Pandemic politics dominate legislature, and why not?

‘COVID hangs over everything and monopolizes public attention’

Tim Houston bristles a bit when his party is referred to as the “Conservatives.” He’s quite insistent that they be called Progressive Conservatives, although he seems OK with PCS, and Tories too.

The name-game is but a subplot in the tale of pandemic politics, a serial that’s been running at the Nova Scotia legislature since it convened in early March, after a yearlong Covid-inspired hiatus.

Houston, who leads the official opposition PCS, has been peppering Premier Iain Rankin with daily questions about the province’s pandemic response, including the vaccine rollout, the hierarchy of vaccine recipients, and the outbreak at Northwood.

Rankin’s ready response has been to cite the province’s enviable record controlling the spread of the virus and, when the time seems right, to accuse the “Conservative” leader of playing politics or “politicizing” the pandemic.

TABLES TURNED

But the tables turned a week ago, when a Liberal Party ad appeared on the front page of The Chronicle Herald.

The ad features a photo of Rankin with the assertion that: “The Rankin government is making the necessary investments … to efficiently distribute and administer vaccinations across the province. Under our plan, every adult in Nova Scotia who wants a vaccine will have access to their first dose by the end of June.”

It was a political ad aimed at increasing Rankin’s profile and associating him with the most promising aspect of the pandemic: the vaccines that might just end it.

It was also a credit grab by the Liberals, according to Houston, when credit rightly belongs with public health.

Rankin’s Liberals will – if all continues to go well – try to capitalize on the province’s mostly-effective pandemic response, again. The qualification is because of the tragedy at Northwood’s Halifax nursing home, where 53 residents died last spring.

Rankin and the Liberals politicized the pandemic with a political ad. So did Houston and others by making it a matter for political debate in the legislature.

But what’s wrong with that?

RANKIN STICKS TO SCRIPT

COVID hangs over everything and monopolizes public attention. Isn’t it natural, even expected, that it would become the focus of attention, questions and debate by our politicians. Imagine if, during the current session of the legislature, the COVID pandemic and the province’s response thereto was ignored by the opposition. They’d be pilloried.

Houston was right to question the government on the speed of the vaccine rollout, when Nova Scotia appeared to be well behind other provinces. He was right to question the hierarchy because, unlike other provinces, Nova Scotia doesn’t prioritize Nova Scotians with preexisting conditions.

Houston and NDP leader Gary Burrill were also absolutely right to pressure the premier over the province’s response to the Northwood outbreak, where the government’s own review found that confusion between the two mammoth health bureaucracies – the department and the authority – made things worse.

No matter the question, Rankin sticks close to the script. In our splendid isolation, Nova Scotian has managed to keep COVID cases low – remarkably so compared to provinces beyond Atlantic Canada, or words to that effect.

He may be a newbie premier, but he’s no political novice. From a master – Stephen Mcneil – Rankin learned to respond to questions, not with answers, but by lauding his government’s efforts. Generally those efforts relate to the question-at-hand, but that’s not mandatory.

SHADES OF MCNEIL

Mcneil was also an accomplished counter-puncher. He often punctuating his replies with partisan shots at the questioner, and Rankin’s taken that lesson to heart, as well.

In addition to accusing Houston of politicizing the pandemic, the premier has compared Nova Scotia’s success to the dreadful circumstances faced by “Conservative” governments elsewhere in the nation. The implication is clear. Nova Scotia’s Liberal government contained the virus, while Conservative governments in other provinces did not.

Rankin links Nova Scotia’s PCS to those Conservative governments because he knows that a sizable chuck of the provincial electorate

— notably in seat-rich Halifax Regional Municipality — is repelled by the right-wing perception of those parties.

Conversely, Houston does not want Nova Scotia’s proud PC legacy — Stanfield, Smith, Hamm, they tend to skip over Buchanan — associated with the Conservatives in Ottawa, nor with other provincial conservatives like Jason Kenny or Doug Ford, for that matter.

The politics of the pandemic aren’t all that much different from any other politics. Opposition politicians find flaws, or perceived flaws, in the government’s actions and government politicians find fault in the opposition’s questions.

It would be routine, except the issue is the most serious any of these politicians is likely to face, ever.

Nor are we done with the pandemic as political fodder. There’s an election in Nova Scotia’s near future, and the Liberals will want to focus on the government’s record keeping COVID at bay.

The PCS and the NDP will try to punch holes in that story and expand the discussion to include the Liberal’s broader record, the record that had them in electoral trouble, pre-pandemic.