Solid leadership isn’t always good government
Liberals much better positioned to win next provincial election than before COVID-19 crisis
It’s an open question whether Nova Scotia is getting good government these days, but I don’t think I’m too far out on a limb
– or out to lunch – in submitting that we’ve been getting what we need – solid leadership through the first – and, we have to hope, worst – wave of COVID-19.
The good government question is outstanding, and will remain so for the foreseeable future, in large measure because the opposition has been effectively sidelined. The crucial committees of the legislature – health and public accounts – haven’t met since before the crisis and, it appears, they won’t meet again until after Labour Day.
Without the opposition to hold the government to account, Nova Scotians tend to get one side of the political story – the Liberals’. That’s not unusual in July and August but, with the crisis as the excuse – or the reason, depending on your perspective – a full six months or more will pass without opposition MLAS having an opportunity to scrutinize the government up close.
To suggest, as Premier Stephen Mcneil has, that regular encounters with the news media makes for accountable government is more than a little disingenuous. Said encounters are orchestrated to deliver the government’s message, and not a whole lot more.
That said, Mcneil and Robert Strang, the province’s chief medical officer of health, earn high marks for shepherding Nova Scotians through the three-month battle to beat back the coronavirus.
For 12 weeks and more than 60 news conferences, Mcneil and Strang have implored, pleaded, hectored and harangued Nova Scotians to alter their behaviour in the interest of the greater, collective good. And, as the reach and impact of the premier’s nowfamous admonition to “stay the blazes home” seems to suggest, they’ve been effective.
Outside of the tragedy at Northwood, where 53 of Nova Scotia’s – to date – 62 deaths from COVID-19 occurred, the province’s aggressive measures to limit the spread of the virus have been largely successful.
“Be kind to each other and we will find our way through this,” the premier said back in March, just days after Nova Scotia’s first COVID-19 cases appeared. We’ll likely never know if he was as confident then as he sounded, but the tone was set and, for the most part, maintained right up to the present.
This week, Mcneil ended his last COVID-19 news conference, at least for a while, with another expression of confidence in the collective capacity of Nova Scotians.
“We’ve got this,” he said, and then he and Dr. Strang exited stage left.
They’ve taken a hiatus from the thrice-weekly briefings – daily for much of March and April – while Dr. Strang self-isolates for 14 days following a trip to New Brunswick for what he described as a minor surgical procedure. That the procedure is available in New Brunswick and not Nova Scotia is a tad perplexing, but I digress.
The Mcneil-strang tandem has been an effective partnership. Strang gives Nova Scotians the straight goods on the course of the contagion and the measures necessary to keep it contained.
Mcneil provides the colour commentary and delivers any news his government has for an economic ravaged by what my colleague John Demont calls “the Great Pause.”
To state the obvious, the COVID-19 crisis changed just about everything, and the political landscape is certainly no exception. Most every government across Canada has gotten a major boost in popular support as Canadians rally behind their leaders in a time of peril.
Nowhere is that more evident than in Nova Scotia, where public satisfaction with the government’s performance jumped by 30 per cent since the crisis hit. In just three months, Nova Scotians who are satisfied with the provincial government increased from 48 per cent to a whopping 77 per cent.
The premier’s position as Nova Scotians’ preferred leader has also improved. He was the first choice of 31 per cent of Nova Scotians in February but by late May that number had grown to 44 per cent.
While it’s true that such a precipitous increase in support can be fleeting, the Liberals are, and likely will remain, much better positioned to win the next provincial election than they were prior to the crisis. That is, of course, subject to rapid and radical change in the coming month, depending on the trajectory of the infection and of the economic recovery.
And, at some point, democracy demands that the government allow the opposition parties back into the political fray, providing them with a platform to offer an alternative to the Liberals, and perhaps more importantly, to chip away at the Grits’ support by exposing government failures and foibles.