Category: Nova Scotia Politics

The elevator conversation critique of the Houston government’s second budget practically writes itself – money for everything but the wellbeing of those who need it the most. The budget, which the PCs seem intent on pushing through the Nova Scotia legislature ASAP, manages to be both parsimonious and profligate. The tightfistedness is most blatant in the refusal to increase income assistance rates. As the NDP’s Gary Burrill put it, failure to at least index assistance to inflation is “a scandalous and a shocking moral failure.” Meanwhile, extravagance characterized much of the remainder of the budget. The Premier seems to...

Only the most die-hard watcher will have noticed but there was an unlikely filibuster in the Nova Scotia legislature last week. In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, the Liberals went on for many hours about the the Houston government’s power-hungry, anti-democratic ways.  The ostensible subject of the lolygagging was a bill making minor changes to governance of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. But the Liberals kept this routine bill in committee for several days, using it as a club to batter the PC government for marginalizing MLAs while consolidating more power at the...