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Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Houston unveils his party's complete and fully costed election platform in Halifax on Thursday, July 22, 2021.
Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservatives are preparing to take power after voters handed them a majority mandate in Tuesday’s election.
Premier-designate Tim Houston’s party surged to victory over the governing Liberals after campaigning on a big-spending fix to the troubled health system.
During the campaign, Houston unveiled a left-leaning platform that promised hundreds of millions of dollars in the first year of the party’s mandate to increase the number of family doctors, bolster the mental health system and create more nursing home beds.
In his victory speech, the 51-year-old chartered accountant said the public responded to the solutions he put forward and decided against simply rewarding the Liberals for competently handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Five hours after the polls closed, the Progressive Conservatives were elected in 31 ridings, with 28 seats needed for a majority in the newly expanded 55-seat legislature.
Houston’s party has also become the first to unseat a government in Canada since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other elections that have taken place during the course of the health crisis – in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Yukon and Saskatchewan – all saw incumbent leaders remain in power.
Liberal Leader Iain Rankin told supporters in Halifax he didn’t have immediate plans to step down, despite the resounding defeat, leaving his party elected or leading in 17 seats.
Rankin revealed in July he had been convicted of impaired driving as a young man in 2003 and 2005. He provided few details about the second conviction, which was dismissed in court. The lack of disclosure surrounding the second case prompted a series of unflattering media reports.
And in the first week of the campaign, the Liberals faced more negative headlines after a female Liberal candidate alleged party staff had pressured her to drop out of the race because she had previously sold revealing photos of herself on the website OnlyFans. Robyn Ingraham said the party had told her to cite her mental health issues as the reason for her departure on the first day of the campaign, which she did in writing before going public with her version of events.
As the campaign neared the midway point, Rankin was kept on the defensive during a leaders debate that saw Houston and Burrill taking shots at the premier over his record on health care. In particular, Houston criticized the premier for failing to deal with a chronic physician shortage that has left more than 70,000 Nova Scotians without a family doctor.
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The NDP didn’t see a significant shift from their pre-election status of five seats, though they managed to gain the riding of Cape Breton Centre – Whitney Pier.