N.S. Liberals release platform promising more housing, tax cuts and boosts to health care

Nova Scotia Liberal Leader Zach Churchill released his party's election platform on Monday, describing the document as a contract with voters to build more housing, reduce taxes and potentially remove the impact of the carbon tax on the price of gas.

"If we're being honest, every party has broken promises to Nova Scotians after they've been elected," Churchill said during a news conference in Halifax.

"This is a contract with Nova Scotians. If you vote for a Nova Scotia Liberal government, this is what we will deliver for you and we will hold ourselves accountable to it."

The Liberals are promising to help build 80,000 new homes by 2032, a figure that would include 4,000 new units spearheaded by non-profit agencies and 2,000 new co-op units.

The party is pledging to maintain the rent cap until there is a vacancy rate of three per cent, create a residential tenancies enforcement unit and prevent the use of fixed-term leases for a tenant for more than one year. A provincial rent bank would be established to give zero-interest loans to renters finding themselves in a bind.

Churchill said housing growth would also be enhanced by reducing red tape around building materials and construction approaches, incentives to get property owners to develop large pieces of vacant land and an effort to get more women working in the skilled trades.

"Less than nine per cent of that workforce is women. We're leaving half of our population out of the skilled trades."

On health care, the Liberals reiterated their pledge to build 20 new collaborative care clinics and expand 20 existing sites.

There would be an emphasis on recruiting more physician assistants and providing student loan relief of up to 20 per cent a year for five years to people working in the province in in-demand health-care professions.

The party is promising to begin work on a new hospital for the Annapolis Valley region, improve access to recreation as a form of preventive medicine and expand early screening for illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

"We know that when we catch these illnesses earlier, they are more affordable to manage and, of course, allow people to live higher-quality lives with less invasive procedures," said Churchill.

The party is vowing to bring in an increased focus on women's health research with a dedicated cabinet minister to oversee the initiative, create an independent agency to manage requests for out-of-province medical care and make parking free at Nova Scotia Health sites.

Churchill has previously touted affordability measures such as reducing the HST by two percentage points, removing the HST from grocery items still subject to the tax and reducing income tax.

The platform also calls for increasing the heating assistance rebate to $1,000 a year, doubling the seniors care grant to $1,500 and ensuring wind development projects in the province benefit Nova Scotians first.