Parties & Leaders

Bernard Lord

MLA Moncton East     [ The PC Party of New Brunswick ]

Bernard Lord is doing everything he can to hang onto his job as New Brunswick's 30th premier.

Lord, 40, is leading a minority Progressive Conservative government clinging to power after seven years in office.

He's campaigning on a recent budget that many are calling the most decisive and socially conscious of any tabled by his government.

The document increases spending in virtually every department, includes new money for schools and nursing homes and has a comprehensive energy policy, which promises to cut the provincial portion of sales tax from all home heating, cap power rates and regulate the price of gasoline and home-heating fuel.

The policies are a political about-face after seven years of tax cuts and reforms to rural health care.

Lord must now ask himself whether that budget is enough to woo an electorate that has grown impatient with the party, is tired of paying high auto- and home-insurance premiums, is worried about access to health care and tired of driving on pothole-pitted roads.

Progressive Conservative Party
known as the Conservative Party until 1943
Term	Leader
1960-1966	C. B. Sherwood
1966-1969	Charles Van Horne
1969-1987	Richard B. Hatfield
1987-1989	Malcolm MacLeod
1989-1991	Barbara Baird Filliter
1991-1995	Dennis Cochrane
1995-1997	Bernard Valcourt
1997-	Bernard Lord
Source: Nodice.ca - New Brunswick Election 2006

Lord is well known across the country as a confident and effortlessly bilingual leader who was once courted to take over the federal Conservatives

But inside New Brunswick, Lord's critics claim his seven years in office have proven only that he is indecisive and overly partisan, and that his government bends too quickly to the will of large corporations, especially those in the forest industry.

No one predicted the Progressive Conservatives were due for the biggest win in the party's history when Lord swept them into power in 1999. Lord brought the party back from more than a decade in the political wilderness, winning 44 of 55 legislature seats.

Adding to that triumph, Lord's Tories gained three more in subsequent byelections where Liberal MLAs had resigned.

That first campaign was easy for Lord, based on a promise to scrap the hated plan for tolls on New Brunswick's planned four-lane highway. The hard part came after the election, when that promise, and plenty of others had to be fulfilled.

Lord based his first year as premier on promises he made during the election campaign. Tolls were never put on the highway, and the $900 million cost of the project was added straight to the province's debt. He raised the minimum wage, made casual nursing jobs permanent and reduced the size of cabinet. He also reduced personal and corporate income tax.

But in 2003, Lord's government won a shaky two-seat majority, incurring heavy losses in part because of its failure to deal with skyrocketing auto insurance rates.

Since then, Lord's party has done its best to increase its political breathing room by luring two opposition members into government jobs. However, his hated health-reform package and massive job losses in the forest industry caused voters to sour on the Tories, and handed subsequent byelections to Liberals.

Lord is the perfect example of New Brunswick's dual nature. He comes from a bilingual family. His father is anglophone and his mother is francophone. He grew up in greater Moncton, speaking both languages with ease. At the University of Moncton he earned a bachelor's degree in social science with a major in economics, as well as a law degree. He practiced law before winning the Tory leadership in 1997.

This election will be a test of Lord's leadership, deciding whether the last seven years have been enough to convince voters that he has what it takes to steer the province through another term.

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