Casey to reoffer
The incumbent MLA for Colchester North says she has filed her papers and her name will be on the ballot for the next provincial election.
The incumbent MLA for Colchester North wants people to know she is running again.
Nova Scotia’s Minister of Education Karen Casey called the Truro Daily News on Friday afternoon to clear up any confusion about her intentions.
“After Diana Whelan announced she wouldn’t be running again, people were coming up to me and saying they saw on TV I wasn’t running,” said Casey. “Well, they were getting us mixed up.”
Casey has represented Colchester North as MLA since 2006 when first elected as a Progressive Conservative member. She served as Minister of Education and then Minister of Health under Premier Rodney MacDonald and then was interim leader for the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives from 2009 until she crossed the floor to join the Liberals in 2011.
She was re-elected as a Liberal MLA in 2013 and has served as Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development. Casey says the Liberal party held her nomination meeting last summer or fall without a lot of fanfare. “I’m very happy to run again – we made some difficult decisions but I believe they will make it better for all Nova Scotians.”
Casey campaigned on a promise to make education a priority and says she fulfilled that by increasing public education funding in every budget.
Casey was minister during the first-ever strike by the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and ended the strike, not through negotiation, but by invoking back-to-work legislation.
She says the Council to Improve Classroom Conditions appointed after the labour dispute has allowed government to hear directly from teachers about ways to improve education.
Casey says she doesn’t know when the next election is.
“There’s only one person who knows, that’s the premier. We know the house is going back in April 25, we know our budget is coming down on April 27. Besides that we don’t know any dates. But what I want people in Colchester North to know is, I have filed my papers and my name will be on the ballot for the election whenever it is. ”