PC government enters House session with new plans and increased power

As MLAs prepare to return Friday for the start of a winter session at the Nova Scotia Legislature, Premier Tim Houston has been setting the stage for the direction his government will follow at the beginning of its second mandate with headwinds already looming.

Last month, Houston shared a manifesto with members of his caucus outlining the challenging times the province faces and the need to become more self-sufficient. The population boom that's allowed the PCs to overspend budgets by billions of dollars is plateauing and the potential of United States tariffs could necessitate government intervention to support affected businesses.

For Houston, the path to resiliency is paved with increased natural resource exploration and extraction.

The premier has said he wants to take the "no" out of Nova Scotia and revisit all development bans in the province. His will be the government that finally stands up to an unspecified group of special interests and "professional protesters" who, in Houston's view, have prevented the province from harnessing its full economic potential.

It's a message Houston has since shared with the public in a $10,000 front page ad the government purchased in a recent edition of the Chronicle Herald newspaper and similar language is appearing in Progressive Conservative fundraising appeals.

Municipal Affairs Minister John Lohr took a less adversarial tone in a letter making the rounds to municipal councils. Lohr is asking that if councils favour more resource development in the province that they express their support in a letter to government or a news release.

It is perhaps not a surprise that Houston is looking for a new target as he enters his second mandate.

As a politician, Houston has been combative by nature and much of his government's first term was spent taking shots at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a federal government the premier often argued treats Nova Scotia unfairly.

With Trudeau weeks away from political retirement, Houston has shifted his focus to a small subset of the population that he argues — without example — has had outsized influence on the direction of the province.

Despite this, government House leader Brendan Maguire says the PCs are not coming into the session with their minds made up about everything.

Changing times mean conversations must happen, he said in an interview, but Maguire points to another word Houston has used repeatedly when discussing resource development.

"Every time I hear the premier or the minister talk about this, the word that keeps coming out of their mouth is 'safe,' and that's something that Nova Scotians should care about because, you know, we want to do this in a way that's not going to impact them."

NDP Leader Claudia Chender, whose party now forms the Official Opposition, said her caucus supports resource development, but she thinks the government would be better off focusing on further development of other sectors, too.

Chender said some of the development bans that exist in the province followed extensive public consultation and that's something she thinks the PCs need to keep in mind as they revisit practices such as fracking and uranium mining.