The swearing-in took place one week after Brian Gallant's Liberal minority government was defeated in a confidence vote. Higgs will also have to govern without a majority in the legislature.

Higgs's choice of Steeves as finance minister comes just days after he acknowledged to reporters he was tempted to keep the job for himself. Higgs was finance minister in the previous PC government from 2010 to 2014.

"I thought, 'Why couldn't I do both?'" he told reporters on Monday. "Let's just say it'll be good for me to be close to my finance minister."

Conspicuous in their absence from the new cabinet were Bruce Fitch and Bruce Northrup, who both held senior ministerial positions in the previous Tory government of David Alward.

All 4 female MLAs are ministers 

One of the women appointed to cabinet, Andrea Anderson-Mason, brushed off questions about all four female PC MLAs becoming ministers.

"I'm also a lawyer," she said. "Let's not forget that. I'm happy to be here and to be a woman in a cabinet position, but I'm also happy to be here as a lawyer as well."

Higgs said the four women — Sherry Wilson, Dorothy Shephard, Mary Wilson and Anderson-Mason — will bring an important perspective.

"Women need to be part of our democratic process," he said. "We can learn a lot from our colleagues and we need a diversification within our group to do that."

Language division

Gauvin, the MLA for Shippagan-Lamè​que-Miscou, was seen as an inevitable cabinet choice after he was elected as the only PC MLA from a northern francophone riding.

He said part of his job would be to work to repair language divisions in the province.
"We have to roll up our sleeves, talk to each other, find ways to respect each other, and get the job done," he said.

Gauvin said he wasn't bothered that office-space limitations in the anterooms adjacent to the legislative chamber led the Tories to have the three People's Alliance MLAs sit with them on the government side of the house.
He said he has been urged by at least one francophone lobby group to get to know the Alliance members and better understand their opposition to some aspects of official bilingualism.

Asked if the Alliance members were making similar efforts to understand him, he said: "Not yet, because we've just started speaking. They're not monsters. We'll start from there."

Higgs also said there's no message in letting the Alliance members sit on the government side.
"I would like to spend more time on the actual messages that are real, because of what we accomplish," he said.

Many policy questions unanswered

Among the immediate issues on the government's agenda is a fix for the shortage of paramedics and nurses, legislative changes to WorkSafeNB to halt spiralling rate increases paid by employers, and a clash with Ottawa on carbon taxes.

Neither Flemming nor new attorney-general Anderson-Mason would comment on how they'll keep Higgs's promise to address the paramedic shortage and ambulance delays without running afoul of a consent order that requires bilingual service.
"Today is not the day to discuss policy," Anderson-Mason said.

Flemming said the consent order doesn't have the same weight as legal precedent but wouldn't discuss it much more than that.

"I believe the matter should be resolvable if we put the best interests of New Brunswickers first," he said.

Education Minister Dominic Cardy, who left the NDP last year to join the PCs, likewise didn't want to discuss whether the new government will undo the previous Liberal decision to return the French-immersion entry point to Grade 1.

Higgs had criticized the Liberals for making the move before there was any evidence that the previous Grade 3 entry point was hurting educational outcomes.

"Amazingly, having been sworn in less than an hour ago, I'm not going to be making policy announcements today," Cardy said.
With his cabinet in place, Higgs will aim to bring in a throne speech the week of Nov. 20. It will face a confidence vote after two weeks of debate.

The three Alliance MLAs have already said they will vote to keep the PC government in power for at least 18 months.

That gives the PCs a total of 25 votes, a bare majority to pass legislation. The Liberals have 20 seats and the Greens have three.

Speaker Daniel Guitard, elected as a Liberal, said Friday he will stay in the position for now — removing one vote from his party's benches — but will rethink if the PCs do anything that forces him to abandon his neutrality.

"The day there's something that happens that will [prevent] me from being impartial will be the day I leave," he said.

Liberals defeated last week

On Nov. 2, the house voted 25-23 for a throne speech motion amended by the PC Opposition to declare no confidence in the government.

Three People's Alliance MLAs joined the 22 PC MLAs in voting to defeat the government. Meanwhile, 20 Liberals and three Greens voted to keep it alive.

Higgs told reporters earlier that he wanted a speedy transition of power.

"Our target is still on track for what we said in terms of a quick plan, a quick move to government," he said.

"I'm excited about that."

The PCs hold 22 of 49 seats in the legislature. The three People's Alliance MLAs have said they'll vote bill-by-bill to keep the Tories in office for at least 18 months.

He's going to be the next premier of New Brunswick — and he'll also be one of the more unusual politicians to hold the office in recent memory.

Blaine Higgs will be sworn in as the province's new Progressive Conservative premier on Friday, an unconventional choice for the job after an unconventional election.

Here are eight things you need to know about Blaine Higgs.

1. He'll be the oldest premier of New Brunswick, ever

 

Six of the last seven premiers who won power through elections were in their 30s. The exception, David Alward, was 50. Higgs is 64.

But that's more than just a break from the recent pattern. Higgs will be the oldest premier to take office ever — since the advent of responsible government in 1854. (Leonard Tilley, sworn in at age 63 in 1933, is the current record-holder.)

Higgs made a virtue of his age when the Liberals attacked him for having run for the leadership of the Confederation of Regions Party in 1989. Higgs was 35 at the time, the same age as Premier Brian Gallant when the negative ads were launched last year.
"I've been attacked about decisions I might have made when I was premier's age," Higgs said, "and that's why I can understand some of the decisions the premier's been making now."

2. He's from the smallest 'city' in the province

 

Higgs grew up in Forest City. The name is a bit of a misnomer: the remote community on a lake on the New Brunswick-Maine border is the farthest thing you can imagine from an actual city.

Last year Higgs estimated the year-round population of Forest City at seven people. "It survives because of the summer activity, not because of any industry or economic development," he said.

That gives him a perspective on small-town life, he said. "There are a lot of rural communities that are challenged, and kids are leaving. Let's not pretend otherwise. Let's lay it all out there and say, 'What collectively are we going to do?'"

3. He worked for the Irvings

Critics of the Irvings joke that every premier "works" for the billionaire family, but Higgs actually did. He spent 33 years with Irving Oil.

When the Liberals used that to attack him as a pawn of big business, Higgs responded that working for Irving Oil allowed him to do what many New Brunswickers dream of.

"I would like that opportunity for anyone coming out of university, or coming out of high school … to have an opportunity to find a job and have a career right here," he said.

He has also said the Irving ethos — cost efficiency and measurable targets — would help him as premier. "I learned a lot working for that company," he said.

"It's ironic to me that someone would say because I have had broad experience throughout my career, that's not a plus to being in the middle of an $8 billion expenditure of taxpayer money."

4. He ran for the leadership of another party

 

There's a long history of party-switching and floor-crossing among New Brunswick politicians, but Higgs may be the first person to run for the leadership of one party and then become premier as the leader of another.

Although he moved from a protest party to a mainstream one, he seems to like that the Greens and the People's Alliance are shaking up the traditional way of doing politics, a system he says he disdains.

For example, he ruled out a PC-Liberal coalition, he said, because voters "have elected two other parties that cannot and should not be shut out of this process."

5. … and not just any other party

The party Higgs wanted to lead in 1989, the Confederation of Regions, was anti-bilingualism, while the PC party he now leads lists official bilingualism as one of its key principles.
Higgs says he no longer subscribes to the COR worldview. "I believe that all New Brunswickers, French and English, have the opportunity to speak their own language and to learn another one," he said in August. "My opinion has changed over the last 30 years."

Even so, many Acadian organizations are wary about what his COR past means for his approach to language rights.

6. He's the first unilingual premier elected since 1970

Higgs's ability to overcome suspicions about his COR past will be hampered by his inability to speak French well.

The PC leader started taking lessons after he won the PC leadership and has gamely made small talk with francophones. He has also delivered two major speeches entirely in French.

But he remains unable to do substantial interviews in the language, making it harder for him to address francophone concerns in his own words. He said this week that he didn't have time for his lessons during the busy campaign but will restart them soon.

7. He won the party leadership despite his fellow MLAs, not because of them

In the 2016 leadership race, most PC MLAs, including former ministers who had worked closely with him in the Alward cabinet, chose to support candidates other than Higgs. Only two current MLAs backed him.

Portland-Simonds MLA Trevor Holder, who supported Mel Norton, said at the time that Higgs's vocal dislike of politics was misplaced, because elected officials should respond to their constituents and communities. "When it's done right … politics is what makes things happen."

And Rothesay MLA Ted Flemming, who supported Monica Barley, took an apparent swipe at Higgs's focus on the deficit.

"New Brunswick isn't just a balance sheet," he said. "I'm from the Progressive Conservative Party. That word means something to me. That word has history."

8. He's in a hurry, but he may not be able to hurry

Higgs promised quick action to tackle the province's problems if he became premier.

He's asking that proposals to address a shortage of paramedics be on his desk next week, he plans to join a legal challenge of the federal climate plan by the end of this month, and PC MLA Bruce Northrup says a moratorium on fracking could be lifted in the Sussex area before the end of the year.
But Higgs has acknowledged he'll be forced to scale back some of his ambitions in the first legislature since 1920 in which no party won a majority.

The People's Alliance has promised to support him on confidence votes for 18 months, but will decide how to vote on other legislation one bill at a time.

That may make it difficult for Higgs to do all the things he feels are necessary — making him the first premier to take office in that position in a century.