Nancy Hunter, 63, says her top two concerns going into Nova Scotia’s Nov. 26 election are housing and poverty.
“We have a lot of tent encampments,” said Hunter, pointing to a study showing the province to be the most impoverished in the region. In fact, the province has the highest poverty rate in the country, according to Statistics Canada.
In Hunter’s view, “very weak regulations” are to blame. She would like to see the province improve rent controls and boost affordable housing.
But she is not confident either the incumbent Progressive Conservative Party or the Nova Scotia Liberals — who were ousted from power in 2021 — would change things.
“We used to joke that only in Nova Scotia are the Conservatives more progressive than the Liberals,” said Hunter, who has lived in the province her entire life.
“The Liberal Party in Nova Scotia … who had two terms, were an extreme austerity government,” she said. “So we were in pretty bad shape before [Premier Tim] Houston came [in.]
“But … Houston hasn’t improved things,” she says. “So I will be voting for the NDP.”
Hunter looks unlikely to get the change she favours.
The Progressive Conservatives are expected to retain their majority by winning between 35 and 44 seats of the province’s 55 seats, according to Nov. 12 data from polling aggregator 338Canada.
“Tim Houston and the PCs are either winning or competitive on all of the top election issues,” said Kelly Bennett, vice president and Atlantic lead at polling firm Abacus Data.
But John George McCracken, a retired union representative and political commentator, says the “real story” of the election is that the “Liberals are in free fall.”
“It looks like the NDP’s poised to form the opposition,” said McCracken, who worked on the 2009 campaign that produced an NDP majority. The NDP currently hold six of the province’s seats, versus the Liberals’ 14.
‘Really infuriating’
Sources noted that the opposition parties have been at a disadvantage this campaign, following Houston’s Oct. 27 decision to call a snap election.
“The PCs have hit the deck with a full slate of candidates … [while the other parties] are scrambling,” said Halifax resident Shawna Henderson.
The decision has angered some voters. One of Houston’s first acts as premier was to introduce legislation fixing an election date of July 15, 2025.
“The current government came in [saying] … there would be no more snap elections so that Nova Scotians could have a measured approach,” said Henderson.
“And then to call a snap election with the shortest possible campaign period — 30 days — [it] just smacks so hard of self-serving manipulation of voters, and the whole system,” Henderson said.
“I find it really infuriating.”
Houston has said he called the early election to strengthen his government’s mandate to make investments, and to avoid entangling the province in federal politics.
“We are ready to make significant new investments in areas like housing and affordability, but before we enact that plan, Nova Scotians should have their say,” Houston said in an Oct. 27 post on social media platform X.
“With the instability in Ottawa and a federal election coming soon … our Province risks becoming a political football in a federal election that could be held simultaneously with the current scheduled fixed election date. That is not in the province’s best interest,” the post said.
Bennett, of Abacus Data, says there are compelling reasons for the PCs to want to distance themselves from federal politics.
“Both [Pierre Poilievre and Justin Trudeau] are significantly less popular than all three of our main provincial party leaders here in Nova Scotia,” she said.
In the 2021 federal election, the Conservatives won only three of Nova Scotia’s 11 ridings. Perhaps for this reason, Houston has distanced himself from Poilievre.
“There is no federal equivalent to the Nova Scotia PC party … there is a Conservative Party of Canada,” Houston told reporters at a Nov. 4 campaign event in Halifax. “That’s a completely different party with a different leader. I am not a member of that party.”
McCracken says Houston has nonetheless adopted similar language as Poilievre.
“Although he swears that he’s not a member of that party … He’s using a lot of the same language as Poilievre,” McCracken said, citing the example of Houston’s opposition to a carbon tax.
‘Not enough doctors’
The parties have been focusing their messages on voters’ top concerns: health care, affordability and housing. These same issues have also been priorities for voters in recent elections in B.C., New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, Canadian Affairs has reported.
In Abacus’ polling data, 66 per cent of respondents listed health care as a key concern.
“Our health-care system is in absolute shreds,” said Henderson. “They’ve [given] more responsibilities to pharmacists, but we still don’t have enough doctors.”
In a province of just over one million people, about 160,000 Nova Scotians — or 15 per cent — are without a family doctor.
In Henderson’s view, the PCs are now asking for more time to address health-care problems they had promised to fix in the last election.
“A lot of the campaign promises and the slogans that they’re using are things that they, the PCs, used in the last election and I didn’t see much happen there,” she said.
Earlier this year, the PCs announced funding for a new medical school at Cape Breton University. The party’s platform says the school will train 30 new doctors a year.
It has also promised to open a centre to assess whether internationally trained physicians are qualified to practice. The centre is expected to add an additional 45 doctors to the system each year.
The Liberal and NDP parties have both pledged to open more medical clinics, while the Liberals are additionally promising to create a loan forgiveness program for in-demand health-care professionals.
‘Bargain fairly’
“Making life more affordable” and “improving housing and reducing homelessness” are the second and third highest-ranked issues, according to Abacus’ polling.
On affordability, McCracken says the province’s unique workforce dynamics come into play.
“You look at who the largest employers are … federal government, provincial government, school boards, hospitals. I mean, you take a place like Yarmouth … The four largest employers in Yarmouth are public sector employers. If you took the public sector out of Yarmouth, you wouldn’t have an economy,” he said.
During the PCs’ tenure, many of the province’s biggest unions secured modest wage hikes, he says.
“[Houston] settled with the nurses. He’s settled with the teachers. He’s settled with the more powerful unions. And the deals that we’re getting here now are the two and the three [per cent increases], which you’re seeing mostly across the country: not quite keeping up with inflation.”
While below-inflation wage increases may not be considered generous, the PCs are still seen as more pro-labour than their Liberal predecessors, sources said.
The PCs’ platform promises to “bargain fairly” and raise the minimum wage, and to also cut the HST from 15 per cent to 14 per cent.
Here, the Liberals are also outflanking the conservatives to the right, proposing a two point reduction to 13 per cent.
NDP leader Claudia Chender has said tax cuts should be more targeted. The party has said it would eliminate the provincial portion of the HST for phone bills, internet and groceries.
‘Money in the pipeline’
On housing, Houston is promising to create a provincial funding framework to help first-time home buyers purchase a property with a 2 per cent down payment.
The PCs have also pledged to bring down housing costs by selling provincial land to municipalities for $1 on the condition it be used for affordable housing.
The Liberals have said they would improve rent controls and reduce red tape in municipal zoning laws to incentivize construction. On the demand side, they have said they would limit population growth to “in-demand workers and their families.”
Henderson says she has been impressed by the NDP’s housing pitch.
“I really like the idea of exploring the rent-to-own piece that [Chender] is talking about,” she said, referring to the party’s plan to enable renters to build equity in prefabricated homes.
Henderson says that while she was “very disappointed with the last Liberal government,” she may vote Liberal again — for lack of a better NDP candidate in her riding.
At the end of the day, Henderson says what she wants to see is a government “that is going to do the best for Nova Scotians and work with all the money that is in the pipeline from the feds for housing [and to] make the best use of the money that’s coming from the feds for health care.”
