Holt adopts Higgs COVID playbook, minus the hard decisions

Jacques Poitras · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 17, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Maybe it was due that Premier Susan Holt chose past week for the motorboat of her play livestreamed property conferences connected her government's tariff "action plan."

It was the 5th day of the COVID-19 pandemic's intrusion successful our lives.

New Brunswickers got to cognize the media country Holt was utilizing — and the representation of enactment successful situation — during Blaine Higgs's predominant pandemic briefings, fed into laptop computers and smartphones.

"It's my occupation to link with New Brunswickers successful a clip of uncertainty," Holt declared.

There are intelligibly important differences betwixt the pandemic and U.S. President Donald Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs connected Canadian products entering his country.

When Higgs and his officials began livestreaming, they were providing endurance information: however to navigate what was virtually a life-and-death challenge.

He was counting infections and deaths.

He was besides announcing swift, hard decisions astir closing schools, shuttering businesses, locking down households, sealing borders and, later, requiring masks and vaccinations.

The commercialized warfare isn't the aforesaid level of threat, and it doesn't necessitate the aforesaid dire measures — and that's lucky, due to the fact that Holt wants to debar asking New Brunswickers to sacrifice oregon endure immoderate discomfort beyond what U.S. tariffs themselves whitethorn create.

Cutting disconnected N.B. Power energy exports to 58,000 Mainers successful a captive marketplace crossed the borderline — oregon forcing them to swallow a surcharge — could provoke costly retaliation erstwhile our inferior needs to import American power, she said.

"We request to respond successful the astir strategical ways imaginable that tin beryllium palmy successful eliminating those tariffs much quickly, oregon reducing them, without putting unnecessary symptom connected New Brunswickers," she said. 

The premier alternatively adopted the relation of therapist-in-chief, pledging to usage the play briefing to respond to questions sent to her bureau by anxious, frustrated New Brunswickers.

She said she empathized with their impulse to lash out.

"I consciousness you erstwhile you archer maine you privation to deed back, and you privation to spot america cutting disconnected our neighbours due to the fact that it's what the U.S. president has done, and they merit to consciousness immoderate symptom from this."

Even connected seemingly easier decisions than the shutting disconnected of energy exports, however, the March 13 action-plan update was lacking successful caller action.

Holt said her authorities volition "look at" selling Teslas successful the authorities fleet due to the fact that the carmaker owned by Trump state Elon Musk was "seeking to bash New Brunswickers harm."

In contrast, British Columbia moved the aforesaid time to chopped Teslas retired of the province's electrical conveyance charger rebate program.

Holt besides pledged to "look at" ending authorities contracts with U.S. work providers, an thought she archetypal talked astir connected March 4.

"None person been cancelled to date," spokesperson Bruce Macfarlane said by email.

Holt said she was besides reluctant to levy an energy menace "just for show," an evident notation to Ontario Premier Doug Ford's blustery imposition of a 25 per cent surcharge connected his province's exports to the U.S. a fewer days earlier.

"We're not definite that those actions marque their mode to the White House and punctual a alteration successful behaviour there," she said.

The Doug Ford amusement did connect, however, with 1 cardinal audience.

"The president woke up this greeting and helium saw it and helium jumped close connected it," Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told CBS News this week.

After Trump threatened to treble immoderate of his tariffs, Ford agreed to intermission the surcharge, but the showdown got wide U.S. media coverage.

It highlighted to Americans the imaginable outgo of the commercialized war, and it landed Ford a meeting  successful Washington with Lutnick, a tiny triumph successful the conflict for American attraction spans.

Holt, however, is not Doug Ford.

She prefers a friendlier, collaborative attack to politics, posting predominant societal media photos that amusement her gathering New Brunswickers and listening to their concerns.

"How we enactment is conscionable arsenic important arsenic what we enactment on,"  Holt said successful the legislature Nov. 29.

Even the video she posted from a travel by provincial premiers to Washington, D.C. — a superior ngo to lobby against the tariffs — had an upbeat tone, with the premier cheerily listing whom she'd met with.

Vibes-wise, Holt's vigor and attack is, to her admirers, a refreshing alteration from the often-dour Blaine Higgs and his enforcement absorption style.

The hazard is if the process becomes the constituent — if having meetings and holding briefings go ends successful themselves, a measurement of achievement.

"The government's code is precise affirmative and the doors are unfastened for discussions," Norma Dubé, the president of a francophone seniors' association, told Radio-Canada past week astir pre-budget consultations.

"But we mustn't hide that there's a request for a spot of enactment from clip to time. It's not conscionable process. Sometimes the effect is important."

That whitethorn beryllium adjacent much acute connected the tariff issue.

Holt acknowledged the state doesn't person a batch of tools it tin usage connected its ain to unit the U.S., which suggests her briefings volition beryllium much astir responding to nationalist anxiousness than taking factual action.

The premier said 1 solution to that anxiousness is "to beryllium with your friends, to get outdoors, to wide your head, to crook disconnected the news."

The accusation was that her soothing livestream appearances mightiness beryllium amended for your intelligence wellness than credible journalistic reporting, oregon the amped-up Doug Ford show.

But if the nationalist decides it wants thing much factual — sharp, combative responses to a brazen onslaught connected the country's system and sovereignty — New Brunswickers whitethorn tune retired a Holt tariff amusement that fails to conscionable the moment.