Green-to-Liberal floor crosser running for mayor of New Brunswick capital

Jenica Atwin, candidate for mayor Fredericton, poses in front of Fredericton City Hall, Thursday, April 16, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eli Ridder

FREDERICTON — From green to red and now blazing her own path with a purple-branded campaign, a former Fredericton-area member of Parliament is putting her name in for local office.

Jenica Atwin, who made history seven years ago as the first Green Party MP in Atlantic Canada before later crossing to the Liberals, is running to be mayor of the city she once represented in the House of Commons.

She is up against longtime city councillor Steve Hicks and retired construction worker John Reid — a trio of first timers that guarantee the next mayor of New Brunswick’s capital city will be a rookie.

Atwin, a former teacher from nearby Oromocto, N.B., says she views city council as an opportunity to leverage her federal connections and experience in her own backyard.

“I can’t tell you how many times I knocked on doors in the federal elections and people were raising municipal issues with me, so now I’ll be able to do something about it,” Atwin said in a recent interview.

Atwin says she wants to address homelessness and substance abuse issues, improve Fredericton’s recreation options and strengthen the city’s efforts to attract new business.

“I can bring that experience from the federal level here to navigate the government systems, leverage those existing relationships with key ministers,” Atwin said.

“We’re going to need funding support to get our goals over the finish line. I want to offer my skills back to the community that made me who I am.”

Atwin made history in 2019 both by winning the Fredericton riding as the Green candidate and by being a part of the party’s largest-ever federal caucus alongside leader Elizabeth May and Paul Manly.

Less than two years later, she surprised many by crossing to Trudeau’s minority Liberals. She said at the time that she wanted to get away from party infighting and work in a more collaborative environment.

She was sharply criticized at the time by Green Party members for betraying her mandate for the sake of political convenience.

As a newly minted Liberal, she held on to her seat in the fall 2021 election by eking out a narrow win with just over 500 more votes than the Conservative Party runner-up. Atwin was later one of many Liberal MPs to publicly call for former prime minister Justin Trudeau to resign.

Atwin decided not to run again in the 2025 federal election, saying she wanted to leave politics to prioritize her family life. She said she didn’t know what was next for her but that she needed to be close to home.

When Kate Rogers, who was Fredericton’s first female mayor, announced in January she wouldn’t run for re-election, Atwin started to consider a campaign she hadn’t thought about before.

“It wasn’t on the radar because I really thought our city had good direction,” Atwin said, referencing mayor and council.

Hicks, the other major challenger in the mayoral race, wants to see a change of course — particularly when it comes to how the city budgets.

“My first 14 years I never voted against the budget, they always stayed within inflation. However, over the last four years, increases have been above what is already record inflation,” Hicks said in an interview.

Hicks, who has been a councillor for 18 years, says city council needs to budget the way people do in their personal lives by focusing on needs above wants.

He pointed to Fredericton’s new $111 million performing arts centre as a clear example. He was the lone vote last year against raising the city’s borrowing limit for the project to $48.4 million from $22.6 million.

“When people are struggling at home and you’re spending a 100 and some million dollars on an art centre, that’s challenging,” Hicks said.

“But I think we just need to really look at everything in the budget and treat it like our own home sometimes to make sure we’re spending money in the right places.”

A lesser known figure in the race, John Reid wants the city to build bomb shelters and prepare for a potential local dam breach and possible war.

“We’re missing things in Fredericton that we absolutely need to protect the population here in Fredericton,” he said, adding the city should be prepared in case war comes to New Brunswick.

There’s currently no indication the Maritime province is under threat of armed conflict.

Rogers, a one-term mayor who is leaving Fredericton’s city hall after a combined 14 years on city council, says it’s important for her successor to continue bringing in more investments from Ottawa and the province.

“A lot of the projects that we want to take on as a municipality require either funding from other orders of government or certainly working well (together) because there’s now such crossover in jurisdiction,” she said.

For example, Rogers said, the City of Fredericton wasn’t able to get the necessary regional buy-in for a new aquatics facility from surrounding communities. But fresh interest from a new Liberal provincial government in 2024 changed the outlook, according to Rogers, and now the city has renewed work on the project.

During her term as mayor, Rogers said the city has introduced Sunday transit, invested in more bike trails and built the performing arts centre. She added the next council should continue that “momentum.”

The outgoing mayor added that also applies to Fredericton’s ongoing struggle with public safety.

Last year, a community task force put forward a series of 47 recommendations that included building low-income housing units, more police presence and setting up an all-hours mobile crisis unit.

“The new council will have to be very vigilant and stay on top of that,” Rogers said.

Hicks, who works as a probation officer, named homelessness, addiction and mental health issues as his top priority, “by far.” He said he wants to work with the provincial and federal governments to get more addiction treatment and transitional housing options.

“What we need to do is just to make sure we have better co-ordination between police and the outreach and all the different non-profits ... we need focus on the root causes,” Hicks added.

Atwin says improving life for all of those who call Fredericton home will take spurring the city’s economy.

“We’ve got to have the resources to, again, make these visions come to life. And so it’s going to be important to leverage those relationships and sure we have what we need,” she said.

“Because we can plan, we can dream — but we have to make sure that everything’s in place to make it happen.”

Fredericton voters will elect their next council on May 11.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 20, 2026.

Eli Ridder, The Canadian Press