By Avery Mullen
New Democrats won their best election result in Nova Scotia in more than a decade, and the party now forms the Official Opposition.
Leader Claudia Chender said her party’s success Tuesday was partly driven by years of tightfisted budgeting from the Liberal Party that hollowed out Nova Scotia’s public services.
“I think what we take away from being the Official Opposition is that people are looking for a strong voice and they’re looking for a different voice,” said Chender at a press conference. “I think we saw that on both ends of the spectrum.
“I think the Liberals, in this manifestation, have run their course. I think people have not forgotten the austerity that got us to where we are. I think that is a legacy of the Liberal government that we’re going to be talking about, but I also think that they couldn’t quite come back to actually being a clear, strong voice of opposition given their history.”
The NDP posted its strongest election result in more than a decade, this time winning nine seats, despite only seeing their share of the popular vote increase by about one point, to just over 22 per cent. The Liberals, previously the Official Opposition, suffered their worst election defeat in modern history, coming within a hair’s breadth of losing party status with just two seats in the legislature.
Chender said the NDP’s ultimate goal is to form government, and this week marked a significant step in that direction. To make further inroads, the party will need to win more rural seats, with all but one of its nine MLAs representing urban or suburban constituencies in the Halifax area.
“I stood at a podium a couple of years ago when I became leader and said we were ready to win,” said Chender. “Our project is to form government, and certainly official opposition is the first step. I think we always have that in our sights.
“I think we have been an effective opposition at Province House. I think our MLAs have been incredible advocates. And so I think that we were very happy and excited, but not surprised at this result.”
The austerity measures referenced by Chender were introduced by the prior Liberal government, first under the leadership of Stephen McNeil and then by Iain Rankin. They included tightly-controlled healthcare spending that Progressive Conservative leader Tim Houston has characterized as having contributed to systemic problems that took most of his first term to correct.
While the McNeil government made very little in the way of data about the health care system available to the public — unlike the PCs, who maintain a dashboard regularly updated with detailed stats about recruitment, staff retention and wait times — doctors, nurses and other professionals were anecdotally reporting ever-escalating problems for much of the eight years the Liberals were in power.
Liberal spending on health care grew about 30 per cent from the 2014-15 budget to the 2021-22 budget, the last passed by that government before it was defeated at the polls. That figure almost exactly kept pace with GDP growth at 28.6 per cent, but by the time the Liberals left office, an escalating shortage of staff had led the registry of people waiting for a family doctor to balloon to what was, at the time, an all-time high of about 69,000 people.
Tory health minister and longtime health care administrator Michelle Thompson has characterized the system under past governments as bogged down by operational distractions like documenting minor, day-to-day processes in detail and a broad lack of structured collaboration between different types of health professionals.
Chender on Wednesday also laid out one of her first policy positions as leader of the Opposition: the NDP will support the federal government’s planned two-month “tax holiday” from sales tax, which under the HST structure used by the Atlantic Provinces, includes the provincial component.
The governments of several provinces, including New Brunswick, have complained about receiving just a day’s notice about the plan and not yet having clarity about whether they will be compensated for their portions of the lost revenue. But Chender pointed out that Nova Scotia already waves taxes on some items — certain groceries like milk and prescription medications being two examples.
“I absolutely think that Nova Scotians need a break,” said Chender. “That’s what we’ve been saying this whole election.
“I don’t think it will pose the same challenge for us that we’re hearing from (Premier) Susan Holt in New Brunswick. But absolutely, I think the Nova Scotians that I’ve talked to over the last several months, and over the last several years, will say that anything that can help them, particularly as we move towards the holiday season, is welcome.”
Nova Scotia NDP leader Claudia Chender staked out one of her first policy positions as leader of the opposition Wednesday when she said her party will support the federal government’s proposed, two-month “tax holiday” from HST. (The Notebook).
