How do Nova Scotia's parties compare on these election issues?

The PCs point to measures during their first mandate such as the creation of a universal school lunch program and the indexing of income tax brackets and income assistance rates to the rate of inflation. In their platform, the PCs promise to cut the HST from 15 per cent to 14 per cent, saving the average person about $500 a year. They would increase the basic personal amount on income tax from the current $8,744 up to $11,744 for every tax filer. The party would increase the minimum wage from $15.20 to $15.85 an hour on April 1, and to $16.50 an hour on Oct. 1. It will also cap power rate increases to the Canadian average increase.

The Liberals would reduce the HST from 15 per cent to 13 per cent, which they say would save families an average of $1,400 per year. The party would make a one-time increase to the personal basic exemption to $15,705 and index it to inflation. It will also double the benefit currently received by earners under $75,000. The Liberals would make public transit free across Nova Scotia, and remove the provincial sales tax from all food in grocery stores. It would increase the Heating Assistance Rebate Program to $1,000 from $600 and double the seniors care grant. The party wants to get rid of the carbon tax and work with other Atlantic provinces to establish a regional cap and trade program that would reduce large industrial pollution, a move it says would reduce the price of gas. The Liberals say they would lower power rates by expanding the ability of renewable energy companies to provide power directly to Nova Scotians and aggressively holding Nova Scotia Power responsible for meeting legislated performance targets.

The NDP would temporarily cut the provincial gas tax, which they say would save 15.5 cents per litre, until inflation comes down. The party would remove the provincial portion of the HST on phone bills, internet, groceries and heat pumps. It would implement a recommendation from the Nova Scotia Energy Poverty Task Force to offer a bill assistance discount of 50 per cent to income-qualified households for both electricity and fuel oil, which they say would save the average household $1,000 annually. It will waive fees for driver's licences, license plate renewals, basic identification cards and change of name/address requests. The NDP will also make Halifax harbour ferries free. It would also immediately increase income assistance rates by $100 a month. 

The Green Party would work with the federal government and other provinces to develop and implement a guaranteed liveable income plan for Nova Scotia, which is universal, unconditional, complementary to other programs, provides for basic needs and respects human dignity. It would reduce the number of hours before workers are guaranteed overtime pay from 48 to 42 hours. The party would increase investment and research into climate-friendly and regenerative agricultural practices and biopesticides. It would empower farmers by collaborating with them to improve their capacity to sell their products in local retail markets. The party would also enact right-to-repair legislation that enshrines the rights of individuals to repair or modify products that they own, saving costs and reducing needless waste. 

The Progressive Conservatives would cut the small business tax rate from 2.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent, and also increase the small business tax threshold from $500,000 to $700,000. The party says its plan to create hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel industries would create jobs and boost the economy. The PCs are also pledging to remove the tolls from the Halifax harbour bridges, expand highways and conduct a feasibility study on light commuter rail.

The Liberals would focus immigration targets on the health-care, education, agriculture and construction sectors. It would cut the small business tax rate from 2.5 per cent to one per cent, and increase the small business threshold from from $500,000 to $700,000. It would invest $300 million over four years to spur economic development and infrastructure growth in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. It would expand the Joint Regional Transportation Agency to continue planning a long-term vision for regional transportation in Nova Scotia. It would build a new, six-lane bridge to replace the aging MacKay Bridge, with active transportation infrastructure and bus lanes to support rapid transit in Halifax. They would complete controlled access highways in Digby County and other parts of the province and expand cell towers along the 100-series highways to ensure no gaps in service.

The NDP says it would cut the small business tax rate from 2.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent. It would create incentives to support local business through a new buy local program and it would also invest more in training and apprenticeships.  The party would double the finance grant for Cape Breton Regional Municipality to $30 million from $15 million. The NDP would help expand transit options in HRM by supporting the recommendations in the HRM rapid transit strategy, which would include more ferry routes and rapid bus lines.

The Green Party is focused on transitioning to a green economy. The party would transition away from fossil fuels as more sustainable technologies develop. It would support legislation and incentives to increase energy efficiency in all buildings in the province and to develop and implement green tech. The party would support the public sector and training programs to help anyone who loses their job, or may lose their job, due to the transition to a green economy. It would also create tax incentives to build and operate public electric vehicle charging infrastructure, especially in rural areas. It would also initiate a long-term project for a comprehensive transit system designed for inter-municipal travel in Nova Scotia, including buses, light rail and ferries, and integrate this system with existing municipal transit and active transportation infrastructure.

In their platform, the PCs largely highlight steps they have already taken, such as the creation of new child-care spaces and the march toward $10 per day daycare by 2026. The party boosted wages and benefits for early childhood educators and enforced the ban on cellphones in classrooms. New schools for HRM were announced before the election call. In its platform, the party promises to update the school code of conduct and hire or second two police officers to work with the Education Department and focus on supporting school teams across Nova Scotia with security protocols, incident prevention and incident response. 

The Nova Scotia Liberals would negotiate with the federal government to allow private daycare operators to expand. It would initiate a proactive, long-term strategy for building schools across the province that accounts for the future growth of communities and hire more educational staff. The party would invest in professional development for existing school staff and new hires, and implement a provincewide strategy to address violence in schools based on a 2024 report by the auditor general.

The NDP would establish a pilot program with four new publicly owned and operated child care centres in underserved areas. It would provide capital funding to schools for more child-care spaces and create a centralized waitlist. The party would enforce indoor air quality standards for schools, requiring regular water quality testing and providing capital funding to improve student safety and comfort. It would immediately act on the auditor general’s recommendations to reduce school violence and would reduce class sizes by accelerating new school construction in high-growth areas and use factory construction to build and add new energy-efficient classroom wings to existing schools. The party would also work with communities to restore a school board model to the province.

The Green Party makes a number of promises related to inclusive education, including developing age-appropriate curriculum for grade primary to Grade 12 on residential schools, Treaties, and Indigenous peoples historical and contemporary contributions to Canada. It would provide funding to postsecondary institutions to educate teachers on how to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms. The party would rebuild the educational system by participating in community-based consultative processes for decision-making that include Mi’kmaw, African Nova Scotian communities, Acadian, 2SLGBTQQIA+, disabled, and newcomer communities, early childhood educators, teachers, school staff, and representative unions, parents, students, and community members. It would introduce targeted training and programs related to respect for diversity, anti-oppression and antiracism. It would invest in licensed child-care expansion in the not-for-profit and public sector to build a publicly managed and publicly delivered system. It would also support initiatives aimed at preventing school violence, including hiring adequate human resources and implementing clear consequences for incidents of violence.

The Progressive Conservatives point to the clean energy plan they created in their first mandate, which includes the expansion of wind and solar projects and a pledge to be off coal by 2030. The party says it would invest in building hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel industries.

The Liberals would proclaim the Coastal Protection Act. The party says it would examine the province’s resource extraction royalties and resource regulatory framework with a focus on critical minerals that are used in green technology . It would expand renewable power generation in Nova Scotia to keep costs down, including investing substantially in renewable generation with in-province wind, solar, and battery farms. It would ensure that the sites in Nova Scotia with the best wind power generating potential are being used for projects to get the province off coal power. 

The NDP would proclaim the Coastal Protection Act. It would transition the province to renewable energy, including wind and solar. It would speed up the transition to make net-zero buildings and offer rebates to people who move off fossil fuels for their home heating.

The Green Party would proclaim the Coastal Protection Act. It would implement non-emitting modes of transportation within urban centres such as bike lanes, bike sharing systems and multi-use pathways. It would ensure provincial legislation is in place to protect old-growth forests and to both protect and remediate coastal salt marshes, which act as natural carbon sinks. The party would form a committee composed of members of academia, industry and municipal representatives to develop a plan for modernizing Nova Scotia’s electrical infrastructure for efficiency and resilience to extreme weather events. It would ban open-pen fish farms in favour of contained operations which do not endanger local fish populations. The party would also implement a made-in-Nova Scotia carbon pricing system to replace the federal backstop system. 

The Progressive Conservatives are touting changes they have already made to the health-care system, including establishing a new medical school in Cape Breton, opening 31 primary care clinics at pharmacies, hiring more doctors and nurses and streamlining the credentialing process. This election, the party is promising to establish an internal travel nurse team, which would eventually have 300 nurses employed by Nova Scotia Health, removing the need to use private agencies. The PCs would implement a universal, no-cost shingles vaccine program for all Nova Scotians 65 and older. They want to establish what they say would be the country’s first centre of excellence to treat symptoms of menopause, which would start as a collaborative clinic. The party is also pledging to remove parking fees at hospitals. The PCs say they would pass legislation making it a requirement for report cards evaluating Nova Scotia Health’s performance to be tabled in the legislature.

The Liberals are promising to implement a province-wide collaborative care model by building and expanding 40 collaborative health-care clinics across the province. It will increase the annual incentive for physicians from $5,000 to $10,000 if they agree to join a collaborative care practice and increase their patient rosters. It would also introduce bonuses and incentives of up to $15,000 for allied health professionals who commit to working at a collaborative health clinic for a minimum of five years. The party would expand the number of training positions for family doctors, increasing pathways for international medical students, and it would forgive up to 20 per cent of an in-demand health professional’s student loan annually for up to five years based on hours worked. The Liberals are promising to recruit more physician assistants and begin work on a new hospital for the Annapolis Valley region. The party promises to significantly expand early screening for illnesses including heart disease, cancer and diabetes. The Liberals would name a minister of women’s health to ensure that a gender lens is applied to the delivery of health care and devote half of health research funding to women’s health. The party is also pledging to remove parking fees at hospitals. 

The NDP would open 15 collaborative family doctor clinics across the province in its first year, and would continue to open 15 clinics per year over three years. It would move to automatic, location-based attachments for family doctors, and attract and retain more doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses and other health professionals by offering new recruitment and retention incentives in return for a long-term Nova Scotia residency guarantee. The NDP would offer a $1,400 refundable income tax credit for anyone providing ongoing voluntary care for a family member, friend or neighbour. The party is pledging to provide free contraceptives, eliminate seniors’ pharmacare premiums, and waive the deductible families pay for prescription drugs covered by family pharmacare. It would remove parking fees at hospitals, make HIV prevention drug pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) universally available and cover the cost of home cancer drugs. The party would address delays to abortion access by increasing the number of sonographers, and enhance maternity care through a new midwifery strategy. The party would also fast track the expansion of civilian-led and health-focused crisis response teams across the province.

The Green Party would increase the number of health-care workers by providing incentives for recruitment and retention, including through increased relief of student debt for medicine, dentistry, physiotherapy and nursing for greater designated periods of service within the province. It would increase the number of seats for both medical and nursing schools in Nova Scotia universities, as well as work to expand spaces in residency programs. The party promises to decrease prolonged emergency room care by relieving a key blockage point — those waiting for long-term care — by increasing the number of public or not-for-profit beds. The Greens would support collaborative clinics and team-based family practices in communities, and hire and train provincial health navigators to direct patients to appropriate health services, especially mental health services. The party would also work with other Maritime provinces to eliminate daylight saving time, which they say would reduce poor health outcomes associated with twice-yearly time changes.

PC Leader Tim Houston has said his party’s housing strategy is working and the party would continue with that. The Progressive Conservatives would make more vacant land parcels available to communities on the condition that they be developed as affordable housing, with the benchmark for affordable being 80 per cent of market rates. They would enter into an agreement with Nova Scotia Credit Unions to expand a loan guarantee program that would help first-time home buyers purchasing a home that costs $500,000 or less. Buyers would only pay a two per cent down payment rather than five per cent. The credit unions would assess the applicants to ensure their income supports the mortgage they want, and the provincial government would provide a loan guarantee for any deficiencies in the event of a default.

The Liberals would maintain a rent cap based on inflation and market conditions until there is a three per cent vacancy rate. Fixed term leases would change to month-to-month leases if a tenant stays in a unit beyond a year and the party would create a rent bank that provides zero-interest loans. A residential tenancies enforcement unit would be established. The Liberals have set a goal of building 80,000 new homes by 2032, aiming for a rate of 11,000 new homes per year using a variety of construction methods and partnering with co-ops and non-profits. Increased minimum density standards would take into account proximity to transportation and services, and eliminate any cases of restrictive covenants or exclusionary zoning that prevent housing from being built. The Liberals would launch a full review of the property tax system to lower property taxes, especially in highly-taxed areas like the CBRM, and ensure the province’s property tax system incentivizes housing being built. 

The NDP would establish rent control, reduce the rent cap from five per cent to 2.5 per cent and close the fixed-term lease loophole. It would bring in a new rent and mortgage tax rebate for low- and middle-income households that provides an average annual rebate of $900 for household incomes under $70,000 a year. It promises to establish eviction and renoviction protection that works for both tenants and landlords, and would create a new residential tenancy enforcement unit. The party would establish a rent-to-own starter home program that combines more home construction with lower up-front costs for first-time buyers with household incomes of less than $100,000 a year. The NDP say they have set a goal of creating 30,000 new affordable rental homes, including co-ops and non-market housing, and would work with municipalities to identify land they can commit to needed housing construction. They would also enable municipalities to levy a tax on vacant lots that are zoned for residential development but where developers are delaying builds.

The Green Party says it would increase investment in public housing and other forms of non-market housing. It would lower the rent cap to three per cent and apply it universally, including to new leases for the same unit. The party would implement a housing first program with additional services for mental health, addictions, and employment assistance to address homelessness. It would outlaw the use of software or services that rely on large databases to recommend rent prices to landlords, safeguarding renters from algorithm-based forms of pricing collusion that can drive up rents. It would also push for the establishment of a provincial residential tenancies compliance unit and establish a requirement for residential rental properties to be registered through the province or local municipality before being rented. The party would also increase the capped assessment program rate to three per cent plus the consumer price index, recognizing the current inequity for first-time home buyers.