One of these three guys will – we hope – lead Nova Scotia through the all-important final stages of the pandemic and possibly into the early stages of recovery.
If that’s not a good enough reason to pay heed to the Liberal leadership race, try considering it a respite from COVID news – a kind of mind-holiday from the constant barrage of the pandemic.
Of course, in order to offer that public service, the three men who would be premier – Labi Kousoulis, Iain Rankin or Randy Delorey – need to up their games, take off the kid gloves and actually fight for the job they want. In other words, they need to make this thing interesting enough to watch, before the final votes are cast and counted in early February.
So far they haven’t cleared that low bar, but there were inklings this week that, given a little time and the right encouragement, this race could descend into a good old-fashioned political dust-up, like leadership campaigns ought to.
In the first seven weeks of the four-month race, we’ve been treated to vapid policy statements and a single, nap-inspiring debate-of-sorts sponsored by the pathologically genteel Halifax Chamber of Commerce. We can only hope the second debate, Thursday in Cape Breton, isn’t as sterile and tedious as the first.
I may be overstating the lassitude that marks the race – although that seems unlikely – but there’s no understating the importance of its outcome.
The Liberal leader and premier that emerges to succeed Stephen McNeil will take the helm of government at a critical time for the province.
He may have to shepherd Nova Scotians through dark days of spreading infection. Or he may lead us to the pandemic’s finish line and kick-start the economic and social recovery. He may be called on to do all the above, before sending Nova Scotians to the polls sometime next year or early in 2022.
Given all of that, we need to get to know these guys, so we can gauge who among them is best equipped to meet whatever lies ahead.
In the first seven weeks of the four-month race, we’ve been treated to vapid policy statements and a single, nap-inspiring debate-of-sorts sponsored by the pathologically genteel Halifax Chamber of Commerce. We can only hope the second debate, Thursday in Cape Breton, isn’t as sterile and tedious as the first.
When Liberals pick their next leader, they’ll weigh that consideration, fleetingly, before getting back to the real business of trying to discern which of the three is most likely to lead the party to another election win.
One spark of interest this week appeared in the form of a social media post that generated some heat but no light. It suggested that Delorey’s team was “cautiously optimistic” of a first ballot victory.
When asked, the Delorey campaign disavowed the report, while the other camps wrote it off as either the musings of an insider with no grasp of the delegate-count, or a plant designed to show momentum where none exists.
Delorey himself needs to find a better way to account for his conspicuous absence from the province’s COVID briefings between March and October. He was, after all, Nova Scotia’s Health Minister.
He explains the absence unprompted, which tells you it is a matter of some concern inside his campaign.
He was, he says, doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes, while McNeil and Robert Strang were the front-men.
If that’s the case, he needs to account for the findings of the expert review into the outbreak that ravaged Northwood’s nursing home in Halifax. The review cited confusion and mixed messages coming from the Health Department and the Health Authority as a problem.
The guy running the show from behind the scenes should likely have made the province’s two big health bureaucracies work together effectively.
Rankin, too, has some explaining to do.
As Land and Forestry Minister prior to entering the leadership, he was responsible for implementing Bill Lahey’s recommendations to transition Nova Scotia to more ecologically-sound forestry practices.
The department disputes it but Lahey’s recommendations have stalled. Their implementation is a least a year behind the department’s own deadlines.
That prompted Kousoulis to ask, rhetorically, why Lahey’s report sat on a shelf for two years.
“There are other ministers that should answer for that,” said Kousoulis firing a little passive-aggressive shot across Rankin’s bow.
Rankin says as premier he will accelerate implementation of the Lahey report which, of course, prompts the question why didn’t he do that as minister.
If, as many folks in Nova Scotia’s broad and potent environmental constituency believe, Rankin is sincere and an ally, there’s only one explanation for the stalled implementation of the Lahey report.ƒ
It’s being held up by what folks in government call “the centre.” And at the very centre stands a man who casts a long shadow, Premier Stephen McNeil.
