Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservatives win decisive majority in Nova Scotia

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston led the Progressive Conservatives to an overwhelming majority win Tuesday, bucking a trend in recent provincial elections that saw incumbents roughed up by the electorate or soundly defeated.

After the count was suspended at 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the Tories were leading or elected in 42 of the legislature’s 55 ridings, the New Democrats were at nine, the Liberals had three and there was one Independent. The riding of Yarmouth — where Liberal Leader Zach Churchill is running — was too close to call, flipping back and forth between him and the Tory candidate, Nick Hilton.

The last time the Progressive Conservatives enjoyed such a lopsided victory was in 1984 when John Buchanan led the party to win 42 of the legislature’s 52 seats — his third of four consecutive wins.

Houston, a 54-year-old chartered accountant, told his supporters that after standing on thousands of doorsteps and talking to countless Nova Scotians at their kitchen tables, he received this message, “Keep going with the plan. Keep moving forward with the plan.”

Speaking to a crowd at the Pictou Wellness Centre in New Glasgow, Houston concluded his victory speech by returning to a theme that he used to start the campaign on Oct. 27, warning the federal Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau not to get in Nova Scotia’s way.

“When they try to rip Nova Scotians off with funding … or a carbon tax that doesn’t make sense, I will never let Ottawa take advantage of us.”

With the latest results, the New Democrats, led by Claudia Chender, were poised to form the official Opposition, replacing the Liberals, who appeared to be in an electoral free fall.

“Our vision for a different kind of government has struck a nerve,” Chender, 48, a lawyer and mother of three, told supporters gathered at a hotel on the Halifax waterfront. “I’m here to tell you that Nova Scotia’s NDP is on the rise.”

The NDP campaign was notable for Chender’s strong performance during the televised debates. As well, it would appear her focus on housing and affordability resonated with voters.

As for the Liberals, five incumbents chose not to run before the election was called and two members of the legislature crossed the floor to the Tories in the past year. The Liberals were also facing pressure from the province’s South Shore, where fishing communities remain angry about what they say is the federal Liberals’ failure to get the Fisheries Department to crack down on illegal lobster fishing.

Churchill, a 40-year-old career politician with experience as a policy analyst, said he respected the will of the electorate.

“I’ll take some time once we know the final tally to discuss my future with my family,” he told a crowd at a hotel in his hometown of Yarmouth, on Nova Scotia’s southwestern shore. “This wasn’t the result that we wanted as a party. But I’ll tell you, we left it all on the ice.”

With the Tories riding high in the polls, Houston called a snap election on Oct. 27, saying he needed to strengthen his bargaining position with the leader of the unpopular federal Liberal government, especially when it came to securing a new deal on carbon pricing.

What followed was a low-key election campaign that saw Houston offering a no-frills, stay-the-course platform.

The Tory’s convincing win — with an increased majority from the 2021 election — breaks a recent trend that has seen other provincial incumbents lose support, or be booted out of office.

Last month, B.C. NDP Premier David Eby barely held on to power when voters outside Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland threw their support behind the Conservative Party of BC, which barely existed 18 months ago.

Less than a week later in New Brunswick, Progressive Conservative premier Blaine Higgs lost his bid for a second term after adopting a series of socially conservative measures and alienating much of his caucus. And on Oct. 28, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe won a substantially reduced majority as his Saskatchewan Party was almost shut out of the province’s big cities.

During the Nova Scotia election campaign, Houston faced withering criticism from Churchill and Chender, both of whom accused him of ignoring the first law his government passed in 2021, setting July 15, 2025, as the date for the next election.

Chender and Churchill — both contesting their first election as a party leader — accused the premier of breaking his promise for a fixed-date election on the first day of the fall campaign.

At dissolution, Houston’s Tories held 34 seats, the Liberals had 14 seats, the NDP six and there was one Independent.

On the hustings, Houston also told voters he wanted their approval for his plans to deal with a stubborn affordability crisis and a desperate housing shortage.

But the telegenic, silver-haired premier repeatedly returned to his complaints about Trudeau. Houston also took aim at Ottawa’s refusal to pay the entire cost of shoring up the Chignecto Isthmus, the strip of land between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that is increasingly at risk of severe flooding.

And when the Tories released their election platform Nov. 8, Houston said the slim, 28-page document represented a “continuation of a plan that is already working.”

By contrast, the hefty platform Houston released in 2021 was 130 pages, and the focus of that campaign was almost entirely on his promise to “fix” the health-care system.

Last week, during another televised leaders debate, Chender and Churchill reminded the premier that the registry for Nova Scotians seeking a family doctor had doubled under his watch to more than 140,000.

Houston responded by saying Nova Scotians had to be patient. “The job is not done, for sure, but there has been incredible progress,” he said.

The premier repeatedly told voters that the province’s economy was growing, and there were hundreds more doctors and thousands more nurses in the province than in 2021.

As for affordability, the Tories’ signature promise is to lower the harmonized sales tax by one percentage point to 14 per cent. They also pledged to cap electricity rate increases. On the housing front, Houston promised to follow through on his 2023 pledge to build 40,000 homes in four years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 26, 2024.

— With files from Lyndsay Armstrong in New Glasgow, N.S., and Cassidy McMackon in Halifax.

Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press