2 days Ago By Michael Taube
There’s been an intense call for political change around the world. We’ve seen it in the U.K.
, where Keir Starmer and the Labour Party ended 15 years of Tory rule. We’ve seen it in the U.S.
, where Donald Trump will be returning to the White House with the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and Senate. Yet, there’s one Canadian province which is seemingly about to buck this worldwide trend. That’s in Nova Scotia, where Premier Tim Houston and his PC government are, once again, coasting to victory.
Houston has been in power since August 2021. The PCs unexpectedly won a majority government over then-Premier Iain Rankin and the Liberals with only 38.44 per cent of the vote.
This caught Canada’s political chattering class completely off-guard. Not a single poll had shown the PCs in the lead during the election campaign. In fact, they hadn’t led in any poll since June 2019, when Stephen McNeil was still Premier.
How did Houston pull off this amazing feat? He ran as a Red Tory (or left-leaning Conservative) who was going to focus on critical policies like increasing public health care spending and hiring more health care workers. It’s a time-honoured election tradition in Atlantic Canada that resonates with local voters of all political stripes. The NS Premier has emphasized Red Tory policies both in government and on the campaign hustings.
He described his election platform, which was released on Nov. 8, as a “continuation of a plan that is already working.” This includes promises to lower small business taxes from 2.
5 to 1.5 per cent, cap power rate increases, reduce the HST by one point to 14 per cent, and further improvements to health care such as a provincial travel nurse program and establishing a menopause centre of excellence. “We’ve come a long way since 2021,” Houston told reporters.
“Our economy is growing and there’s a strong foundation to build on.” Many Nova Scotians seem to agree. Recent polls show the provincial PCs at 47 to 50 per cent popularity, with the Liberals and NDP fighting for second place in the low to mid-20s.
With voters heading to the polls on Nov. 26, the result seems pretty clear. There’s another part to this election story, too.
Houston and the PCs may owe a valuable assist to Claudia Chender and the NDP. Why? The latter party, which formed government in Nova Scotia between 2009-2013 under then-Premier Darrell Dexter, has badly botched up its campaign from pillar to post. For instance, the NDP tossed out Tammy Jakeman, its candidate in the riding of Eastern Passage, on Nov.
9. This was after the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs connected her to anti-Israel and antisemitic tweets. Jakeman retweeted one disgusting post in March 2023 that described Israel as being “happiest when terrorizing Palestinians.
” She also wrote an abhorrent Nov. 2023 tweet on top of an Auschwitz Memorial message about World Children’s Day and atrocities to young Jewish children in Nazi concentration camps. Here’s what she said in part, “This — on a day that children in Gaza will die b/c Israel is obsessed with killing all Hamas regardless of the human expenses.
” How did this candidate get past the vetting process — and was she even vetted to begin with? The NDP hasn’t said much. The party acknowledged that Jakeman had resigned (she’s now running as an Independent) and released a statement that they’re “committed to ensuring the safety and dignity of all members of the Jewish community and Nova Scotians of all faiths.” The missing ingredient? An apology from Chender.
Alas, the NDP leader doesn’t seem to relish the fine art of tactful political apologies. Chender’s Nov. 6 screed against Trump’s re-election, on the other hand, was certainly artistic in terms of joining other left-wingers who’ve been screaming bloody murder for the past two weeks.
She was aghast by the “chilling election results in the United States,” stating that “sadness and anger don’t begin to capture how I feel” and felt “a whole generation will grow up with a leader who is small, and mean and full of hate.” Hmm. She certainly wasn’t sad or angry when the Nova Scotia PCs revealed that Lisa Lachance, the NDP candidate for Halifax-Citadel-Sable Island, has a consulting company, Wisdom2Action , which has collected $1.
1 million from Ottawa since 2021. This occurred while Lachance was the party’s deputy leader to boot. Any comments about this revelation, Ms.
Chender? There wasn’t too much anger or sadness about Lisa Blackburn, either. The former Halifax regional councillor and current NDP candidate for Sackville-Uniacke apparently made some controversial remarks about defunding the police. The Nova Scotia PCs revealed that Blackburn called a 2022 Defund Police report written by anti-police activist El Jones for the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners “everything I wanted it to be and then some.
” This sentiment was just a wee bit different from her Feb. 28, 2022 response to CBC reporter Rose Murphy on the same issue, where she stated : “I just see this as the logical next step.” How about this discrepancy, Ms.
Chender? Anything? Anyone? Bueller ? Houston and the PCs have run a popular government and strong election campaign, but Chender and the NDP’s silence, ignorance, and incompetence likely helped make the decision of normally undecided voters even easier. Incumbency will rule the day in Nova Scotia, it seems. National Post.
