PC government enters House session with new plans and increased power
CBC
As MLAs prepare to return Friday for the start of a winter session at the Nova Scotia Legislature, Premier Tim Houston has been setting the stage for the direction his government will follow at the beginning of its second mandate with headwinds already looming.
Last month, Houston shared a manifesto with members of his caucus outlining the challenging times the province faces and the need to become more self-sufficient. The population boom that's allowed the PCs to overspend budgets by billions of dollars is plateauing and the potential of United States tariffs could necessitate government intervention to support affected businesses.
For Houston, the path to resiliency is paved with increased natural resource exploration and extraction.
The premier has said he wants to take the "no" out of Nova Scotia and revisit all development bans in the province. His will be the government that finally stands up to an unspecified group of special interests and "professional protesters" who, in Houston's view, have prevented the province from harnessing its full economic potential.
It's a message Houston has since shared with the public in a $10,000 front page ad the government purchased in a recent edition of the Chronicle Herald newspaper and similar language is appearing in Progressive Conservative fundraising appeals.
Municipal Affairs Minister John Lohr took a less adversarial tone in a letter making the rounds to municipal councils. Lohr is asking that if councils favour more resource development in the province that they express their support in a letter to government or a news release.
It is perhaps not a surprise that Houston is looking for a new target as he enters his second mandate.
As a politician, Houston has been combative by nature and much of his government's first term was spent taking shots at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a federal government the premier often argued treats Nova Scotia unfairly.
With Trudeau weeks away from political retirement, Houston has shifted his focus to a small subset of the population that he argues — without example — has had outsized influence on the direction of the province.
Despite this, government House leader Brendan Maguire says the PCs are not coming into the session with their minds made up about everything.
Changing times mean conversations must happen, he said in an interview, but Maguire points to another word Houston has used repeatedly when discussing resource development.
"Every time I hear the premier or the minister talk about this, the word that keeps coming out of their mouth is 'safe,' and that's something that Nova Scotians should care about because, you know, we want to do this in a way that's not going to impact them."
NDP Leader Claudia Chender, whose party now forms the Official Opposition, said her caucus supports resource development, but she thinks the government would be better off focusing on further development of other sectors, too.
Chender said some of the development bans that exist in the province followed extensive public consultation and that's something she thinks the PCs need to keep in mind as they revisit practices such as fracking and uranium mining.
After much of southern Ontario was hit with a winter storm Wednesday night, schools in the Hamilton, Brantford and Burlington areas are closed Thursday, while schools in Niagara remain open, though buses are cancelled.
U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of tariffs on Canadian products and his imposition of tariffs on imported steel and aluminum have triggered alarm in the Canadian auto sector, with experts warning of possible work stoppages and supply chain disruptions.
Much of southern Ontario and Quebec is under winter storm and snowfall warnings as a low-pressure system moves east toward the Atlantic provinces.
Several school boards in the Greater Toronto area have closed their schools on Thursday after a winter storm blanketed the city with snow overnight.
Schools and facilities are closed as people in Waterloo region, Guelph and Wellington County dig out from a winter storm.
Schools in Prince County have been cancelled for Thursday as a winter storm system is expected to bring significant snowfall to the region in the afternoon and evening.
Shoppers and businesses in some small northern communities have mixed feelings about the "buy Canadian" movement started in response to the potential trade war between Canada and the U.S.
President Donald Trump claims he's targeting Canada with punishing tariffs on all our goods because he's concerned about the country's supposedly lax approach to fentanyl and migrants.
The call to Angela Rasmussen came out of the blue and posed a troubling question. Had she heard the rumour that key data sets would be removed from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website the next day?
As residents of two downtown Toronto neighbourhoods say city efforts have failed to reduce a spate of coyote attacks on pet dogs, a local councillor is hosting a public meeting Thursday to hear their concerns and come up with a long-term safety plan.
In the otherwise quiet halls of Oakridge Presbyterian Church in west London, Ont., on a weekday afternoon, a rhythmic thud echoes through the building.
In a corroding American democracy, there's one guardrail still standing. The court system. President Donald Trump is testing it, he's pushing it, but so far has not kicked it aside.
Speaking with reporters in Washington, D.C. following meetings on trade Wednesday, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey said Canada hopefully won't make concessions to the United States amid threats of economic tariffs.