Baillie seen as a builder
Leading a political party can be an unforgiving job, particularly given the harshly narrow metrics of success or failure. Fairly or not, party leaders are typically judged on pretty much one performance indicator: Did he or she win an election and form a government?
That narrow definition of success leaves out many qualities of good leadership. It ignores the impact a leader can have on public policy and services from the Opposition benches. It’s highly subject to quirks of the election cycle.
A case in point is Jamie Baillie, who has decided to step down as leader of Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservatives after leading the PCs for seven years and serving as an able leader of the Opposition since 2013.
Mr. Baillie has often demonstrated the knowledge, policy depth and management skills to be a capable premier, as well as a doggedness about improving public services.
And in leading the PCs through two elections (2013 and 2017) he has done a good job of attracting strong candidates and rebuilding the party from the third-place wreckage he inherited following the defeat of a PC government.
Under Mr. Baillie, the PCs increased their popular vote and MLA count in both elections and are arguably in a strong position to win a future one. In May, the Baillie team took an impressive 35.73 per cent of votes cast, picked up seven seats (a total of 17) and held the re-elected Liberals to a bare majority squeaked out in some very tight races.
It was a strong result for Mr. Baillie, but not quite enough to overcome the pull of election-cycle gravity that has not been his friend. In 2013, his PCs had the disadvantage of being recently turfed from office themselves when voters decided to defeat a one-term NDP government. This year, Nova Scotians were not ready to turn out a one-term Liberal government that had improved financial management and balanced the budget, in spite of a rocky record on labour relations and health services.
On the government’s failure to adequately plan and deliver primary health care, Mr. Baillie and his caucus have held its feet to the fire before and during the election. The PC leader has also been a well-informed and determined voice for those Nova Scotians who have been unable to get mental health care, particularly in rural areas where shortages of hospital staff and beds have led to long and significant interruptions in mental health services.
No political figure has been more persistent or more passionate in this cause. He has organized news conferences for patients to relate their experiences. He has pressed for a legislative committee to take the issue of poor mental health services in hand and to summon officials to be held accountable.
At one point, he declared it a “a moral imperative” for government to “bring all the expertise together and build an action plan that will revamp the whole system.”
Mr. Baillie also committed his party to ending discrimination in chemotherapy coverage, whereby the province paid for infusions in hospital but not for costly oral chemos prescribed to be taken at home. The first step toward remedying this unfairness was added to the post-election budget this fall. Even without ever forming a government, Jamie Baillie has helped improve important public services in Nova Scotia. He has gone to bat for patients, has refused to accept excuses for poor service and has proposed quality-improving changes like a health system auditor.
A good debater, questioner and creative thinker on policy, he excels more in talking with people about solutions than talking at them in speeches. He has kept the progressive side of his party alive and healthy, and tempered by conservative fiscal prudence, a formula that will probably serve it well in the future.
In short, he has given his party and his province a high standard of leadership that deserves our collective thanks.