Ready to Vote? Nova Scotia's Minority Tory Government Falls

[Posteritatis]

Yay!

Nova Scotia's opposition MLAs voted down a finance bill Monday, prompting the fall of the minority Progressive Conservative government and setting the stage for an election.

Premier Rodney MacDonald said he plans to meet with Lt.-Gov. Mayann Francis on Tuesday to ask her to dissolve the legislature. Tradition dictates she will grant his request to head to the polls on June 9.

The last provincial election was in June 2006.

The MacDonald government collapsed over its plan to spend $260 million instead of putting it toward the province's $12-billion debt, as is required by law.

One, this was a surprisingly longlived government; two, about time. I actually liked the setup shortly after the '06 election; we've had far worse PCs than Rodney, and the near three-way tie got everyone to just kind of sit down and function for awhile. The lurching to and fro more recently has been frustrating, though, and the Tories started airing random attack ads a few months ago that had nothing to do with elections, which is a little too American a practice for me to enjoy. If we had another election in, say, '08 I would have liked the government, but it's dragged on too long by now.

I'm not looking forward to thirty-six days of substance-free acrimony and mudslinging, but that day at the end will be nice.