Graham Steele explains why he quit NDP in new book
Posted Sep 4, 2014 05:28:47 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Former provincial finance minister Graham Steele has released a book providing an inside look at what happened during the NDP government’s term in office.
Steele told the Rick Howe Show Thursday, the expense scandal in 2010 was the beginning of the end for the New Democrats.
“Suddenly, like a snap of the fingers, people stopped giving us the benefit of the doubt,” he said.
Also in the book, titled What I Learned About Politics: Inside the Rise — and Collapse – of Nova Scotia’s NDP Government, Steele gives readers an inside look at what he says was the last straw that caused him to leave the party in 2012.
During labour talks between the province and the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, Steele writes that then-Premier Darrell Dexter told his cabinet one thing, then did the opposite.
“A decision came from the Premier’s office, [Dexter] alone decided to go in a different direction,” said Steele.
Steele says he told Dexter that the province could not afford the deal the premier made with the NSGEU, but Dexter made it anyway.
Still, he says anyone looking for a “hatchet job” against the former premier should look elsewhere.
