The New Brunswick CCF was slow to become established on the provincial political scene. It ran only one candidate in the 1939 election, Joseph C. Arrowsmith in the riding of Saint John City, winning 712 votes. The fortunes of the New Brunswick CCF rose in tandem with growing expectations for postwar social reform and the rising fortunes of the national CCF, including the election of the CCF in Saskatchewan in 1944. Under the leadership of J. A. Mugridge, a trade unionist and the chief electrician at the Saint John Drydock and Shipbuilding Company, the CCF won 11.7 percent of the vote in New Brunswick's 1944 provincial election. The best results were in Edmundston, Saint John, and Moncton, which had large numbers of union members. In that election, the CCF described itself as "the People's Party", running on a twelve-point program that included public ownership and full development of all natural resources including electricity, oil and gas and other public utilities.