Nova Scotia Liberals release four-year, $2.3-billion election platform

HALIFAX — An ambitious target for housing and a replacement for federal carbon pricing are among the major promises contained in the Nova Scotia Liberals’ election platform, which commits to $2.3 billion in spending over four years.

Flanked on Monday by 16 of his party’s candidates in the Nov. 26 provincial election, leader Zach Churchill revealed a 31-page plan that he said would amount to a fully costed “contract with Nova Scotians.”

Among the significant measures is a promise to build 80,000 new homes by 2032 in order to help alleviate the province’s housing shortage. “This is a number that can’t just be a goal,” Churchill said. “We have to do this if we are going to ensure people have a roof over their heads.”

The target could be reached by setting provincewide zoning standards and eliminating red tape, he said. To address the shortage of labour needed to build the housing, the Liberals propose spending $20 million over four years to increase the number of skilled trades opportunities for women, who Churchill said currently comprise less than nine per cent of the province’s skilled labour workforce.

The overall plan for housing also includes $37.5 million a year to build more non-profit housing and $20 million over four years to build and support co-operative housing.

There is also a pledge to replace the federal carbon price with an Atlantic region cap-and-trade model for large industrial greenhouse gas emitters. Churchill said New Brunswick’s new Liberal Premier Susan Holt already agrees with the idea.

“It needs to be regional so it is large enough to meet federal targets,” Churchill said, adding that such a program would reduce gasoline prices by at least 10 cents a litre.

The platform contains previously announced items such as a two-percentage-point reduction in the harmonized sales tax at a cost of $542 million a year, free public transit, and a pledge to build 20 new collaborative health-care clinics and expand 20 existing clinics at a cost of $15.3 million a year.

Churchill said to implement the plan, his party would run budget deficits in the first three years if elected, with a surplus planned for the fourth year.

“We can afford this if we stick to our budget,” he said. “It is based on revenue increasing on the economic side, but also decreasing on the population side because we are going to better manage our population growth.”

The Liberals are the first of the three main parties to release a full platform, which followed the release Saturday of new polling numbers from Abacus Data showing the party in third place, well behind the Progressive Conservatives.

The Tories registered 45 per cent support with committed eligible voters, the NDP 26 per cent, the Liberals 25 per cent and the Green Party four per cent. The survey was conducted Oct. 28-31 with 600 eligible voters drawn from a random sample of panellists. It cannot be assigned a margin of error, but Abacus says a comparable probability-based random sample of the same size has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Meanwhile, housing was the focus Monday of the Progressive Conservatives and NDP, with both parties making announcements in Halifax.

Tory Leader Tim Houston announced a measure aimed at first-time homebuyers, pledging to reduce the minimum required down payment on a home costing up to $500,000 to two per cent from five per cent under a loan program administered by local credit unions.

“I think there’s lots of young Nova Scotians … in different financial circumstances where a down payment is a challenge,” he told reporters. Real estate firm Royal LePage says the median cost of a single-family home in Halifax is $575,000.

NDP Leader Claudia Chender announced a new affordable homes rebate that she said would help households with incomes of less than $70,000 save an average of $900 per year on rent or mortgage payments. “The price of housing in this province, whether you rent or own, is out of control,” Chender said.

She said the rebate would apply to about half of Nova Scotia households, with households that make between $29,000 and $59,000 expected to receive about $1,000 per year through the rebate, and households making less than $29,000 to receive about $1,500.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.

— With files from Lyndsay Armstrong in Halifax

Keith Doucette, The Canadian Press