value of a minority government that we had at the time."
Around that time, Austin sat down with the CBC's Jacques Poitras for an in-depth interview and told him he could "win a lot more battles in government, than I can in opposition."
Lewis said the bold move shifted things for people who were sympathetic to the right, and ultimately led to lagging support and questions about where the party stood.
"Then, basically, we see a pattern we've seen in other parties, that once they kind of fold back … where they might fit on the political spectrum, the story of the party changed," Lewis said.
Lewis is not at all surprised by the party's fate but said it comes at an interesting time for conservatives, even at a federal level.
"I'm not saying that the stage is set for a People's Alliance comeback ,but it's interesting that it's happening at a time where smart political strategy might be for the Tories to move to the centre."
"Then, it's a matter of can that kind of coalition of like-minded people stay together?"
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