Prepare for election call

When it comes to re-election attempts, the Liberals playbook looks painfully familiar. Put enough distance to take some of the sting out of a nasty labour dispute with the teachers’ union?

Check.

Curry favour with taxpayers by promising and repromising over $100 million worth of goodies for the past two months?

Check.

Bring in a budget that promises tax cuts for half the province’s population and a $26 million surplus to boot?

Check.

Pay close attention to the polls, the most recent of which put the Liberals at 43 per cent of decided voters compared to 27 per cent for the Progressive Conservatives and 24 per cent for the NDP? Check.

It’s a playbook akin to those used by other governing parties in the past because doing whatever it takes to get re-elected is in their DNA.

Put them all together and the time to strike, it would seem, is now with Premier Stephen McNeil calling a news conference in his hometown of Annapolis Royal today at 1 p.m. If not today, it will happen tomorrow.

What else could it be given Nova Scotia’s embarrassing status as the only province in Canada without fixed election date legislation?

And how convenient that loophole is for the Liberals given the fact that more government labour disputes lurk over the horizon, each of which will cut into their solid poll numbers when the province imposes or negotiates wage packages that limit the 2017-18 increase to one per cent.

It wouldn’t be the first time McNeil has held a major political event in picturesque Annapolis Royal either. Or have you forgotten that he and his entire cabinet were sworn in the picturesque little Valley town in 2013, the first time since 1954 that the swearing in ceremony has been held outside Halifax?

So just three-and-a-half years into a mandate that could be stretched out to five years, a late-spring election is now in the cards.

Have the Liberals done enough to earn themselves a second majority? With 34 seats compared to just 10 for the Progressive Conservatives and five for the NDP, they are certainly posed to do so. There’s a lot of ground to make up, after all.

But there are questions voters will or should be asking.

For instance, will Nova Scotians buy into McNeil’s argument that a government surplus and promised lower taxes are the upsides of his party’s tough stance regarding public sector wages?

Will poorer Nova Scotians be swayed by the fact they will no longer pay provincial income taxes after the program kicks in Jan. 1, 2018?

What about improvements to the health care system? Has there been too much talk and not enough action in this area?

Can the NDP regain some of the ground they lost in the last election? Is there any chance of a Progressive Conservative breakthrough?

And there are many more. Let the formal campaigning begin.