"Holy first-past-the-post, Batman! It's an actual political article!"
Right you are, Robin. With a general election almost here in Nova Scotia, I figured I had to say something about it. Now, for the uninitiated, here’s how the standings in the legislature were before the government fell. The Progressive Conservatives, led by Rodney MacDonald, formed the government; Darrell Dexter's New Democrats formed the Opposition, trailing the PCs by a single seat; and the Liberals of Stephen McNeil were a fairly distant third, with less than half the seats of the NDP. Most polls suggested a possible minority government for the NDP, with the Liberals often placing second, ahead of the PCs. Some more recent polls even suggest the possibility of a majority NDP government.
With that out of the way, it's time for something substantive: my opinion. Until 2006, Nova Scotia was led by John Hamm. While he was also a PC, his government was fairly competent, with its key plank being reducing Nova Scotia's astronomical debt. This will surely be the legacy of his government, if only in comparison with the disaster story that followed.
In 2006, Rodney MacDonald became leader of the PCs and premier in the wake of Hamm's retirement. Nova Scotians showed that they were willing to give him a chance by re-electing him to a minority government that year. At this time, Frank magazine bestowed upon him the moniker "Rocket Rodney".
As his term continued, it became clearer and clearer that Rodney had no plan to continue his predecessor's fairly popular legacy. Big spending became the new motto of the government, prompting Frank to change their nickname from "Rocket Rodney" to "Baby Buchanan", after John Buchanan, one of the biggest-spending premiers in Nova Scotia’s recent history. The final stage of this metamorphosis of the PCs came right before the election, when the government was defeated on a proposal to use profits from the province’s offshore natural gas projects to fund new spending in the budget. This was the same money that John Hamm had mandated by law to go exclusively to servicing the debt. By now, the Rocket has sunk low enough for Frank to simply call him "Smugly MacDonald".
At this point, I'm not really paying much attention to the promises of the PCs, despite the fact that their radio ads have become almost as ubiquitous as Taylor Swift’s song "Love Story". ("You were a voter that wasn’t pleased / And your daddy said, 'Stay away from that Rodney'…") In three years of government, virtually every policy implemented by Rodney's gang has either not impressed me or outright turned me away. With a record like that, I don't believe they can be trusted to suddenly start doing the right thing.
This leaves the NDP and the Liberals. A curious thing happened while the NDP ascended from third party to government-in-waiting: they and the Liberals switched places, sort of. A similar thing happened in the UK, with the third-way Labour Party moving into the right of the political spectrum as it grew more powerful, while the remnants of the Liberal Party merged with the Social Democrats and moved left. Today's Liberal Democrats are largely a persistent third-place party.
Now, before anyone makes the observation that Labour's popularity is falling massively, remember that its drop is primarily due to two reasons that don't affect Nova Scotia politics: the commitment of British troops to Iraq, and the introduction of a new leader, Gordon Brown, who hasn't managed to catch on with the electorate.
Nevertheless, the switch is obvious and staggering. At first glance, Liberal Stephen McNeil's policies seem like great ideas that are long overdue. He's done a great job of presenting himself as a populist, doing what the people want him to do. However, the cost of implementing all of these policies would be astronomical, as a May 23 Chronicle-Herald investigation shows. Through all the tax cuts and price caps, McNeil seemingly doesn't care about the fact that we're currently in a global economic crisis, and on top of that, we already have the highest debt per capita in the country. All his talk of "living within our means" in the first debate was apparently as lost on him as it was on me, considering that debate literally put me to sleep. Perhaps he feels that he's unlikely to be elected, and can therefore make any number of promises, knowing he won't be expected to keep them. Sounds a little like the federal NDP's Jack Layton, doesn't it?
Even though the policies seem at first glance more like the now-discredited principles of supply-side economics, they are clearly targeted at lower-income voters, suggesting a left-leaning bent. It's some bizarre blend of Keynesian stimulus spending with the tax cuts and deregulation of the Washington Consensus. Worse yet, McNeil seems convinced that his plan will cause revenues to skyrocket and therefore pay for itself. While I believe in stimulus spending, this is not stimulus. This is loading loonies into a machine gun and firing them at random, hoping to hit the special bonus target to win a large plush animal stuffed with $100 bills.
Now, before anyone accuses me of turning my back on the Liberals, I still strongly support Michael Ignatieff and my local MP, Geoff Regan. I also wish Mr. Regan’s wife, Kelly Regan, luck in taking the Bedford—Birch Cove riding from the PCs in the provincial election. But on a whole, the federal and provincial parties could not be more different. I laughed when I saw Ignatieff and McNeil together at a campaign event, because it was obvious they had little in common beyond the name of the party.
Then we have the NS NDP of Darrell Dexter. Dexter hasn't made any big promises, instead focusing his campaign on a couple of simple planks, the most ambitious of which being to balance the budget within two years. I'm not sure if this is possible, but I give the NDP a lot of credit for actually trying as opposed to McNeil's approach. On a whole, the NDP's policies are very economically moderate while tending to be socially liberal. That sounds like a certain federal party I know…except with union support. The NS NDP has become what seems like a walking paradox: a centrist workers' party.
Nevertheless, this brings me to my main point: A true supporter of the federal Liberals, who supports their policies more than their name, should, in my opinion, also support Darrell Dexter's NDP over Stephen McNeil's Liberals in this election. I am first and foremost a centrist with a socially liberal bent, and I feel that Dexter represents that better than McNeil.
So how did the NS Liberals end up in this wilderness? After the NDP became the Official Opposition in 1998 and the Liberals fell to third in 1999, the NDP has moved increasingly towards the centre in an attempt to expand its support base. While retaining its original left-leaning supporters, it was also able to erode the Liberals' centrist base by using their Official Opposition status to claim greater legitimacy as a viable party. As the NDP marched to the centre, with the right still firmly held by the reigning PCs, the Liberals desperately had to find some way to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. In the last election in 2006, they failed to do that, and suffered massively as a result. If McNeil has succeeded in anything, it is making this distinction.
The future could prove interesting, however. If the NDP takes government as expected, there could be another power shift like that in 1999. With the PCs losing credibility faster than I would lose a boxing match with Muhammad Ali and the Liberals on an upswing, we could end up with a system like that of British Columbia, where the Liberals and NDP vie for power and the Conservatives have become all but irrelevant. In a very unlikely extreme case that is nevertheless remotely possible based on the most recent poll, the remnants of the Liberals and PCs could merge to form a new party to challenge the NDP, as happened in Saskatchewan with the Saskatchewan Party. (No one needs to bring up the Nova Scotia Party that ran candidates in 1999 and 2003. In 2003, they only beat the Marijuana Party by 29 votes, despite running candidates in five more ridings than them. Enough said.)
One thing is certain: Stephen McNeil or his successor will have to transform the Nova Scotia Liberal Party during the next few years to remain relevant. They can't keep coasting on the failures of the PCs. In the meantime, the NDP will likely form government, and I firmly believe that this is by far the best outcome given our choices.
Remember to vote on June 9, no matter whom it is for.
(Side note: The decision for which candidate for MLA to support in my riding, Halifax Fairview, was ridiculously easy.
Graham Steele (NDP): An outstanding representative for the past eight years, an overall good guy, a high ranking NDP MLA, and a shoe-in for cabinet in an NDP government.
Brad Armitage (Liberal): The guy who sets up Stephen McNeil's sound system at speaking engagements.
Paul Henderson (PC): The picture on his pamphlets is actually intimidating. I've summed it up before as "Paul Henderson is about to shoot you." (Some credit needs to go to TV Tropes for that.) He's also PC.
Amanda Hester (Green): Who? I'd honestly never heard her name before until I checked the CBC riding profile tonight.
I think the choice is pretty obvious. On top of that, for two years, I had represented Halifax Fairview in the Model Legislature as a member of the "Orange Party", and, in my second year, actually ended up as leader of the party through an interesting chain of events. The events were held in Province House itself, and therefore I sat in Graham Steele's seat. Both years, I left notes in his desk wishing him and the NDP well. When I graduated from high school last year, I finally got the chance to meet him – when he was there to present me with the Eileen O'Connell Memorial Scholarship. He remembered the notes, and later extended an invitation to help with the campaign. I accepted the offer, and therefore, for most of the election, I have been a volunteer for his campaign. I feel it makes up for the fact that I'm still not of voting age despite recently finishing my first year at Dalhousie, and won't be until September.)
Whew. That post was long. Regardless, again, remember to vote on June 9!
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