Nova Scotia Liberals coy about election plans

The opening of the spring session of the Nova Scotia legislature Tuesday means an unofficial election campaign, underway for weeks, will be temporarily shelved as the Liberal government gears up to present a budget later this week.

The budget is scheduled to be tabled Thursday. Whether house proceedings continue much beyond that is up to Premier Stephen McNeil, who is widely expected to call an election as early as Friday or Saturday, resulting in a May 30 vote.

For the last seven weeks, all three parties have been on election footing with candidates knocking on doors and taking part in election-style rallies. Meanwhile, the Liberal government has rolled out a flurry of spending announcements worth ten of millions of dollars since the beginning in March.

In an interview Monday, Liberal house leader Michel Samson wouldn’t say whether the government had planned any legislative business beyond this week.

“We’ll start the budget debate as required and we’ll see how things go from there,” he said.

However, he said the government intended to pass its reworked law to make the province more accessible for the disabled. “There’s absolutely no reason why that bill cannot pass third reading this week,” Samson said. “It’s really going to come down to what type of co-operation that we get from the opposition.”

The proposed Accessibility Act was shelved last fall after heavy criticism from the groups it was meant to help. On Monday, the bill was unanimously supported by the all-party law amendments committee after changes that resulted from public hearings conducted last month.

The revised bill now includes a goal of achieving an accessible province by 2030, and revamps a proposed 12-member accessibility advisory board to include seven members with disabilities.