On August 17th 2021, a provincial general election was held in Nova Scotia, in which the Progressive Conservatives won enough seats to form a majority government. Meanwhile, no seats were won by candidates from the Green Party of Nova Scotia.
Election results
The election results were as follows: with 31 seats won in the provincial legislature, the Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia managed to secure a surprise majority. The newly dethroned Liberals managed to win 17 seats. The NDP secured 6 seats with, the last of the 55 seats going to independent candidate Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin. The rest of the parties, including the Nova Scotia Greens, did not win a single seat in the 2021 provincial election.
Despite securing a majority government with 31 seats, the Progressive Conservatives lead by Tim Houston won less than 2% more of the total vote share when compared to the Liberals. The Progressive Conservatives amassed 38.43% of the total vote share while the Liberals secured 36.67% of the total votes according to Elections Nova Scotia. A relatively small margin that still allowed for a discrepancy in the number of seats.
The Green Party of Nova Scotia secured 2.14% of the the total vote share made up of 9,042 votes. This was not enough to win a single seat in the legislature. Tim Houston’s, Progressive Conservative party focused extensively on healthcare and the need to have more family doctors available for Nova Scotians. The strategy clearly paid off as the party is forming its first government since 2009 as reported by CBC.
What happened with the Nova Scotia Greens?
Global Green News reached out to the interim leader of the Green Party of Nova Scotia, Jessica Alexander, to get her thoughts on the election. What went wrong for the Greens and how will the party move forward? Alexander first acknowledged that the incoming government is a “Progressive” Conservative government and has some good policy objectives such as affordable housing. According to comments that Alexander provided to Global Green News, the Progressives Tories “distance” themselves from other conservative parties.
She claims that the healthcare issue of missing family doctors overshadowed Green objectives:
That crisis eclipsed what Greens were promoting: aggressive climate action and an end to open-pen fish farms on our coasts.
Jessica Alexander to Global Green News
Back in April of this year, the former leader of the Nova Scotia Greens ,Thomas Trappenberg stepped down. Subsequently, the leadership contest was not completed before a new election was called and according to Alexander, this had a negative effect on the party’s results:
Nova Scotia is the only Canadian province without fixed election dates, so this was a risk that the party, in some ways, could not avoid.Thankfully we are a resilient and capable party, and having had a leader/deputy leader team prior to the election call meant that we had an experienced person ready to lead the party through the election.
Jessica Alexander to Global Green News
Where does the party go next?
The two pressing objectives for the party according to Alexander are to first complete their leadership contest. Secondly, the party now has the resources to complete a policy book from which the next platform will be built. Alexander confirms that the Nova Scotia Greens will keep pushing their objectives forward:
We will continue to speak out on environmental, social justice, and economic issues on behalf of Green Nova Scotians.
Jessica Alexander to Global Green News
Despite their shortcoming in the recent election, the issues that the Nova Scotia Greens advocate for are very real. Now that the dust is settling from this election, as mentioned by their interim leader, the Nova Scotia Greens can start building and planning for the near future.
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