Shawn, Interrupted

In May of this year, our Liberal Premier and friend Shawn Graham made a very odd comment about whether he would be willing to call an early election.

He said essentially that he wanted to stick to the fixed election date of Sept 27, 2010, but that if an "issue of public importance" came along he might have to go to the people.

We know now that Shawn Graham personally broke his promise about NB Power and started the sales pitch with Premier Jean Charest in January of this year. Obviously a few months later he was so excited about how the talks were going he accidentally let it slip that it might become an election-worthy issue.

Were the Liberals lining up for a snap election? The timing of recent events for are very curious. On October 29th the Big Deal was signed with Charest. There is also a provincial Liberal party convention scheduled for Saturday November the 14th. This is just three days before the Legislature is set to start on the 17th with a fancy Speech from the Throne.

And let's not forget that the provincial budget has been announced for December 1st. Which we have also been forewarned by the Finance Minister is going to contain another historic deficit.

That's an awful lot of interrelated stuff happening within 33 days.

But consider this - if Shawn Graham's plan all along was to call a snap election at the Liberal Convention on November the 14th - then the House opening and the budget would be postponed until the spring. He could be campaigning on lower power rates as well as the positive impact they could have on the provincial budget - he wouldn't be campaigning on another terrible deficit.

The real kicker is that with a snap election there would be no time for the Official Opposition to ask annoying questions in the Legislature that would reveal the details of the Big Deal. Plus we also know that they have been spending our tax dollars on a massive advertising campaign in the three weeks leading up to the snap election date.

We here at the NB Conservative believe that the Liberal gurus intended all along to use the two week period between the announcement of the Big Deal and the Liberal convention to make the final decision on calling a snap election. But we also think a funny thing happened on the way to the election - the people have already spoken.