Nova Scotia vote may hold clues for Ottawa

National party leaders, strategists are preparing for a federal election call

CAPE BRETON, N.S.—Driving along the coast in Cape Breton, you could be forgiven for not realizing there’s a provincial election campaign going on.

Few political lawn signs mar the yards along rural roads, bordered by forest on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. Aside from brief news clips between classic rock playlists or country ballads, politics seems very far away indeed.

The province is continuing to reopen after a spring of lockdown measures, with new COVID-19 cases numbering in the single digits most days. Nova Scotians are largely free to roam their province, to shop and dine indoors at restaurants, to socialize or hit the beach — at least, in Cape Breton’s case, between weeklong bouts of rain.

It’s a dynamic that could work in the governing Liberals’ favour as they seek a third consecutive majority government, this time under a new leader — 38-year-old Premier Iain Rankin. People are happy, increasingly vaccinated, and hopeful that the worst of COVID-19 is behind them.

“Here, there’s almost a sense of accomplishment. We’re coming out of (the pandemic) together. I knock on doors and even people who aren’t voting for me are still in a pretty good mood,” said Zach Churchill, the province’s health minister, who is seeking his fourth term as the Liberal MLA in Yarmouth.

“I do believe that for a large part of the population, they’re satisfied with our decisionmaking as a government … with the pandemic management. And it does seem to me that we are getting even new supporters, who may not have supported us in the past, who are supporting the government because of that.”

The Aug. 17 vote will be the closest thing Canada has seen to a “post-pandemic” election since COVID-19 shut down the country, drawing voters’ minds away from everyday politics to more existential issues.

Will it be a referendum on the Liberals’ management of the pandemic in Nova Scotia? Or will the ballot box question focus more on how the province recovers from the economic and public health crisis? Will the Liberals be judged on their performance over the last 16 months, or shuffled out the door in favour of a new direction?

Those questions are relevant not only to voters in Nova Scotia, but to national party leaders and strategists as they prepare for a federal election call expected within weeks. For them, the Nova Scotia campaign could provide lessons — or cautionary tales — for their own post-pandemic pitches.

While Nova Scotians don’t seem particularly tuned in to the early days of their midsummer election campaign, two issues have come to the fore: the state of health care in the province, an issue driven by the opposition Progressive Conservatives, and housing affordability, primarily highlighted by the third-place New Democrats.

Health care is a perennial concern in Nova Scotia, given the province’s aging population. Health-care spending has accounted for roughly 40 per cent of the province’s total spending in recent years, and the COVID-19 crisis focused even more attention on the stresses in the system.

PC Leader Tim Houston pledged $430 million in additional spending to improve access to primary care physicians, creating 2,500 new longterm-care beds, and boosting mental health services.

The Tories were relentless in the early days of the campaign in their messaging on the issue, controlling the campaign narrative and forcing the governing Liberals to react. It also gave Houston some much-needed profile after 16 months of pandemic news, which largely overshadowed opposition politics.

“Nova Scotians that I’ve talked to across this province are ready to move forward,” Houston told the Star at a recent campaign stop in Membertou.

“They want to know who’s going to fix health care, how will they get access to health care? We were in health-care crisis before the pandemic … Now more than ever, people are looking forward to what’s possible for this province — and that is a tremendous opportunity for us.”

The Liberals’ failure to control the narrative early in the campaign is something Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his team would be wise to avoid, according to Scott Reid, a principal at Feschuk. Reid who served as communications director for prime minister Paul Martin.

“When the writ drops, they’re going to have to have a sharp offering. It’s going to have to be precise,” said Reid in an interview.

“You say to the voters, ‘This is what your vote gets out of us. By the way, this is what we think your vote gets you if you vote for the other guys, and it’s not as good,’ ” he said.

“Right now, they’re focusing on let’s either remove lingering (issues) or cementing claims to certain achievements. But eventually, once that writ is dropped, you’re going to have to shift to, ‘Here’s the bargain. This is what you get.’ ”

While it’s unlikely that health care will feature as prominently in the federal campaign as in provincial races, the Conservatives and Erin O’Toole have already laid the groundwork to make the issue a significant part of their offering, promising to boost funding for provincial mental health care.

Housing affordability is another issue that has garnered more attention during the pandemic, with housing prices soaring in the Halifax Regional Municipality. Both the federal Conservatives and NDP have been drawing attention to the issue in Ottawa, but in Nova Scotia the issue is owned by the New Democrats.

“I think we’ve learned a huge lesson out of COVID, that the capacity to focus resources of a whole society towards a singular end is only present in one place: it’s present in the government, and if you’re going manage it, you have to have a government that’s focused on what’s needed,” NDP Leader Gary Burrill told the Star after a campaign event in Lunenburg on Thursday.

“Stuff like child care, job creation in long-term care, improving care for people living in nursing homes, housing and affordable housing, rent control — huge issues during the pandemic.”

Those issues could be a winner for the New Democrats in urban and suburban ridings around the HRM, where the party has found success before. Burrill is promising to cap annual rent increases and creating new non-profit housing and co-operatives. The Liberals’ offering is comparatively small — $25 million to address urgent needs — creating a possible wedge issue in Halifax and surrounding communities.

Despite the Liberals’ stumbles out of the gate and the opposition’s best efforts, public polling suggests this is still Rankin’s election to lose.

A July 21-22 Mainstreet Research poll found the Liberals have 42 per cent support among decided and leaning voters, followed by the Progressive Conservatives at 30 per cent and the NDP at 22 per cent.

But the poll, which surveyed 607 voting-aged people in Nova Scotia and is considered accurate within 3.97 percentage points, found that almost a quarter of eligible voters remain

undecided. As the old saying goes: campaigns matter.

A big factor will be voter turnout, according to Lori Turnbull, the director of Dalhousie University’s School of Public Administration. Just 53 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the province’s 2017 election, and while early voting appears to be up this time around, scheduling the vote for the middle of August could keep turnout low.

Turnbull said it remains to be seen if the Liberals can regain control of the narrative, or if any of the three major parties can get Nova Scotians excited enough to switch governments at the tail end of the pandemic.

“Before the writ was dropped, the assumption was it was the Liberals’ to lose … (But) out of the gate, there have been stumbles, and a failure to develop a narrative that overrides the stumbles,” Turnbull said in an interview.

“Houston is very hungry. He wants to be premier and that’s palpable … To the extent that people are paying attention to this yet, I think you are seeing that. And I’m not sure, really, what the Liberals are going to do to recapture this, or if they’re going to sort of rely on the fact that the polls were good for them and expect that to last.”

Relying on good polling numbers to last is a dangerous strategy, particularly during an election campaign. But building on successes in managing the COVID-19 crisis, offering an optimistic view of the post-pandemic recovery, counting on weak opposition and an electorate with little enthusiasm for change starts to look like a winning hand for Rankin and the Nova Scotia Liberals.

The rest of the country could see another Liberal leader try to play the same cards in just a few weeks.

“I think we’ve learned a huge lesson out of COVID, that the capacity to focus resources of a whole society towards a singular end is only present in one place: it’s present in the government.”

GARY BURRILL

NOVA SCOTIA NDP LEADER