Initial thoughts on our new premier
Last week I listened closely to the new premier’s first interview on CBC’s Information Morning. Iain Rankin was called upon to speak on a variety of topical issues that had loomed over his predecessor’s record. Nice guy, but what I heard was doublespeak.
Doublespeak is geared to make the truth sound more palatable or to disguise the nature of the truth. As George Orwell once wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
While obviously Rankin wasn’t lying, what was clear to me was that he wanted to sound widely appealing. Of course, a new premier wants to be liked. I just don’t think it’s possible to appease both WestFor Management and the elders who were living in tents in November hoping to preserve old Crown forestland.
Rankin billed himself as a leadership candidate for generational change. Now he’s got to navigate positive change, so I suggest he take New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as a model. He is only 37 and attempting to distance himself from a conservative premier who valued balancing the budget above all.
I got my first inkling that dollars and cents were going to be counted above all in April of
2015 when in Stephen McNeil’s spring budget, the provincial government cut back the film industry tax credit severely and blindsided the industry. That fall, an important film version of the life of Digby County artist Maud Lewis astoundingly got filmed in Newfoundland.
Producer Mary Sexton was quoted that October saying, "Maudie is going to put me, and Newfoundland and all our team that have worked so hard, on the map." A sad, sad comment. Only during the pandemic have film producers returned to this province to make films and that is only because of our low count of COVID cases.
The health-care system was mushed together for budgetary reasons early in McNeil’s regime. Now patients who sit for days in emergency room beds call the provincial health authority systematically starved. Emergency physicians who speak up are demeaned. Meanwhile, public sector unions, like the nurses and teachers, are like elephants who never forget. Neither will the families of those in long-term care.
So Rankin has big issues to find the wisdom to deal with before an election that could occur as early as this fall.
Fortunately, Dr. Robert Strang is handling the COVID-19 pandemic well and Nova Scotians have already obliged by ‘staying the blazes home.’
I want to congratulate our Kings South MLA Keith Irving on his appointment to the cabinet. Seven years since his initial election, he has a new and super tough balancing act ahead. As the new minister of the Department of Environment and Climate Change, as well as chairman of treasury and policy board, doesn’t he have to foster change and keep spending down?
Stepping down from cabinet this month is revered Kings West MLA Leo Glavine, a former teacher first elected in 2003. We had many conversations over the years and he was always a good listener. When pushed about progress on long-awaited projects, like the new hospice, often Leo could only listen. But you always felt like his heart was in the right place.
I sincerely hope that the new Rankin regime will hear the people before corporations in this province. I hope the Lahey Report is rolled out and much more happens to preserve species like the endangered mainland moose.
Meanwhile, I recommend we all educate ourselves in doublespeak. After all, bombing is not really pacification as some would have us think.
Nova Scotia deserves a transparent government around ferry service and a raft of other high costs. Disguising the nature of the truth or hiding behind euphemisms is not going to move us forward as the virus loses its hold.