Whatever your opinion of Premier Stephen McNeil, I think most Nova Scotians will agree that he’s going to be a tough act to follow.
Even before the pandemic hit, he dominated the provincial political scene, perhaps to a greater extent than any premier in recent memory. But once COVID-19 arrived, it felt like McNeil was thrust into the role he’d been destined to play from the day he got elected.
Remember, not long before everything changed, Nova Scotians were reading headlines telling them that theirs was the least popular premier in the land. Today, he’s near the top of that heap, among Canada’s most popular first ministers.
McNeil is a rock-ribbed fiscal conservative, whose government delivered four successive balanced budgets and brought down a fifth just a few weeks before the virus swept into Nova Scotia.
Provincial spending in response to the pandemic, combined with revenues lost to the economic devastation in its wake, turned the modest surplus in that recent budget into a deficit approaching $800 million.
But, true to form, McNeil wants Nova Scotians to know that the deficit is not “structural” which means that once the health and economic crises wane, he thinks balanced budgets should come back, although he’s careful to point out that those decisions rest with his successor.
McNeil’s commitment to pay-as-you-go government framed his tenure as premier – before COVID.
Money – or the lack thereof, depending on your perspective – was at the root of the McNeil government’s many battles, with film producers, civil servants, teachers, doctors and most other folks whose livelihoods are, in whole or in part, dependent on provincial coffers.
It was through those feuds that Nova Scotians came to know McNeil as stubborn – some said mean – and unmoveable once he, and his government, made a decision.
His attacks on anyone he perceived as standing in the way of his government’s agenda – or criticizing it unduly – drew decidedly mixed reviews from Nova Scotians.
But, in the entirely different context inflicted on us all by the coronavirus, McNeil’s obstinance was recast as iron-willed determination to keep his fellow Nova Scotians safe.
Adversity, it is said, doesn’t build character, it reveals it.
The COVID crisis is adversity writ large. It confirmed for Nova Scotians that their premier is the kind of tough-minded, no-nonsense guy we need to harangue, goad, berate and cajole us into staying on guard against infection.
But it also revealed McNeil’s heart. He’s a man who cares deeply about the welfare and wellbeing of his fellow Nova Scotians.
In a little more than a month, McNeil will turn the keys to the premier’s office over to Iain Rankin, Randy Delorey or Labi Kousoulis – whichever guy wins the Liberal leadership on Feb. 6. What place, if any, McNeil will occupy after that on the provincial political landscape is yet-to-be-determined.
For the past 10 months – with one more to come – McNeil and Robert Strang, the province’s chief medical officer of health, have updated Nova Scotians regularly – sometimes daily – on the trajectory of infections and the action required to keep the virus under control.
It is difficult – impossible? – to picture Kousoulis, Rankin or Delorey moving into the chair to Strang’s right – McNeil’s chair – for those briefings.
In fact, a good many, maybe most, Nova Scotians likely have trouble picturing Delorey, Kousoulis or Rankin at all, let alone as premier. But it is often said that few people, if any, look like a leader before getting the leader’s job.
One obstacle the next Liberal leader and premier won’t have to overcome is high expectations. With about a month to go in the Liberal leadership race, it seems safe to say that Nova Scotians’ expectations for their next premier are modest, at most.
As for that spot beside Strang at the COVID briefings, the next premier might be wise to leave that unfilled and find a new way to keep Nova Scotians updated on COVID-19. The next premier, whoever he is, is unlikely to benefit by comparison to McNeil, especially in that spot.
