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.

[Ken Burch]

1. Hopefully, the election will give Nova Scotia its first NDP government

The third place "Liberal Party" in the province isn't significantly different from the Tories, so it doesn't really deserve any Canadian DU'ers support in that vote.

[Posteritatis]

2. Hasn't really been my experience

Provincial and federal parties are distinct from each other in Canada to an extent that isn't common in the states, in part due to the wildly different jurisdictions involved. The difference between any of the federal parties and their provincial equivalents in NS can be night and day at times. Aside from a vague desire to see MacDonald out of office, I actually don't know who's getting my vote yet.

That's actually a pleasant feeling so far. They're actually behaving like adults in the campaign, which hasn't happened in Canadian electoral politics since the Republicans started advising the federal Conservatives.