​Election stakes: Lo and behold!

If you drive the rural roads of New Brunswick these days, chances are you will see a lot of orange squares tilted on their sides, looking like diamonds. They have on them the telltale lettering: Construction.

Could it be there is an election in the air? For those who have witnessed a few elections over the years, it will not come as a big surprise that there is a lot of roadwork in these parts in the run-up to an election.

However, when Blaine Higgs successfully ran to became the Premier of New Brunswick in 2018, he talked as though he was a new type of politician. He would do away with old style politics, the way it had always been practiced in the past-- you know, a mickey of rum in exchange for your vote; patronage handed out by the party in power in government hiring.

And, roadwork, lots of roadwork.

But for Premier Higgs, all that was a thing of the past. Politics and governing would be done in a new way, and, above all, he professed to be very tight with the taxpayers’ money.

But not so fast! These days road-side construction signs are blossoming like orange flowers no-doubt cheering up residents who have been waiting six years for some patching on the road in front of their rural home.

For the most part, this is not the application of a full coat of asphalt or even chip seal with extensive planning by highway engineers. It is likely just work sketched out on the back of a cigarette package for quick and dirty patching.
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In some cases, such as for bridges, there is not even a need for a flag person to guide the traffic and protect the work crews. Automatic traffic lights indicate safe passage. Continuous operation of these lights suggests an election is coming even after all work at that site has finished for the day.

These lights are a new form of what used to be dismissed as mere “election stakes” when, in the “bad old days”, citizens were encouraged to get excited when there were signs that new construction was imminent outside their home. Part of the alure was just the hope that, sometime, good things would happen.
 
It is nothing new for some politicians to get exuberant about roadwork at election time. In New Brunswick’s neighboring province of Quebec, Jean-Guy Cardinal, a minister in the former Union Nationale government back in the 1970’s, ordered a road paved right over the fallen snow.
 
Despite Premier Higgs’ new-found interest in electoral roadwork, we would not expect him to go as far as Minister Cardinal. In any case, with climate change we do not get as much snow now as we used to before Mr. Higgs took office in 2018...