February 23, 2024 • 21 mins
It wasn’t the first time a provincial politician switched political stripes in Nova Scotia — and it likely won’t be the last. But it was rather surprising when Premier Tim Houston announced Brendan Maguire (Halifax-Atlantic) would also be joining the Executive Council as a member of his cabinet. The former Liberal MLA has been highly critical of the Progressive Conservatives since they took office. And now he says he’ll have a chance to make a difference from the Government side of the house. What does it all mean? That’s what we explore in this conversation with Dalhousie University Professor Dr. Lori Turnbull.
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(00:00):
Hi, my name Michelda McLeod Andthis is Thinking out Loud, my podcast
here on salt Wire. Now,I've been covering politics since around nineteen for
a long time here in Nova Scotia. And why is this important to discuss?
Because context is king and in orderto understand why something is important,
it's important to look back. Andthe last time a provincial MLA crossed the
(00:22):
floor to join another party in NovaScotia was in twenty eleven Karen Casey leaving
the Progressive Conservatives to join the Liberals. Now this latest floor crossing is somewhat
different. As reported by Saltwire,Halifax's Atlantic MLA, Breanda McGuire crossed the
floor to become a Progressive Conservative onThursday. But that's not it. That's
not the only thing. Premier TimHouston immediately named McGuire the new Minister of
(00:43):
Community Services. We took that cabinetpost that was vacated by Cape Bretton MLA
Trevor Boudreau. Just moments earlier,a news release was sent out saying that
was the case and that the Richmondmember was stepping away from cabinet because of
health reasons. What does it allmean? Well, that's what I wanted
to know, and I wanted tospeak with an expert about it. Coming
up, it's my chat with doctorLori Turnbull, professor in the Faculty of
(01:06):
Management at Dalhousie University. This ismy podcast Thinking out Loud, presented by
Saltwire. Please like and subscribe.It's not unusual for a politician to switch
parties. It is more than alittle unusual for them to well go from
opposition into cabinet. Doctor Lori Turnbullis a political science professor with Dalhousie University.
(01:30):
She joins us here today. Doyou ever remember anything quite like this
happening? Yes, remember when intwo thousand and six David Emerson ran for
the Liberals in Vancouver King's Way andhis election he won as a Liberal and
his election night speech was about howhe was going to make Stephen Harper like
he was going to be Stephen Harper'sworst nightmare, and he was all partisan
(01:52):
and everything. And then when Harper'scabinet was sworn in in January, Emerson
showed up but he was a minister. Yes, yes, it totally happens.
I remember the time that what's hername, Belinda Stronik went from the
Conservative benches to be part of PaulMartin's cabinet right before a budget. So
(02:14):
yes, yes, the world ofpolitics is a crazy place now. In
recent memory, in Nova Scotia,Karen Casey was a member of the Progressive
Conservative Caucus. She was a Ministerof Education. She crossed the floor to
the Liberals, but it took untilafter the next election, which she ran
for the Liberals and won, andthen was once again returned to the cabinet
(02:38):
as the Minister of Education. Shejust served as that minister in both a
PC and a Liberal government. There'sa lot of talk about what should or
should not happen. Fundamentally, whatdoes Lori Turnbull say about someone who's elected
under one banner and crosses the floorto sit with another party? Okay,
okay, So for me that myinitial reaction is as an MP or an
(03:02):
MLA who is not a minister,you have so few choices about what you
can do. Whatever party you sitin is going to expect you to tow
the line and carry the banner andbe disciplined and vote with a party and
support the leadership and do all thisabout one of the only choices you can
(03:23):
make is which party you sit with. And to me, if we expect
an MP or an MLA to sitwith a party with whom they are not
comfortable and with a leader with whomthey are not comfortable, that's not right.
And the MP or MLA in thiscase, the MLA obviously is going
to have to come back to hisvoters and explain why he did what he
(03:43):
did. And it's up to himto make that argument. And if the
voters agree with him, or enoughof them agree with him, then great,
and if not, he's going tosee the door. And so it
doesn't bother me. And so I'mgoing to ask, you know whether you
have the mandate to do so.The social media platform X formally Twitter,
it's kind of mixed today. Ihad one person who said, well,
you know what, we love him, will vote for him no matter what.
Another person said, yeah, Ivoted for him, but now that
(04:05):
he's crossed the floor, I'm notgoing to support him. And for Nova
Scotia's Progressive Conservative government under Tim Houston, which is mostly not exclusively a rural
party. What does this signal toyou that the premier was willing to either
make this offer. We assume itwas from the desk of Tim Houston,
(04:25):
considering he was posing for pictures forthe for the press after immediately afterwards.
So what does that say to youabout his thought process? Not that we
can get inside of his head though, Yeah, we can't get inside either
of their heads, and we can'treally be flies on the wall. In
a conversation that already happened that said, I think for Tim Houston, yeah,
(04:46):
this is a massive win. Thisis a big get for him.
This is somebody who was elected firstI think in twenty thirteen, was a
minister under a liberal government, youknow, and when most of the people
or a lot of the people whowere around Stephen McNeil for his government and
kind of when he indicated he wasn'tgoing to reoffer, and even before he
(05:08):
indicated he was going to walk away, a number of them said they are
not going to run again. Likea lot of that brain trust in that
government has left. And so tosee that Brenda McNeil was somebody or sorry,
Brendan MacGuire was someone who was wasa part of all that and now
he's leaving that to join Tim Houston'sgovernment. And this is an HRM seat.
This is an area that Houston certainlywants to break into and part of
(05:31):
the vulnerability, you know, suchas to the extent that a majority government
has a vulnerability. But he doesn'thave so many seats in Halifax, right,
so, like this is not thisis not insignificant for him to convince
somebody in an HRM seat to comeand join him on on the government,
well on the government side with thecabinet post. Maybe that's not so difficult,
right, Like and sure like there'llbe there'll be questions around that.
(05:54):
Like I it would not that Iwant to you know, escalate some some
thing, but like it went tothe Ethics Commissioner when David Emerson crossed the
floor from the Liberal side to jointhe Conservatives and he got a cabinet post
in the process, several MP's referredto the Ethics Commissioner and said, like
this guy is on the you know, like he did this for himself,
(06:14):
for his own personal gain, becausein the assertion was almost like he got
like bribed with a cabinet post,right that. You know, I don't
mean that in an illegal way,but like there's an issue here in that
he was supposed to be sitting withthe party and the constituency office worked your
butt off to get him elected,and then once he got in there,
he bailed from an offer for aprime minister who he said he hated because
(06:39):
there was a cabinet post. Andcertainly Brendan Maguire has been outspoken. In
fact, he had been tossed outof the House of Assembly. So it'll
be interesting to see what now hisposition is in a lot of these issues
that he had problems with when itcame to government. Since always easier on
the inside than it is on theoutside to make change, I want to
(07:00):
And I don't know if you've heardthis or read this yet, but the
statement from the Liberal leader Zach Churchill. Did you see what they released?
No? Okay, So here's fromand this is very surprising to me.
Statement from Leader Zach Churchill on MLABrendan Maguire. I've served with Brendan for
ten years and I admire his passionfor his community. Well, I'm sad
to see him leave our caucus.I know Nova Scotian. Sorry, I
(07:27):
know he shares our concerns about theaffordability crisis. To date, the Houston
government has made decisions to worsen foodand security and government poverty, and I
hope that in his new role Brendanis able to reverse that trend to help
low and middle income Nova Scotians.That doesn't sound like the leader of an
opposition that's just lost one of itsmembers. What does that in any way
(07:49):
suggests to you about Zach Churchill's thoughtson this move? That statement strikes me
as conciliatory and civilized and a personwho's like it sounds to me like he's
just not wanting to draw any negativeattention to himself. Like what to me
(08:11):
is like what else can he say? Like, you know, he he
could, he could go on,you know, walk up to the mic
and say McGuire betrayed me, buthe'd sound petulant to do that, Like,
I mean, what else can hesay? There's nothing he can do
about it? Like there's this isthis is done? What does if anything,
this speak to the effectiveness of theLiberal parties or at least their chances
(08:33):
were, you know, a yearand six months, three months, four
months away from a provincial election inNova Scotia. What does this say anything
about Zach Churchill to you? Well, it strikes me that Brendan McGuire was
not happy in that. In particular, Caucus and the Liberals just had their
AGM where Zach Trichill came out withthis announcement around if they are the government,
they're going to take two points offthe GST. It doesn't surprise me
(08:56):
that that that wasn't something that keptMcGuire in the fold. I get that,
and so I think it's probably thecase that Zach Churchill's problem is going
to be in the next election,unless something very strange happens, it's going
to be trying to secure the officialopposition status against Claudia Echender. I don't
(09:20):
think he's like unless and I don'twant to predict the outcome of the next
election, but if history repeats itselfand we give a government a second term,
well you know what is Zach Churchillfighting for? Like he's fighting to
be the official opposition, He's fightingto be Claudiachender as the person that this
(09:41):
voter's most trust to hold the governmentto account. One of the things that
we had not mentioned, though,was that Trevor Boudreau announced that he was
stepping away from cabinet for health reasons, but staying on in Caucus, and
again it was just a matter ofmoments that the minutes that the you know,
(10:01):
the Progressive Conservative government from the Premier'soffice sent out the statement that that
vacancy was going to be filled bya former Liberal member of the House.
I don't know anything about this manor his healthy but he was part of
the shuffle just a few months agothat he was introduced to cabinet. There
was a bit of controversy with thePremier's comments around the municipality of Cape Breton's
(10:24):
calling for a state of emergency duringa snowstorm and accused it of being a
pr stunt. And you know,it's all really, you know, just
all the just connecting dots that mayor may not even have any relevance to
each other other than you know,I don't know. If this man's health
is in a position where it's notwell, why else would you accept a
cabinet position and then a few monthslater decide it's not for me. Yeah,
(10:48):
I don't know either. I don'tknow anything about this person's personal situation
or health situation or anything like that. So yeah, I can't I can't
really say anything about that. Sodo we have a do we have a
right to know? It doesn't matterI for my for myself, people's health
situations are not I don't feel likeI have the right to know that at
(11:09):
all, particularly if the like,yeah, there's I don't think there's a
right to know that. That's that'sme. That's that's where it Just where
I'm at on that like, AndI've always kind of been that way,
like, especially if there was anythingthat could could potentially affect his ability to
do his job as a cabinet ministerand he's moved out of it. It's
(11:33):
no business of ours and purely respectative. If you get into a position you
say I don't like it, uh, and maybe it's not for me.
You know, this is a wayAgain, I don't know any more than
you do, and I'm certainly notin it. I wish him well if
if he has health concerns and andthat just to say that people are really
skeptical, the skeptical of all politicsthese days, and you know, motivations
(11:54):
and help people get to where they'regoing. So Tim Houston has had a
fairly a successful run so far andmoving towards the next election, and I
have to wonder if you know,every government in this country in fact,
probably in much of the developed worldis dealing with issues of homelessness and dealing
(12:15):
with food and security and dealing withpoverty issues and pocket push book issues.
Is this just, you know,are we gonna forget about this? Brenda
maguire is the guy who's now insome ways looked at as he's going to
have to deal with some of this. Yeah, I mean, like,
to me, the ideological stretch betweenpolitical parties and Nova Scotia is not terribly
(12:37):
long. It's not like he hasleft one party and joined another party that
has a completely different values base andthere's reason to wonder where his priorities are
and all that. Like, Ireally don't see that. Like, I
think that he, any of thesepeople could probably find a happy enough spot
in another political party, because mostof the political parties are talking about the
affordability crisis, the housing crisis,the healthcare crisis, and what are we
(13:01):
going to do about this? Andgiven the economic constraints on the province,
the question is more usually about howare we going to solve these things as
opposed to what the problems are.And so I can't really say that this
is going to be a this isn'tstrike something that strikes me as like an
inexplicable stretch by any stretch, Andso I think probably people will just kind
of get on with it, ismy guess, right like, and some
(13:24):
people may not some people who don'tlike this particularly, And if there are
people who are in his writing whodon't like it, well they're not going
to get over it. They're goingto be mad and at the next election
they're going to say, what thehell you know? What you what we're
thinking? And sure, like that'sall of these things are are completely understandable.
But as a as a news storyin Nova Scotia, no, this
(13:45):
will this will be like anything else. People will will start thinking about something
else and move on. Saw thecomment liberatory, same old story. So
does this present an opportunity for ClaudiaGender and the NDP? Sure, Oh
absolutely, I mean not because andshe doesn't have to say anything, like
she doesn't have to even notice thishappened, but just acknowledge you know that
(14:05):
there's this is this is a lowsyday for Churchill and liberals. And I
think that to go back to thepoint that Churchill made, he doesn't want
to make it any more lousy.He's been in politics a long time too,
and so the last thing he wantsto do is to seem sour about
it, because that's going to looklike, you know, he's shedding light
on why McGuire might not have beenhappy there if the leader is not recognizing
(14:28):
in not respecting the autonomy of hismembers, right Like, if McGuire wants
to do this, that's this ishis business. And I think time will
tell whether this is a smooth transitionor not. For Karen Casey, that
seemed to just be you know,it made headlines for a day or two
(14:50):
and that was it, and thenit was like okay, And I think
people just sort of forgot that shewas ever with another political party, Like
maybe she didn't, but it wasn'ta big deal, like whereas some of
them that just seemed really politically motivated, they can stick her that Like Eve
Adams was never you know, shewasn't crossing for a cabinet position. But
when Eve Adams left the Conservatives tojoin the Liberals, that was never a
(15:11):
logical move for a lot of people, right, And so that was always
like an eyebrow raiser. And thenwhen she tried to get the nomination against
Margot Mandaccino that was a no go. So in Nova Scotia's history, we
had Scott Brison elected as a Conservativewho then became a Liberal. We had
Leonora Zan who was the MLA forthe New Democrats in Truro in fact ran
(15:33):
for the leadership of the party,left provincial politics to run for the Liberals
federally and was not successful. Soit's not unusual for people to look down
the road. And I'll always remembersomething that Graham Steele, former NDP finance
minister in Nova Scotia, said isthat in many cases people choose politics they've
(15:54):
probably been asked by all of theparties at one point or another to run
before they make their decision. Ina year interview of the premieer of Nova
Scotia said, people join politics eithera because they're asked or b because they're
passionate over something. Now Tim Houstonsaid he joined because he was passionate about
something else. Is Tim Houston theleast conservative progressive conservative you've ever seen?
(16:21):
Okay? So, like I thinkthere are there is still a Red Toy
there's life to Red Toryism and exist, and it exists in Atlantic Canada.
I'm not sure like you could puthim, you could put Dennis King in
a kind of similar category, Ithink, where these are pragmatic people who
(16:41):
believe that government is there to dosomething quote unquote good. And you're not
going to see a whole lot oflines from Doug Ford's playbook that Tim Houston
is going to pick up and use. And you're sure as hell not going
to see any lines from Danielle Smith'splay book that Tim Muton's Heston is going
to pick up and lose use.And he set himself in the twenty twenty
(17:03):
one election that he is more incommon with Justin Trudeau than he did with
then Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole, Andso I don't think he's trying to align
himself as a Conservative at all.And in some ways, though, even
though I think he and Doug Ford, for example, in Ontario are very
different people, even Ford stays awayfrom mentions of conservatism. You can see
a lot of provincial premiers, Ithink, who are moving away from being
(17:26):
party branded and who are trying toappeal more on the basis of their own
here are my values, Here's whatI want to do, you know,
And here's what I think is importantfor the province, and that might not
be a bad thing, like itjust it's certainly destabilizing a bit for political
parties, where we typically see partiesgo from one leader to the next and
(17:47):
the party stays constant and you're justkind of switching the helm, whereas now
I think it's more of the partyrebuilds itself around a new leader, because
the party then takes the shape ofthe values of the leader and the personality
too. And I guess, justabout to close this off, I thought
it was very interesting that Tim Houstontook a lot of time to put distance
(18:07):
between himself and the federal Conservative Partyof Canada, but yet during the by
election in Preston was quick to say, well that the provincial Liberals support the
federal carbon tax, you know,basically saying that the Nova Scotia Liberals are
the same as the federal Liberals,even though he wants to put some space
between himself and I assume Pierre Poulievand the PC Party of today or the
(18:29):
Conservative Party of Canada today. SoI don't know what that says other than
I noticed it, and I'm sureother people have as well. Oh yeah,
yeah, one hundred percent and wecan see all a lot of that
happening across the country where conservative politiciansin particular are being measured and how they
fit with one another. Right,So, like if Blaine Higgs say says
something about pronouns and says something aboutidentity, people look to see what other
(18:56):
provincial premiers say are saying. Theylook to see how Peer Poliev puts himself,
you know, how he aligns himselfwith comments like that. And so
I think we're still figuring out whatdifferent conservative premiers stand for. It'll be
interesting to see if Peer Polyev becomesPrime minister, how he creates and maintains
relationships with provincial conservatives, because hisrelationship with Houston would, I would assume,
(19:22):
be very different than the one he'sgoing to have with Smith. Absolutely,
And I guess you know, we'resome time away from an election and
you know, the whole issues southof the border in politics there there's a
lot of criticism about journalism and journalismschools right now saying that they're creating or
is this idea so creating activists thatpeople are not entering to report but to
(19:45):
try and move public opinion or movepolicy. What's it like teaching political science
students in twenty twenty four when itcomes to this vast difference between ideologies and
maybe even the real world lived experience. Yeah, I'm on teaching release right
(20:07):
now, but I still talk tostill talk to students a lot, and
yeah, I mean, like tome, it's always been valuable to have
an ongoing laboratory as a political scientist. There's always stuff going on, there's
always ways to contribute to dialogue,it's going on in public. You can
always connect the concepts that you're usingin class to what's going on outside of
class, and so that stuff isreally is really valuable, I think,
(20:30):
I hope for students. But atthe same time, we're living in a
very complicated world. The disinformation aspectalone, the willingness and the ability of
many political actors to proliferate content thatis untrue or partly true, or just
a kind of creative interpretation of somethingthat causes the distorting effect that really has
(20:56):
a lot of impact on how democracyis operationalized and how voters come to this
exercise. And when trust is broken, it's very difficult for voters to continue
to participate. It's like there arevery damaging effects I think, and politicians
are stewards of these institutions, andthey are supposed to be you know,
leaving them in good shape when theygo on to their next office kind of
(21:18):
thing. But we can see,I think, a lot of attacks on
each other, but also attacks onthe institutions that we're all supposed to be protecting.
Hi, my name Michelda McLeod Andthis is Thinking out Loud, my podcast
here on salt Wire. Now,I've been covering politics since around nineteen for
a long time here in Nova Scotia. And why is this important to discuss?
Because context is king and in orderto understand why something is important,
it's important to look back. Andthe last time a provincial MLA crossed the
(00:22):
floor to join another party in NovaScotia was in twenty eleven Karen Casey leaving
the Progressive Conservatives to join the Liberals. Now this latest floor crossing is somewhat
different. As reported by Saltwire,Halifax's Atlantic MLA, Breanda McGuire crossed the
floor to become a Progressive Conservative onThursday. But that's not it. That's
not the only thing. Premier TimHouston immediately named McGuire the new Minister of
(00:43):
Community Services. We took that cabinetpost that was vacated by Cape Bretton MLA
Trevor Boudreau. Just moments earlier,a news release was sent out saying that
was the case and that the Richmondmember was stepping away from cabinet because of
health reasons. What does it allmean? Well, that's what I wanted
to know, and I wanted tospeak with an expert about it. Coming
up, it's my chat with doctorLori Turnbull, professor in the Faculty of
(01:06):
Management at Dalhousie University. This ismy podcast Thinking out Loud, presented by
Saltwire. Please like and subscribe.It's not unusual for a politician to switch
parties. It is more than alittle unusual for them to well go from
opposition into cabinet. Doctor Lori Turnbullis a political science professor with Dalhousie University.
(01:30):
She joins us here today. Doyou ever remember anything quite like this
happening? Yes, remember when intwo thousand and six David Emerson ran for
the Liberals in Vancouver King's Way andhis election he won as a Liberal and
his election night speech was about howhe was going to make Stephen Harper like
he was going to be Stephen Harper'sworst nightmare, and he was all partisan
(01:52):
and everything. And then when Harper'scabinet was sworn in in January, Emerson
showed up but he was a minister. Yes, yes, it totally happens.
I remember the time that what's hername, Belinda Stronik went from the
Conservative benches to be part of PaulMartin's cabinet right before a budget. So
(02:14):
yes, yes, the world ofpolitics is a crazy place now. In
recent memory, in Nova Scotia,Karen Casey was a member of the Progressive
Conservative Caucus. She was a Ministerof Education. She crossed the floor to
the Liberals, but it took untilafter the next election, which she ran
for the Liberals and won, andthen was once again returned to the cabinet
(02:38):
as the Minister of Education. Shejust served as that minister in both a
PC and a Liberal government. There'sa lot of talk about what should or
should not happen. Fundamentally, whatdoes Lori Turnbull say about someone who's elected
under one banner and crosses the floorto sit with another party? Okay,
okay, So for me that myinitial reaction is as an MP or an
(03:02):
MLA who is not a minister,you have so few choices about what you
can do. Whatever party you sitin is going to expect you to tow
the line and carry the banner andbe disciplined and vote with a party and
support the leadership and do all thisabout one of the only choices you can
(03:23):
make is which party you sit with. And to me, if we expect
an MP or an MLA to sitwith a party with whom they are not
comfortable and with a leader with whomthey are not comfortable, that's not right.
And the MP or MLA in thiscase, the MLA obviously is going
to have to come back to hisvoters and explain why he did what he
(03:43):
did. And it's up to himto make that argument. And if the
voters agree with him, or enoughof them agree with him, then great,
and if not, he's going tosee the door. And so it
doesn't bother me. And so I'mgoing to ask, you know whether you
have the mandate to do so.The social media platform X formally Twitter,
it's kind of mixed today. Ihad one person who said, well,
you know what, we love him, will vote for him no matter what.
Another person said, yeah, Ivoted for him, but now that
(04:05):
he's crossed the floor, I'm notgoing to support him. And for Nova
Scotia's Progressive Conservative government under Tim Houston, which is mostly not exclusively a rural
party. What does this signal toyou that the premier was willing to either
make this offer. We assume itwas from the desk of Tim Houston,
(04:25):
considering he was posing for pictures forthe for the press after immediately afterwards.
So what does that say to youabout his thought process? Not that we
can get inside of his head though, Yeah, we can't get inside either
of their heads, and we can'treally be flies on the wall. In
a conversation that already happened that said, I think for Tim Houston, yeah,
(04:46):
this is a massive win. Thisis a big get for him.
This is somebody who was elected firstI think in twenty thirteen, was a
minister under a liberal government, youknow, and when most of the people
or a lot of the people whowere around Stephen McNeil for his government and
kind of when he indicated he wasn'tgoing to reoffer, and even before he
(05:08):
indicated he was going to walk away, a number of them said they are
not going to run again. Likea lot of that brain trust in that
government has left. And so tosee that Brenda McNeil was somebody or sorry,
Brendan MacGuire was someone who was wasa part of all that and now
he's leaving that to join Tim Houston'sgovernment. And this is an HRM seat.
This is an area that Houston certainlywants to break into and part of
(05:31):
the vulnerability, you know, suchas to the extent that a majority government
has a vulnerability. But he doesn'thave so many seats in Halifax, right,
so, like this is not thisis not insignificant for him to convince
somebody in an HRM seat to comeand join him on on the government,
well on the government side with thecabinet post. Maybe that's not so difficult,
right, Like and sure like there'llbe there'll be questions around that.
(05:54):
Like I it would not that Iwant to you know, escalate some some
thing, but like it went tothe Ethics Commissioner when David Emerson crossed the
floor from the Liberal side to jointhe Conservatives and he got a cabinet post
in the process, several MP's referredto the Ethics Commissioner and said, like
this guy is on the you know, like he did this for himself,
(06:14):
for his own personal gain, becausein the assertion was almost like he got
like bribed with a cabinet post,right that. You know, I don't
mean that in an illegal way,but like there's an issue here in that
he was supposed to be sitting withthe party and the constituency office worked your
butt off to get him elected,and then once he got in there,
he bailed from an offer for aprime minister who he said he hated because
(06:39):
there was a cabinet post. Andcertainly Brendan Maguire has been outspoken. In
fact, he had been tossed outof the House of Assembly. So it'll
be interesting to see what now hisposition is in a lot of these issues
that he had problems with when itcame to government. Since always easier on
the inside than it is on theoutside to make change, I want to
(07:00):
And I don't know if you've heardthis or read this yet, but the
statement from the Liberal leader Zach Churchill. Did you see what they released?
No? Okay, So here's fromand this is very surprising to me.
Statement from Leader Zach Churchill on MLABrendan Maguire. I've served with Brendan for
ten years and I admire his passionfor his community. Well, I'm sad
to see him leave our caucus.I know Nova Scotian. Sorry, I
(07:27):
know he shares our concerns about theaffordability crisis. To date, the Houston
government has made decisions to worsen foodand security and government poverty, and I
hope that in his new role Brendanis able to reverse that trend to help
low and middle income Nova Scotians.That doesn't sound like the leader of an
opposition that's just lost one of itsmembers. What does that in any way
(07:49):
suggests to you about Zach Churchill's thoughtson this move? That statement strikes me
as conciliatory and civilized and a personwho's like it sounds to me like he's
just not wanting to draw any negativeattention to himself. Like what to me
(08:11):
is like what else can he say? Like, you know, he he
could, he could go on,you know, walk up to the mic
and say McGuire betrayed me, buthe'd sound petulant to do that, Like,
I mean, what else can hesay? There's nothing he can do
about it? Like there's this isthis is done? What does if anything,
this speak to the effectiveness of theLiberal parties or at least their chances
(08:33):
were, you know, a yearand six months, three months, four
months away from a provincial election inNova Scotia. What does this say anything
about Zach Churchill to you? Well, it strikes me that Brendan McGuire was
not happy in that. In particular, Caucus and the Liberals just had their
AGM where Zach Trichill came out withthis announcement around if they are the government,
they're going to take two points offthe GST. It doesn't surprise me
(08:56):
that that that wasn't something that keptMcGuire in the fold. I get that,
and so I think it's probably thecase that Zach Churchill's problem is going
to be in the next election,unless something very strange happens, it's going
to be trying to secure the officialopposition status against Claudia Echender. I don't
(09:20):
think he's like unless and I don'twant to predict the outcome of the next
election, but if history repeats itselfand we give a government a second term,
well you know what is Zach Churchillfighting for? Like he's fighting to
be the official opposition, He's fightingto be Claudiachender as the person that this
(09:41):
voter's most trust to hold the governmentto account. One of the things that
we had not mentioned, though,was that Trevor Boudreau announced that he was
stepping away from cabinet for health reasons, but staying on in Caucus, and
again it was just a matter ofmoments that the minutes that the you know,
(10:01):
the Progressive Conservative government from the Premier'soffice sent out the statement that that
vacancy was going to be filled bya former Liberal member of the House.
I don't know anything about this manor his healthy but he was part of
the shuffle just a few months agothat he was introduced to cabinet. There
was a bit of controversy with thePremier's comments around the municipality of Cape Breton's
(10:24):
calling for a state of emergency duringa snowstorm and accused it of being a
pr stunt. And you know,it's all really, you know, just
all the just connecting dots that mayor may not even have any relevance to
each other other than you know,I don't know. If this man's health
is in a position where it's notwell, why else would you accept a
cabinet position and then a few monthslater decide it's not for me. Yeah,
(10:48):
I don't know either. I don'tknow anything about this person's personal situation
or health situation or anything like that. So yeah, I can't I can't
really say anything about that. Sodo we have a do we have a
right to know? It doesn't matterI for my for myself, people's health
situations are not I don't feel likeI have the right to know that at
(11:09):
all, particularly if the like,yeah, there's I don't think there's a
right to know that. That's that'sme. That's that's where it Just where
I'm at on that like, AndI've always kind of been that way,
like, especially if there was anythingthat could could potentially affect his ability to
do his job as a cabinet ministerand he's moved out of it. It's
(11:33):
no business of ours and purely respectative. If you get into a position you
say I don't like it, uh, and maybe it's not for me.
You know, this is a wayAgain, I don't know any more than
you do, and I'm certainly notin it. I wish him well if
if he has health concerns and andthat just to say that people are really
skeptical, the skeptical of all politicsthese days, and you know, motivations
(11:54):
and help people get to where they'regoing. So Tim Houston has had a
fairly a successful run so far andmoving towards the next election, and I
have to wonder if you know,every government in this country in fact,
probably in much of the developed worldis dealing with issues of homelessness and dealing
(12:15):
with food and security and dealing withpoverty issues and pocket push book issues.
Is this just, you know,are we gonna forget about this? Brenda
maguire is the guy who's now insome ways looked at as he's going to
have to deal with some of this. Yeah, I mean, like,
to me, the ideological stretch betweenpolitical parties and Nova Scotia is not terribly
(12:37):
long. It's not like he hasleft one party and joined another party that
has a completely different values base andthere's reason to wonder where his priorities are
and all that. Like, Ireally don't see that. Like, I
think that he, any of thesepeople could probably find a happy enough spot
in another political party, because mostof the political parties are talking about the
affordability crisis, the housing crisis,the healthcare crisis, and what are we
(13:01):
going to do about this? Andgiven the economic constraints on the province,
the question is more usually about howare we going to solve these things as
opposed to what the problems are.And so I can't really say that this
is going to be a this isn'tstrike something that strikes me as like an
inexplicable stretch by any stretch, Andso I think probably people will just kind
of get on with it, ismy guess, right like, and some
(13:24):
people may not some people who don'tlike this particularly, And if there are
people who are in his writing whodon't like it, well they're not going
to get over it. They're goingto be mad and at the next election
they're going to say, what thehell you know? What you what we're
thinking? And sure, like that'sall of these things are are completely understandable.
But as a as a news storyin Nova Scotia, no, this
(13:45):
will this will be like anything else. People will will start thinking about something
else and move on. Saw thecomment liberatory, same old story. So
does this present an opportunity for ClaudiaGender and the NDP? Sure, Oh
absolutely, I mean not because andshe doesn't have to say anything, like
she doesn't have to even notice thishappened, but just acknowledge you know that
(14:05):
there's this is this is a lowsyday for Churchill and liberals. And I
think that to go back to thepoint that Churchill made, he doesn't want
to make it any more lousy.He's been in politics a long time too,
and so the last thing he wantsto do is to seem sour about
it, because that's going to looklike, you know, he's shedding light
on why McGuire might not have beenhappy there if the leader is not recognizing
(14:28):
in not respecting the autonomy of hismembers, right Like, if McGuire wants
to do this, that's this ishis business. And I think time will
tell whether this is a smooth transitionor not. For Karen Casey, that
seemed to just be you know,it made headlines for a day or two
(14:50):
and that was it, and thenit was like okay, And I think
people just sort of forgot that shewas ever with another political party, Like
maybe she didn't, but it wasn'ta big deal, like whereas some of
them that just seemed really politically motivated, they can stick her that Like Eve
Adams was never you know, shewasn't crossing for a cabinet position. But
when Eve Adams left the Conservatives tojoin the Liberals, that was never a
(15:11):
logical move for a lot of people, right, And so that was always
like an eyebrow raiser. And thenwhen she tried to get the nomination against
Margot Mandaccino that was a no go. So in Nova Scotia's history, we
had Scott Brison elected as a Conservativewho then became a Liberal. We had
Leonora Zan who was the MLA forthe New Democrats in Truro in fact ran
(15:33):
for the leadership of the party,left provincial politics to run for the Liberals
federally and was not successful. Soit's not unusual for people to look down
the road. And I'll always remembersomething that Graham Steele, former NDP finance
minister in Nova Scotia, said isthat in many cases people choose politics they've
(15:54):
probably been asked by all of theparties at one point or another to run
before they make their decision. Ina year interview of the premieer of Nova
Scotia said, people join politics eithera because they're asked or b because they're
passionate over something. Now Tim Houstonsaid he joined because he was passionate about
something else. Is Tim Houston theleast conservative progressive conservative you've ever seen?
(16:21):
Okay? So, like I thinkthere are there is still a Red Toy
there's life to Red Toryism and exist, and it exists in Atlantic Canada.
I'm not sure like you could puthim, you could put Dennis King in
a kind of similar category, Ithink, where these are pragmatic people who
(16:41):
believe that government is there to dosomething quote unquote good. And you're not
going to see a whole lot oflines from Doug Ford's playbook that Tim Houston
is going to pick up and use. And you're sure as hell not going
to see any lines from Danielle Smith'splay book that Tim Muton's Heston is going
to pick up and lose use.And he set himself in the twenty twenty
(17:03):
one election that he is more incommon with Justin Trudeau than he did with
then Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole, Andso I don't think he's trying to align
himself as a Conservative at all.And in some ways, though, even
though I think he and Doug Ford, for example, in Ontario are very
different people, even Ford stays awayfrom mentions of conservatism. You can see
a lot of provincial premiers, Ithink, who are moving away from being
(17:26):
party branded and who are trying toappeal more on the basis of their own
here are my values, Here's whatI want to do, you know,
And here's what I think is importantfor the province, and that might not
be a bad thing, like itjust it's certainly destabilizing a bit for political
parties, where we typically see partiesgo from one leader to the next and
(17:47):
the party stays constant and you're justkind of switching the helm, whereas now
I think it's more of the partyrebuilds itself around a new leader, because
the party then takes the shape ofthe values of the leader and the personality
too. And I guess, justabout to close this off, I thought
it was very interesting that Tim Houstontook a lot of time to put distance
(18:07):
between himself and the federal Conservative Partyof Canada, but yet during the by
election in Preston was quick to say, well that the provincial Liberals support the
federal carbon tax, you know,basically saying that the Nova Scotia Liberals are
the same as the federal Liberals,even though he wants to put some space
between himself and I assume Pierre Poulievand the PC Party of today or the
(18:29):
Conservative Party of Canada today. SoI don't know what that says other than
I noticed it, and I'm sureother people have as well. Oh yeah,
yeah, one hundred percent and wecan see all a lot of that
happening across the country where conservative politiciansin particular are being measured and how they
fit with one another. Right,So, like if Blaine Higgs say says
something about pronouns and says something aboutidentity, people look to see what other
(18:56):
provincial premiers say are saying. Theylook to see how Peer Poliev puts himself,
you know, how he aligns himselfwith comments like that. And so
I think we're still figuring out whatdifferent conservative premiers stand for. It'll be
interesting to see if Peer Polyev becomesPrime minister, how he creates and maintains
relationships with provincial conservatives, because hisrelationship with Houston would, I would assume,
(19:22):
be very different than the one he'sgoing to have with Smith. Absolutely,
And I guess you know, we'resome time away from an election and
you know, the whole issues southof the border in politics there there's a
lot of criticism about journalism and journalismschools right now saying that they're creating or
is this idea so creating activists thatpeople are not entering to report but to
(19:45):
try and move public opinion or movepolicy. What's it like teaching political science
students in twenty twenty four when itcomes to this vast difference between ideologies and
maybe even the real world lived experience. Yeah, I'm on teaching release right
(20:07):
now, but I still talk tostill talk to students a lot, and
yeah, I mean, like tome, it's always been valuable to have
an ongoing laboratory as a political scientist. There's always stuff going on, there's
always ways to contribute to dialogue,it's going on in public. You can
always connect the concepts that you're usingin class to what's going on outside of
class, and so that stuff isreally is really valuable, I think,
(20:30):
I hope for students. But atthe same time, we're living in a
very complicated world. The disinformation aspectalone, the willingness and the ability of
many political actors to proliferate content thatis untrue or partly true, or just
a kind of creative interpretation of somethingthat causes the distorting effect that really has
(20:56):
a lot of impact on how democracyis operationalized and how voters come to this
exercise. And when trust is broken, it's very difficult for voters to continue
to participate. It's like there arevery damaging effects I think, and politicians
are stewards of these institutions, andthey are supposed to be you know,
leaving them in good shape when theygo on to their next office kind of
(21:18):
thing. But we can see,I think, a lot of attacks on
each other, but also attacks onthe institutions that we're all supposed to be protecting.
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