Mar 3, 2025:
– From the NS Legislature to the Oval Office — the Mainstreet Spinbusters on politics in the age of Trump(Audio)
CBC Mainstreet with Jeff Douglas “Barbara Emodi, Chris Lydon and Michelle Coffin speak with guest host Alex Guye”. View audio bar.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT
Of the first 20 minutes, the part in which recent
political happenings in NS are discussed
MS (Mainstreet): U.S. Pres. Donald Trump is upending the world order that Canadians have been used to for 80 years to the point that even before Friday’s shouting match in the Oval Office a Kremlin spokesperson said last week that US foreign policy under Trump, quote, “largely coincides with Russia’s vision”.
Clearly the most urgent question that results is what about Ukraine. But some Canadians are also wondering what are our options in this new world order and what are the opportunities and liabilities for Nova Scotia in an accelerated time of change.
Let’s ask the Mainstreet’s Pinbusters.
Chris Lydon is senior vice president and general manager in Atlantic Canada for global public affairs. Barbara Emodi taught communications at Mount Saint Vincent university, now she writes books in a sub stack. They are with me in studio A. Michelle Coffin is the governance and by-law researcher for the Municipality of the County of Inverness, she is on the line from Sydney. They all have worked inside different political parties but they’re not here to represent the views of the parties they have work with. We ask the spin Busters to draw on their own experience and insight and to call it like they see it.
Welcome back… let’s start with local. There’s a lot happening at province house and today on the Cape Breton Post website the political scientist Tom Urbaniak asked premier Houston, to quote, “please avoid the mega virus it has disturbingly infected your hyperpartisan emtourage.”
Michelle to what degree is Premier Houston scrambling to reorient our economy with only the best of intentions, or where do you see reasons to question his motives?
M.C.: So I think we’re continuing to see the pragmatic side of Houston, and we’ve talked about that previously on the show, so he’s he’s kind of been one of the first part of the gate responding to trump ultimately by breaking down trade barriers, reintroduced legislation. So I think he’s you know he’s trying to set up the province to make it stronger and more resilient and he has a history of that sort of pragmatic decision-making. Now that I’m thinking about it, I think that’s probably why he repealed the fixed term election date legislation, like his new bud Doug Ford, he wants to last trump and one way to do that is to make sureyour government has an ability to last Trump.
Now that is assuming of course that the states will have an election in 2028. But what I don’t understand is some of those decisions that Houston is making that are not in response to Trump, instead really what he’s doing is being the bully at home while on the national and international stage, trying to protect the province from the bully.
So it’s really interesting to see him take so much more power than he really needs to to make decisions that his government wants to make.
So he’s been you know there have been several voices now so one is Tonya B being asked there has been retired lawyer or law prof from Dalhousie who has also spoken out.
So I think that it’s time for the premier to kinda take a step back and reflect on some of these decisions.
You know it’s really, I think all we have to do is look to the States to see that we have to really slippery democratic slope and you know many are suggesting that he’s on the wrong side of that slope.
So yeah, so he mentioned during the last election campaign that he needed to have a strong mandate you know he still even hasn’t told us what that means, but now he’s taking several actions to limit opposition power that has nothing to do with what he suggested might be a strong mandate during that term.
MS: Barb, how worried do Nova Scotians need to be about 10 Houston taking political advantage of this moment in which Donald Trump is the centre of the world’s attention?
B.E.: That’s a good question and I think there’s several parts to it. I think I’ll be really blunt here, I think Nova Scotians should be proud of the fact that Houston who dispositionally has two characteristics, he does see opportunities in crises but he’s also incredibly impatient. I see every move he’s making in the legislature has to do with speeding things up. I mean that’s really how he operates. You know, the plus side of that is he also still remains fairly accessible and he changes his mind. But he will be fast, and then if it’s not right he pivots.
I actually disagree with the editorial in the Post where they said he were acting like Donald Trump. If I was drawing an analogy, I would say Tim Houston’s more like Elon Musk, going, trying to speed up and clean up and streamline and, oops I made a mistake, ‘will have to remember – that that’s more his style.
So I think that’s what’s happening provincially. But I think Nova Scotians’s should be proud of the way he has actually taken this crisis as an opportunity to show Canadians or the rest of Canada that there are good ideas here. When I saw the premier of British Columbia in an interview, because of the word “consult”, he said I would like to thank the government of Nova Scotia and Premier Houston for consulting with us, showing us how we can remove trade barriers.
And you find that those references happening all across the country and we have a very interesting and robust democratic history in this province and we are seeing, I think, an out-size almost presence on the national level with how we’re dealing with.
The other part of this is of course all of us old political operators which would be the three of us here saying this man’s got federal ambitions.
MS: Chris what’s your take on the flurry of activity at the legislature.
C.L.: I am not saying he has federal ambitions…agree with Barb especially on her analysis of the Premier’s two main, I will call them qualities that we’ve seen. And you know, I think that a lot of this process stuff that we’re seeing, one, it’s it’s very inside baseball; and I’m you know I am not learning or lettered enough to counter two professors in public, but to be frank this is very inside baseball and every single change, every single change is largely in there, they’re going to be mistakes… every single change here is designed to move things along, and that that does cut into the ability to consult, and moving things along does cut down on the opposition’s ability to critique.
And ability to consult and ability to protect are cornerstones of our democracy and those proteins are very very valid. So to counter to counterpoint that, you know these are challenges, legitimate, however we know that he’s a guy that wants to do quote “more faster” because he says it 10 times a day, more faster when more solutions for this that and the other thing faster and that includes limiting process and limiting the ability for the opposition to filibuster , and limiting ability for the public to consult and challenging the governments direction.
They certainly have a mandate to do a whole whack of that, which they achieved in November. And I know this is a perennial challenge for us that are inside the Beltway, us that are inside the bubble, but it isn’t a priority for 99% of Nova Scotians. Anything involved in this discussion about process in Nova Scotia, we did see some blowback, that probably marked in the hundreds of people, that would have been paying attention and agitated about the Auditor Genera, and that was walked back. … a history of “oops I did it again”…
… So we saw we saw we saw consequential pushback on the Auditor Genera and the premier walked it back … I contend that 99.99% of Nova Scotia aren’t focused on this, on any of these changes, especially in the wake of the Auditor General being walked back; and even that is generous, 99% of Nova Scotia is probably generous ’cause that would denotes know that there’s 10,000 to Nova Scotia’s that are agitated about it, about the process and understand what the …is in it and I don’t and I don’t think that’s an accurate depiction of the issue.
We have much bigger things at play and I also think that the Premier’s been a leader and we’ve seen that on the national stage. we you know we talked about months ago we talked about in the absence of the federal government being present and they’ve been more present in the last month of two to be fair but in the absence of the federal government being present wow look at what Doug Fors was doing, Doug Ford bringing all the premiers together and although isn’t it great that all of the premiers, it’s unfortunate, but isn’t it great that all the premiums are stepping up and you are seeing from all the political parties; you’re are seeing leadership from Kanoe or the same leadrehsip from BC, from the east and all sort of being coordinated by Ontario.
Isn’t that warm and lovely? And we’re seeing that still to a degree, but we’re also seeing Houston emerging on the national stage as planning a pretty big role.
You know we’re going to get into a much broader discussion about impacts of not just the Oval Office rebukes that we saw from Friday, but sort of the existential threat that Trump’s reorganization of American hegemony looks like. And then will I know we’ll get into that discussion now and what the domestic and national impacts of that are going to shortly get into what those impacts are going to be. But there’s also reason for a lot of optimism in Canada and in Nova Scotia that comes in the wake of this; this isn’t all doom and gloom and disaster.
MS: Is it possible that moving quickly fix healthcare looks different to some Nova Scotia than moving quickly to explore for uranium or curtail the auditor general’s independence? ‘Like most people would love have healthcare fixed but comparatively everything else is probably a little bit more controversial and this is more towards, Barb.
B.E: Well OK so I think healthcare.. this really was apparent in the election, healthcare was not fixed but people saw movement, people saw different things they had not seen before happened and I think that was very positive, and that was a case where you know the rapid movement got noticed and appreciated. So healthcare in Nova Scotia is not fixed but it certainly looks different than it did.
In terms of the Auditor General and I know where Michelle’s coming from…you know I worked 2 doors down from the Auditor General. So I know what goes on in that office. It matters, but it is just not something most people understand, know about, worry about care about. I mean that’s the truth.
In terms of resource development, I think finally I think Houston actually almost was waiting for this crisis to be quite honest, to kind of streamline that, because there were many indications that he wants… Tim Houston does not want to decouple us from the US as much I think is he wants to decouple us from economic dependence on Ottawa. And he wanted a chance to make that happen quickly and that is resource development, that’s new markets.
We also need to remember that the resource development is talking about is not coal, it is not traditional stuff, it’s green energy and he has been anxious I think to move that forward and use that. I think people are beginning to understand that difference and I think that people are thinking, you know we’ve got to take care of ourselves and so that part of the equation probably they’re receptive to right now.
But procedure, no. Like when you’re in big trouble, which most people feel they are now, how often in a week at committee meets doesn’t really matter.
MS: Michelle you were wanting to hop in here earlier, is there anything you want to add?
MC: There’s so much. OK a couple of random things I never thought I would see…I’m going to read that statement right there. I believe that we are really at a point in time where mandatory political science in school has never been as important as it would be today.
I’d like to just quickly kind of go through a list of items that the premier has ever legislated or attended to in the last little, that while in opposition that 100% [they]would have been against. So yes sure they can no longer fire the Auditor General but they can limit the release of AG reports.
I’ve already mentioned that while in opposition, Tim Houston’s government [opposition party] actually went to court for access to information that government refused to release, now he somehow agrees with Stephen McNeil.
He introduced legislation that would force municipalities to fund infrastructure projects that are demanded by the provinces; if they refuse the provinces just going to bill the municipality.
They’ve removed the ability for witnesses to come before the legislature to either support or suggest better reflection upon legislation that’s being passed in the house, so now there is no public comment available to the house.
They have restricted, when where and how the premier and cabinet will be available to reporters and I know while in opposition he was fundamentally opposed to this.
They are now rejecting witnesses turning down topics and allowing deputy ministers to refuse to appear at standing committees of the house. These are things that would once be considered in contempt of the house.
and the other thing …I think we have to maybe reframe with green energy is, because the Houston government also very recently approved the ability of multinationals to go in and to mine on private property and I just don’t understand how any of these things are not upsetting to at least some percentage of the population, particularly if you live on property that might have uranium, because your property value is just gone way down.
MS: Chris do you want to hop back in?
C.L.: Yeah well first off, … if you own property in Nova Scotia you have property that’s rich in uranium that’s why we all have radon in our basements. …none of them are new and none of them are inconsistent with what with what our neighbors are doing either, the vast majority of Canadian provinces the all these changes are in alignment…
19:56
….Followed by discussion of tariff etc