A Progressive Conservative candidate for a seat in the New Brunswick Legislature is facing calls she withdraw from the campaign after she compared protections for 2SLGTBQ+ students to the systematic taking of Indigenous children from their parents to place them in residential schools.

Sherry Wilson said the federal system of forcing tens of thousands of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children into the schools was "only allowed to happen because children enrolled in school were isolated from their parents' oversight, input and influence."

She implied there was a parallel between that and the province's original Policy 713 — which allowed 2SLGBTQ+ students to adopt names and pronouns at school without their parents knowing.

"We cannot afford to repeat the tragic mistakes that destroyed the lives of thousands of Indigenous families," Wilson, the PC candidate in Albert-Riverview, wrote in the statement posted on social media.

"Therefore I am committed to keeping the parents of minor children aware of, and involved in, their children's development while they are entrusted to our government schools."

Wilson, the PC candidate in Albert-Riverview, and Blaine Higgs, the PC leader, posed for a picture over the weekend after they rappelled down a building for a charity event. Higgs said Tuesday that Wilson's post 'missed the mark.' (Radio-Canada)

The post was removed from Wilson's Facebook page Tuesday morning. 

The PC government changed Policy 713 last year to require parental consent if students under 16 wanted to adopt new names and pronouns consistent with their gender identity.

Wilson posted this statement on Facebook on Monday. It appears to have been since taken down. (Sherry Wilson PC for Albert Riverview/Facebook)

PC Leader Blaine Higgs has described the issue as parents having the right to know what is happening in their children's lives, and said at one point last year that "children are being taught to lie to their parents."

But Higgs said at a campaign stop Tuesday morning that there was no parallel between the "trauma" of residential schools and today's policy debate and the post "missed the mark."

"There isn't a comparison to be made there," he said.

Chief Terry Richarson of the Pabineau First Nation urged Higgs to remove Wilson as a PC candidate.

"This woman should not be allowed to run for the Conservative Party of NB," he wrote in a Facebook post.

"Premier Higgs you need to have this woman withdraw immediately. … Shame on you and shame on your party on this day dedicated to the memory of those children who were killed for their beliefs!!"

Six Wolastoqey chiefs also made that call in a statement issued Tuesday.

Higgs said he would not remove Wilson because she had withdrawn the post.

He said it was not written by anyone with the PC campaign and that the party's position on residential schools was reflected in his own post on Monday, which spoke of the "deep wounds" inflicted on those who were forced into the system and their descendants.

The PC campaign did not respond to a CBC News request for an interview with Wilson.

Richardson said in an interview that removing the post was "a step" but said Higgs should apologize to Indigenous people and arrange for training for his candidates on the history of residential schools. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called the residential school system "a systematic, government-sponsored attempt to destroy Aboriginal cultures and languages and to assimilate Aboriginal peoples so that they no longer existed as distinct peoples."

The goal, the commission said, was "cultural genocide."

Terry Richardson, chief of Pabineau First Nation, urged Higgs in a Facebook post to remove Wilson as a PC candidate. ( Jacques Poitras/CBC)

Wilson, the minister for mental health and addiction in the PC government, posted the statement on Monday, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

It was liked with a heart emoji by another PC candidate, Rob Weir of Riverview.

Tuesday is the deadline for candidates to register with Elections New Brunswick, so removing Wilson as a candidate could leave the PCs without anyone on the ballot in Albert-Riverview.

Liberal Leader Susan Holt also denounced Wilson's comparison. 

"Minister Wilson's statement is completely disrespectful and inappropriate," she said in a statement.

"Clearly it shows her lack of understanding of basic history and is yet another example of this government's disrespect for First Nations."

Liberal Leader Susan Holt called Wilson's statement 'completely disrespectful and inappropriate.' (Pool Camera)

Holt said it was up to Higgs whether Wilson should be dropped as a PC candidate.

"He has certainly kicked people out of his cabinet and caucus when they didn't agree with him," she said by email.

Green candidate Megan Mitton called on Wilson to apologize and for Higgs to denounce the statement.

"This is abhorrent, it's indefensible, and it's completely wrong," she said in a post on X.

Wilson not the first

Wilson isn't the first Progressive Conservative to draw the parallel between policies to protect 2SLGBTQ+ children and the residential school system.

Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins candidate Faytene Grasseschi made the comparison as a Christian conservative activist, before becoming a PC candidate last year.

She told CBC News in a July 2023 interview it was an Indigenous parent who first told her there was a parallel.

"It's an ideology. It's a mindset that says the children belong to the government, not the family, not the parents," she said.

Grasseschi acknowledged the potential consequences of the original Policy 713 weren't as severe as children being taken hundreds of miles away from their families and losing their Indigenous language and culture.

"In terms of children actually physically being taken away to another — yeah, absolutely," she said. "But I think the point was it's an ideology."

"How do you find 32 days of things to say, other than potentially critiquing your opponents?" asks Acadia University political scientist Alex Marland, an expert in political messaging.

"If you're not going to fill that with promises, the question is 'what are you going to do?""

Higgs has made some other, smaller commitments, such as changes to the scope of practice of medical professionals to improve access to primary care.

But increasingly he is spending his time trying to poke holes in his opponents' spending commitments.

Total turmoil

Early in the campaign, the PCs released their estimate of the cost of Liberal Leader Susan Holt's promises, a multi-year total they pegged at $6 billion.

Their list is expansive, going well beyond the official campaign period.

It takes in everything from non-binding resolutions at a Liberal Party policy convention in February, to topics raised during a Holt "listening tour" of the province, to ideas the Liberal leader has outlined in media interviews.

One example: an eye-popping $300-million cost estimate to address the need for 30,000 housing units, which Holt made during an Oct. 6, 2023, CBC interview. 

"It's not small," she said of the sum.

Holt repeated the commitment to 30,000 units early in the campaign, but the $300-million figure doesn't appear in the costing document the Liberals have filed with Elections New Brunswick, a requirement under the Transparency in Election Commitments Act.

The Liberals also claim their promise to improve pay for doctors and other primary-care providers carries no cost at all — because Higgs's government announced a new compensation model for doctor billings on Sept. 12 that took effect a few days later.

"This is presumed to be covered and in the fiscal framework due to the September 2024 announcement by the government," the Liberals say in their costing disclosure form.

That led Higgs to complain on Friday that the Liberal promise is "largely a copy" of his own.

"Nothing new here, except less of it," he said. "The only other difference is it's printed in red, so that it'll be covered in red ink."

 While the PCs have pegged the cost of Liberal promises at $6 billion, they've included proposed initiatives that were mused about long before the election call. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

As of Monday, the Liberals had pegged the total cost of all their promises at $203 million over five years — leading them to brag that their platform promises are less pricey than Higgs's HST cut, which would cost $1.6 billion in lost revenue a year during the same period.

"The premier has made the single most expensive campaign commitment of anyone on this stage," Holt said during last week's CBC News leaders' debate.

"In fact, his commitment is more expensive than the entire platform that a Holt government is going to put forward, with that single expense."

Holt's campaign did not respond directly to CBC's questions about the PC calculation of $6 billion in Liberal promises or their no-cost promise on primary-care compensation.

Instead, they said in a statement that Higgs "waited until the month before an election to shovel money out the door" to avoid the transparency law's costing requirements.

"Higgs is focused on us, we are focused on New Brunswickers," the statement said.

But the PCs are sticking with their calculation that the Liberals have promised — or at least created expectations among voters of —  a lot more spending.

"They promise everything to everybody. Whatever anybody wants, their hands are out, they promise it — but somebody's got to pay for it, and that scares me," said Moncton South PC candidate Greg Turner.

Marland says research indicates that voters tend not to focus on the complex cost calculation of promises, but the math can still influence the campaign narrative.

"If one party is making all these wild promises, opponents and journalists and others want to have a sense of what the implications are all of these promises," he said.

"I'm not sure the average person is going to look at it, but the average person is going to depend on other people to bring it forward, so in that sense it matters."

Historic aversion

Higgs's aversion to costly platforms goes back to his belief that the large government deficits of the past were largely the result of a vicious cycle of impulsive campaign promises.

"What puts governments behind is an elaborate campaign position, spending all kinds of money, and then you can't get out of it, and you're in a [financial] hole for the next two or three years, and by the time you get out of it, you're into another election," he said.

"I refused to get into that cycle when I started this, and I continue to be in the same frame of mind."

Fredericton North PC candidate Jill Green says voters have warmed to the Higgs approach.

Fredericton North PC candidate Jill Green believes voters have warmed to Higgs's approach of announcing less. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

"I think we've shown in the past that we don't make promises we can't keep," she said. "So when we say we're going to do something, they know we're going to do it."

Higgs said last week he hasn't seen a downside to a one-promise campaign — "not in my elections in the past," he said.

But it's unclear that's what voters were endorsing when Higgs won in 2018 and 2020.

Six years ago, the Liberals won the popular vote over the PCs by a wide margin. The Tories only scraped into power — with a minority government — thanks to vote splits and a handful of very close wins.

Two years later, the Tories got a majority, but that may have been less about Higgs's aversion to promises and more about his steady management of the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic — and his notably weak Liberal opponent, Kevin Vickers.

Which could make this campaign the first real test of his faith that the party that promises less can win more.