Only hours before European scientists said August was tied for the world’s hottest month on record, Megan Mitton was positioning herself as the only real alternative to Premier Susan Holt’s leadership.
The three-term Green MLA and long-time environmental champion announced on Wednesday she was running for the leadership of the small opposition party.
She’s the first person to declare candidacy for the position to replace the long-serving David Coon, who announced in June he would be stepping aside to breathe new life into the party.
In recent interviews, Mitton has accused Holt of abandoning the fight against climate change, citing the Liberal government’s recent decisions to explore the idea of lifting the 12-year-old moratorium on shale gas fracking and approve a gas and diesel plant in the Green MLA’s own riding of Memramcook-Tantramar.
Mitton, whose hometown of Sackville is in a low-lying part of the province that’s at risk of flooding, said emitting more greenhouse gases will just cook the planet.
“I want to fight to improve access to health care and preventative health care, and to actually take climate change seriously because that means that we’re taking the health and safety of New Brunswickers seriously. We need to be investing in things like renewable energy and energy efficiency, rather than things like gas plants, and possibly pursuing fracking and hyperscale data centres,” she told Brunswick News in an interview on Wednesday.
The last reference was a criticism of a proposed data centre in Saint John that would use a lot of fresh water to cool its operations and electricity to power servers, two forms of pollution the Liberal government hasn’t made efforts to stop.
On Thursday, Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service, said that August tied a record from 2023 as the hottest month the world has ever suffered, pushing global temperatures more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, considered a grave danger that will lead to more flooding, wildfires and extreme weather.
Besides tackling climate change and health care, Mitton has a third salvo – seeking economic justice.
“I want us to have an economy that benefits New Brunswickers and is less focused on benefitting billionaires.”
The Progressive Conservatives – the biggest opposition party in the legislature – have roundly criticized the Liberals for running up the biggest deficit in New Brunswick history – which grew to an estimated $1.7 billion in last month’s latest fiscal update.
But Mitton didn’t put the same emphasis on turning the deficit around to ensure future generations aren’t burdened with a heavy debt load they need to pay back.
She said there were other measurements just as important as the deficit, such as people’s wellbeing and access to health care.
“Who is going to bear the burden of difficult times?” she said. “If the government is so focused on cutting spending and reducing the deficit, then those costs end up somewhere else. Maybe it’s people going hungry, people not getting access to the services that they need. The reality is that the debt and deficits have become part of how governments function.”
She said she would work with Ottawa to tax windfall profits from sectors such as the oil and gas industry to help tame deficits.
“I’d like to address the excess profits that we’ve been seeing with these extremely rich corporations and their owners and closing some of the loopholes on tax havens. There’s an extreme amount of wealth in the world that is not being shared fairly by any means.”
Mitton, 40, was the first woman in New Brunswick history elected as a Green in 2018, when she, Coon and Kevin Arseneau spearheaded a breakthrough, winning three of the legislature’s 49 seats. Along with the People’s Alliance, the small Green party held the balance of power in Blaine Higgs’s minority Progressive Conservative government.
She gave birth to a daughter and son while in office before becoming the party’s deputy leader in 2023.
In the 2024 provincial election, the Greens lost Arseneau’s seat, a setback for the party, while the Liberals won a big majority.
Arseneau is very outspoken and loves publicity, once taking a 24-hour journey from his Kent North riding to Fredericton, normally a drive of a couple of hours, just to prove that public transit was underfunded. His supporters wanted him to take a stab at the leadership, but he announced last month he wouldn’t run, preferring to focus on his organic farm and teaching career in Rogersville.
Mitton submitted her application this week to the party’s leadership contest committee and will officially become a registered leadership contestant once vetting is complete, no later than Sept. 28.
David Wagner, chair of the committee, said it would not disclose any other potential candidates until it examines all applications and provides a final list of registrants. The deadline to apply is Saturday at noon. Party members will vote for a new leader between Nov. 21 and Dec. 5. Coon is already on record stating he won’t endorse anyone in the race.
Mitton said if she wins the contest, a big task will be rebuilding the party. She wants to see the party regain more than three seats in the next election and pledged to visit every part of the province to ensure success.
“It’s going to take a lot of work and I’m up for the challenge. Our party has a really great base that we need to build on,” she said. “Of course, in politics, there are some factors that you can’t control. The last election was really a get rid of Higgs election, and there was a red wave that impacted us, but we still had a pretty steady vote share. And so, we’re solidly there to stay, and now it’s time to grow and aim to have more seats and more influence in the legislature.”
John Chilibeck is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter for the Daily Gleaner. This article originally appeared in the Telegraph-Journal on September 10, 2026.
