What Nova Scotia’s election does (and doesn’t) mean for Justin Trudeau

As they watched the results of the Nova Scotia election roll in, there were probably more than a few sphincters that tightened over at the Liberal Party of Canada headquarters in Ottawa. The parallels between their situation and that of their Nova Scotia wing are, after all, hard to avoid. Both were minority governments looking to win a majority, and both began their elections with significant polling leads over the conservative opposition. As columnist David Johnson wrote last month, “this election looks to be (Iain) Rankin’s — and his Liberals — to lose.”

Well, he did, and convincingly at that. But while it will be tempting for pundits and conservative politicians to transpose this outcome onto the current federal race and suggest Justin Trudeau’s decision to call a snap election will backfire, I’m not sure that’s actually the lesson Nova Scotians are trying to teach us. After all, the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Party is a much different political animal than the one Erin O’Toole is trying to ride to victory.

Nova Scotia PC Leader (and new premier) Tim Houston said as much back in March when the Conservative Party of Canada’s members refused to acknowledge the reality of climate change. “It’s a separate party, different leaders, different members and, in some cases, obviously different values.”

If anything, the Nova Scotia PCs have more in common with the 2015 Trudeau Liberals than the 2021 O’Toole Conservatives, given they won their election by outflanking their provincial competitors to the left on everything from climate change to health-care spending.

Their policy platform, which runs a whopping 130 pages, is a testament to just how progressive Nova Scotia’s conservatives are. The Conservative Party of Canada’s platform, on the other hand, is a reminder of how unwilling it is to give up the ghost of the Harper era and the policies that defined it.

The O’Toole child-care plan, for example, revolves around the same combination of tax credits and demand-side incentives that informed the Harper government’s approach. Its absurdly micro-targeted 50 per cent rebate “for food and non-alcoholic drinks purchased for dine-in from Monday to Wednesday for one month once it is safe to do so” clearly takes a page from Harper’s approach to winning elections.

The CPC platform even includes a promise to appoint a “minister responsible for red tape reduction,” which was a familiar theme for both the former Harper government and the Kenney government in Alberta that continues to carry his ideological torch. Ironically, there’s more than enough red tape in the Conservative Party of Canada’s own platform to keep said minister busy for years. That’s one job created, at least.

Ironically, this package of promises and policies barely even pays lip service to the party’s recent commitment to attacking the federal deficit and bringing our spending back in line. While there’s a vague promise to balance the budget within a decade, the actual policies in the plan, from the one-month GST holiday to a $60-billion increase in health-care spending and post-COVID job-creation incentives that are even more generous than those currently offered, would seem far more likely to blow it out even wider. That’s before a promised review of the income tax code, which would almost certainly result in less revenue for the federal government.

In 2008, this might have been a winning platform. But in 2021, it’s yesterday’s news — especially since Canadians have now rejected both Stephen Harper and Andrew Scheer’s attempt to imitate him. Even the climate policy, which some Conservatives have tried to spin as a bold step forward, is really just a long-overdue concession to political reality in Canada.

The federal Liberals, whatever you may think of them, are taking some big swings at big issues right now. The NDP is willing to entertain some even bigger ones, even if it won’t ever be in the position to actually take them. But the Conservatives, it seems, are content to keep playing small ball, sprinkling a boutique tax credit here and a targeted measure there in the hope of recreating Harper’s winning coalition.

The problem with that strategy is that they’re not reading the room they’re in. The smallness of their vision does not match the enormity of the challenges we face right now. It doesn’t reflect what we’ve learned over the past 18 months, which is that governments can and should play a role in helping us solve our biggest problems. And it doesn’t articulate any sort of coherent Conservative vision for our country’s future. Instead, it seeks to recreate a familiar past.

Nova Scotia’s provincial election proves that looking back is not the best way forward for conservatives in Canada.

Instead, they need to embrace the future with conviction and credibility, and offer Canadians a new set of solutions to their problems instead of trying to recycle old ones. In the wake of the PC win Tuesday night, O’Toole spokesperson Mathew Clancy said: “It’s clear that Canadians want change.” But unless federal Conservatives start offering the kind of change that Canadians want, they won’t be following in Tim Houston’s footsteps.