The time is nigh
“Election 2024” is nigh upon us, although not only in New Brunswick, as it turns out.
In case you didn’t already know, there’s the dumpster fire (I love that term) down south in November, the possibility of a Canadian federal election at any time, now that the Liberals and NDP have ditched their “friends with benefits” agreement, and elections in several other provinces besides.
For us here in New Brunswick, decision day, Election 2024, is October 21. Oh, and there are municipal elections coming up here as well in May 2025. Plenty of chances to exercise our democratic muscles.
I’m not going to get into who the best party or best leader is here in NB, as there are plenty of pundits who get paid to share their wisdom with us on such things. I already know whom I’m voting for and, like anyone else, I have my own particular reasons. And so might you.
However, if fixing the sorry state of property assessment and taxation in New Brunswick is important to you, you may want to hold up for a bit and see what the parties and their candidates have to say about that.
I have found New Brunswickers to be shrewd in that we are willing to vote for different parties at different times, depending on the circumstances. And property assessment and tax reform might just be one of those issues that makes people consider all the options.
Where do the parties stand on property assessment and tax reform?
Here’s the short answer as far as the three parties with seats in the current legislature go: nowhere. They each stand virtually nowhere on property assessment and tax reform relative to Election 2024.
New Brunswick Liberals
Susan Holt’s Liberals had a policy convention in February of this year and one of the resolutions was entitled “Comprehensive Property Tax Reform and Study”. It talks about “fair assessment, exemptions, and relief”. Attendees recommended that the Party convene a panel of experts to devise a reform plan, should the party win the election.
The resolution suggests that the problem is still “rising property tax assessments” instead of the damned property tax rates – because NB doesn’t have a “culture” of lowering tax rates to offset increasing assessments like most other provinces do. I’ll just bite my tongue here, at least for the time being.
But, hey, at least the party has some type of position on this on their website, even if it isn’t an official Election 2024 policy plank.
Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick
There is nothing on the PC website on this topic, neither as a party policy resolution, nor as a plank in Election 2024.
However, Premier Blaine Higgs did say this past March that he’d like to reform the system “this year”. Now, I’m not sure when he would have intended to undertake this type of massive reform – perhaps in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day? Good grief.
Think about how much time the Government needed to implement local governance reform – they did it over a period of years beginning early in the PCs’ last mandate – and, in terms of the financial aspect of that reform, they haven’t completed it yet, as most municipalities would argue.
In that same March article, Premier Higgs also mused that assessment and tax reform could include farming out the assessment function to a private company or to a new standalone Crown corporation. Is this a hint of how the PCs might approach this issue? Perhaps, but that’s all we know from them right now.
Green Party NB
The Greens don’t have anything about property assessment and taxation on their website either. However, they could well hold the balance of power in a minority legislature in the wake of Election 2024, so don’t sleep on what they could bring to the table.
They have stated their belief that industries in NB aren’t paying their fair share of property taxes and that part of the solution to this would be to “remove the cap on how much tax municipalities can levy against heavy industries”. But that’s all we’ve got from them, at least for now.
They do have a link entitled “Policy manual” on their website, but a click takes us to the dreaded “The page you were looking for was not found”. Let’s hope for the Greens’ sake that this isn’t an omen in the coming vote.
Which party is most likely to do something about our broken system?
At the outset of Election 2024, it looks like the three main parties are keeping their powder dry about how they might – or might not – reform NB’s property assessment and tax system. We have hints of how they might approach it but nothing more than that.
As of right now, neither the Libs, nor the Greens have even come close to committing to revamping the system. The PCs have hinted at comprehensive reform but Premier Higgs’s statement about privatization or a standalone Crown corporation were just him thinking out loud, it seems, rather than a commitment to anything tangible.
What none of the parties seems to realize is that a revamped system could very well be a winning election strategy, as long as a party presents it in a clear, concise, and voter-friendly way. I realize that the issue is anything but simple, but that’s why they use all those highly-paid political consultants, right?
But at the root of it all is the most important question: do any of these three parties have the political courage to undertake a project like this? The PCs showed that they weren’t afraid to undertake municipal reform, which would be comparable in scale to property assessment and tax reform, but are they up to something similar?
Or will one of the other parties dare to try? (At which point, Yoda’s famous, “Do or do not. There is no try” comes to mind.)
So what’s a concerned voter to do?
The answer: push. Push the issue and push hard. Push everywhere.
Attend all-candidate forums and ask:
- “What exactly do you intend to do about our broken property assessment and tax system?”
- “What are you going to do to about changing the ‘culture’ of not lowering tax rates to offset assessment increases completely?”
- “What are you going to do to ensure that municipalities stop relying on increased assessments as a way of raising taxes by stealth?”
Write letters to the editor (yes, people still read newspapers, whether online or on actual paper – and these people vote). Dial up radio call-in shows. Attend a function in which any of the three leaders is participating. Do everything you can to put this issue at the forefront of every freaking politician’s mind. Be relentless in your quest for better.
Do everything you can to make our Election 2024 leaders and candidates understand that reforming our very broken assessment and tax system is important to you and that you will reward the party that has the nerve to tackle it head-on.
If not now, when they’re most eager to “listen” and get your vote, when?
It’s time. Do it.
Want to understand our property assessment and taxation system better and make it work to your advantage?
See my new book:
Taxing New Brunswick: An Insider’s Guide to Successfully Challenging Your NB Property Assessment (available on Amazon)