Parti Acadien - 1978 Provincial Election

1978 Provincial Election

The Parti Acadien decided once again to support the creation of a separate province, in tandem with most (but not all) SANB members. The party went into the 1978 election with a platform of independence. However, Richard Hatfield and the governing Progressive Conservatives also promoted a platform that promised to increase the role of the Acadian people and culture within the province.

The party's platform was seen as vague during the election, so it subsequently clarified its positions. The party stood for in decentralization of provincial powers and French-language administrative units across the province. A convention of Parti Acadien supporters, SANB members and other Acadians in 1979 produced a split on the issue of whether to vote to secede from New Brunswick or work for reform from within. The SANB (still a cultural association at the core) risked having its funding from the Government of Canada cut off before it explained that the convention produced no consensus and was not binding.

The 1978 election was the Parti Acadien's most successful. Their candidates averaged 12% of the vote, and Restigouche West candidate Armand Plourde finished second, only 170 votes short of first place. This was the party's only second-place finish, and the closest it came to winning a seat. In the election the Liberal Party led by Acadian Joseph Daigle garnered 44.36% of the popular vote, just .03% less than the winning Progressive Conservatives and captured twenty-eight seats to the Conservative Party's thirty. The votes that went to the Parti Acadien traditionally had gone to the Liberals and it was widely believed that the Parti acadien cost the Liberals the election.

In 1980, the majority of the SANB membership votes in favour of promoting secession. As a result, it lost funding from both the federal and provincial governments, who feared that radicals had taken over the group (and by extension, the Parti Acadien). The more centrist factions of the party jumped ship, mostly to the Conservatives.

By the 1982 election, the Conservatives' policies on francophone rights resonated with Acadian voters, and Hatfield's party won an unprecedented number of Acadian seats. Hatfield's overtures to the Acadians did not sit well with many anglophone New Brunswickers, who later founded the New Brunswick Confederation of Regions Party whose platform called for English as the only official language in New Brunswick. The Parti Acadien lost 75% of its support from 1978, and officially disbanded in 1986.