Higgs's PC campaign spending leaned on populists, westerners
CBC
The 2024 New Brunswick Progressive Conservative election campaign leaned heavily — and spent heavily — on campaign consultants with socially conservative and populist connections, particularly in Western Canada, newly public documents reveal.
Financial returns for the PC Party show six-figure spending on services provided by Steve Outhouse, the party's campaign manager, and his company Intercede Communications.
Another Prairie-based company, Mash Strategy, whose CEO has raised the spectre of western separatism, also worked on the campaign.
Both companies also did taxpayer-funded work for the New Brunswick government when PC Premier Blaine Higgs was in power.
"I want to be sure our perspective is not limited to one region, one province," Higgs said of the government contracts in April 2024.
For pre-election and campaign services, Outhouse personally billed the party $154,843 in 2024, while Intercede billed $413,052.
Outhouse's government salary as principal secretary to the premier was $124,656 from April to September 2024.
Mash was paid $31,842 by the PC Party for campaign services. It had a government communications contract worth $72,000 last year.
Mash's CEO Derek Robinson was the chief of digital strategy for former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall from 2011 to 2018 and later joined the Buffalo Project, an organization that supports a more bullish approach to federalism.
It advocated Alberta and Saskatchewan taking control of some policy areas now under federal jurisdiction, including pensions and immigration — which Robinson told a podcast in 2020 was designed to discourage western separatist sentiment.
"If we don't get a fair deal within Confederation within a decent period of time here, I think the flames of separation are going to be burning much hotter in the very near future," Robinson said.
Outhouse is originally from Nova Scotia. He ran Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's winning election campaign in 2023 and two federal Conservative leadership campaigns by social conservative Leslyn Lewis.
Higgs insisted last year that the veteran campaign consultant could hold a taxpayer-funded government job in his office while preparing for the PC government's re-election campaign outside work hours.
"The separation between the night duties and the day duties would be very clear," Higgs said in April 2024.
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