2 activists say they will ask people to join the PC party so they can vote for the premier in the leadership review
Christian conservative groups in New Brunswick that are trying to get people to support Premier Blaine Higgs now have enough signatures to be a deciding factor in any vote to review his leadership.
In the last month, two groups working to help the troubled leader of the Progressive Conservatives have shown their strength by getting enough people to sign up to vote for him.
“Hundreds or even dozens of people can make a difference in some of these elections,” said Faytene Grasseschi, who runs the group 4 My Canada from Quispamsis, near Saint John.
She said that as of Wednesday, she had nearly 9,000 names from all over Canada, including 2,000 from New Brunswick.
“If it goes to a leadership review, I think it’s worth buying that membership and making your voice heard,” said Grasseschi.
“Isn’t this just simple democracy?”
More than 1,200 people have signed on to the Right Now group. Alissa Golob, one of the co-founders, thinks that more than 90% of them are from New Brunswickers.
She said, “We’ll be ready if it comes down to a leadership review or an election.”
Twenty-six presidents of PC riding associations have signed letters calling for a review. They want members to vote on whether or not to get rid of Higgs. In the past few months, New Brunswick’s premier has lost or fired a number of cabinet ministers because of how he leads and how he feels about things like a gender policy in the province’s schools.
The next step is for the party’s governing body to vote with a two-thirds majority to set a date for a convention. But if that happens, Grasseschi and Golob give Higgs a good chance of staying alive.
In the third and final round of the 2016 PC leadership vote, which Higgs won, only 2,732 members voted.
His lead was only 394 votes, which is a lot less than the number of names 4 My Canada and Right Now got.
“Those who participate in the process shape the country and our communities,” Grasseschi said.
Policy 713 caused groups to act quickly
Last month, Higgs had to deal with a cabinet and caucus revolt in the legislature over changes to Policy 713. This caused the two groups to start getting ready.
The original policy said that school staff had to honor the name and pronoun choices of students under 16 in the classroom, even if the child didn’t want their parents to know.
WATCH: Faytene Grasseschi says that trying to change how PCs vote is “basic democracy.”
If a child doesn’t want to include their parents, they will now be sent to a school psychologist or social worker to figure out a way to include them. Teachers and staff must use the child’s given name and pronoun at birth in the meantime.
Two ministers resigned from cabinet after joining four other PCs to vote with the opposition to help pass a Liberal motion calling for more consultations.
They said they quit over broader problems with the premier’s top-down leadership style, but Higgs has insisted the rebellion is about Policy 713 and parents’ rights.
In a recent interview on True North, a conservative digital media site, Grasseschi said the original policy assumed “every parent is a villain. [But] most parents are not villains.”
In fact, the policy was aimed at a tiny percentage of parents who might react badly or even violently if their children revealed they were questioning or changing their gender identity.
Grasseschi told CBC News that Higgs is trying to “strike a balance” to protect “vulnerable youth” while respecting the role of parents.
Author says trans issues ‘a new hub’ for Christian conservative
Grasseschi is something of a celebrity in Christian conservative circles.
She first came to prominence as an organizer of mass prayer rallies called TheCry and founded 4 My Canada in 2006.
In 2009 well-known Canadian televangelist David Mainse compared her to Old Testament figures Deborah and Esther, saying she had a “prophetic edge.”
Journalist Marci McDonald, author of a 2010 book on the Christian conservative movement, called her “very compelling and charismatic” and “one of the leading figures in this country’s emerging Christian right.”
McDonald said in an interview she believes Grasseschi and others are using the issue of LGBTQ rights in schools as “a new hub to get Christians, evangelical Christians, the religious right, involved in politics again, as a new rallying cry.
“They haven’t had a rallying issue since same-sex marriage that brought people out to the polls.”
Support can grow ‘exponentially,’ says Right Now co-founde
Right Now has existed since 2016 and focuses mainly on abortion.
Its online petition to support Higgs cites both Policy 713 and his refusal to fund abortions in Fredericton’s Clinic 554.
Golob said she believes most of the New Brunswickers who have signed are not PC members because many of them opposed some of his other policies, such as COVID-19 restrictions early in the pandemic.
But she said they form a base that can be deployed in any leadership review or election where Higgs’s future is on the line.
“You can grow that exponentially as long as you have that solid foundation,” she said.
In a statement, Higgs said he has received support “from a wide cross section of individuals” who come from “different backgrounds, different cultures, and different religions.”
He said “despite their differences,” they share his belief and support what he calls his balanced approach.
Sussex parent joins PCs to back Higg
The strategy of the two groups is already bearing fruit.i
Roxana Kreklo, a Sussex parent of school-age children who works for Harvest Prison Ministries, said she joined the PC party two weeks ago expressly to support Higgs.
“I think it’s important for all of us to get involved civically,” she said.
Kreklo moved to Canada as a child from Romania, shortly after the collapse of Communist rule there — one reason she said she’s getting involved politically now.
“I understand the value of of coming to a place that is a free and democratic society,” she said. “So I want to do what I can to preserve that for my kids and for other kids as well.”
Grasseschi disputes author’s descriptio
McDonald said Grasseschi is part of a movement called the New Aposotolic Reformation that aims to put believers in government leadership positions so Canada can be “restored to be a Christian nation in time for the second coming of Christ,” she said.
Grasseschi would not confirm that.
“You know, that would be a good question,” she told CBC News. “I don’t know. I hear these types of terms thrown around. People assume that I know. I actually have the same question myself.”
But Grasseschi said she is not aiming to create the kind of Christian-based government McDonald claims.
She also said her history with the Christian conservative movement isn’t relevant to the current debate in New Brunswick.
“I think every young person wants to change the world,” she said. “Once we get older, we just want the government to stay out of our pockets and not delete us from the lives of our kids.”
What’s next after Policy 713? 
Grasseschi and Kreklo are both vague on whether they want further changes to the guidelines around LGBTQ students or other policies.
“Of course I haven’t dissected the policy,” Kreklo said. “I’ve just been made aware of it. … So as it stands right now, I’m happy with that first point of keeping the lines of communication open.”
Grasseschi hopes to persuade the province to issue tax credits to parents who take their children out of public schools and enrol them in private schools, in effect allowing them to move their tax dollars out of the public system.
Higgs’s spokesperson was asked for a comment on that idea, but the premier’s statement to CBC News didn’t include a response.
Grasseschi would not say if she’ll lobby Higgs for more on Policy 713 or on issues such as abortion access or Medicare coverage of gender-confirming surgery for transgender people.
“If some of these other things come back onto the radar down the line, maybe we can have another conversation at that point,” she said
Political activism separate from charity group, Grasseschi say
Besides running 4 My Canada, Grasseschi is also executive director of a charity called V-Kol Media Ministries, which runs a range of programs and produces her Faytene TV show.
The program, which looks at current affairs from a faith-based perspective, airs online and on several cable channels.
V-Kol and 4 My Canada share the same mailing address, but Grasseschi said they are “separate legally and financially.”
V-Kol issues charitable tax receipts to donors, so it is restricted from political advocacy, while 4 My Canada, a non-profit without charitable status, is free to be vocal and active.
Right Now and 4 My Canada also operate outside provincial laws on election transparency.
Since 2015, Elections New Brunswick has required party leadership candidates and riding nomination candidates to register and disclose their donors.
But there’s no such rule for party leadership reviews.
There are also rules on third-party advertising, but they only apply during election campaigns.
Grasseschi won’t rule out another election run 
Grasseschi herself has already waded directly into electoral politics.
Not long after moving to New Brunswick, she ran unsuccessfully to be the Conservative Party of Canada candidate for Saint John-Rothesay in the last federal election.
She lost to former Saint John mayor Mel Norton, who went on to lose to Liberal incumbent Wayne Long.
She is not ruling out running federally again. She also said she has thought “vaguely, vaguely” about running provincially in Quispamsis whenever Higgs retires as MLA.
“Right now I’m just trying to get my laundry done,” she said. “Right now I’m just trying to get to tomorrow. But we all take things a day at a time in this world, right?”