The sharp end of global geopolitics used to be a comfortable distance away. Now it is getting closer to Canada.
It’s not just that the Northwest Passage is melting and China is eyeing it as a shipping route. Or that Beijing bars Canadian canola or meat when it is upset and throws Canadians in jail when it is angry. Or that agents of India allegedly plotted to kill a Canadian citizen in Surrey, B.C., and New Delhi bristled dismissively when Canada complained.
It’s that all those things have been happening at a time of power shifts that have shaken the sense that there are global rules – and left Canada more vulnerable.
Yet Canada doesn’t have a foreign policy for this changedworld. The body politic remains in a bubble of the world it has known for decades, securely surrounded by three oceans and a superpower, satisfied it is in a club of Western allies that sets the rules of the world order, and comfortable enough to tout its values to the world without worrying about protecting its interests.
There is no escaping the ripples of conflict at a time when the Israel-Hamas war has created global tensions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has frightened Europe. The U.S. is strained by both and riven by domestic politics. There is a new era of superpower competition with a rising and coercive China.
And there are more powers with more tools to reach around the world,countries that don’t feel as bound by old genteel rules and are willing to pick a fight with Canada. Saudi Arabia, for example, froze investment over a tweet.
A Japanese soldier takes part in a marine landing drill on Tokunoshima island. Japan’s military budget is set to rise dramatically.Issei Kato/Reuters
Some are rewiring for a tougher world. Japan, a country with a constitutionally quasi-pacifist policy since 1947, is in the process of doubling its military spending over the next five years. Germany rearranged the nation’s energy supply to break its dependence on natural gas piped from Russia.
Canadians, however, haven’t felt foreign policy is critical to their security or their prosperity. That has fed a generation of benign neglect.
Familiar relationships in Washington and Europe came first, so Canada didn’t diligently build influence in the fast-growing economies of Asia. Diaspora politics sometimes displaced calculations of the national interest. Governments let the military decline and failed to develop national-security policing and intelligence to meet new threats. All while Canadians ascribed to the conceit that the world needs more Canada.
“We have coasted for years,” Ward Elcock, a former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and formerdeputy minister of national defence, said in an interview. “Is it just the politicians, or is it Canadians? Canadians feel safe.”
John McKay, chair of the House defence committee, worries about ‘creeping marginalization’ for Canada in world affairs.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
As a political commodity, foreign policy writ large is in low demand. Liberal MP John McKay, the chair of the Commons defence committee, has come to believe that successive Conservative and Liberal governments kept military funding low because voters don’t ask for it.
“I cannot think of a conversation at the door in the last two or three elections where anyone has been concerned about the inadequacy of our support for the military,” he said. Conservative opponents? “They’re knocking on the same doors.”
The effects accumulate. “The chronic underfunding of defence, diplomacy, development – and parliamentary diplomacy – has resulted in creeping marginalization. Of us. Of Canada,” Mr. McKay said.
As global risks rose, Justin Trudeau’s government redrafted foreign-policy rhetoric. In a 2017 speech, then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland focused on protecting the rules-based international order. In October, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly recognized that order has eroded in a major speech and promised a newly pragmatic foreign policy based on defending Canada’s sovereignty and building ties with a broader set of partners.
But look at the Indo-Pacific strategy Ms. Joly outlined last year, belatedly, to chart a serious course in a massive, dynamic region while keeping a wary eye on a disruptive China: It leaned heavily on expanding ties in India, and that is now in tatters. The strategy called for augmenting Canada’s naval presence, but that only meant sending a third frigate into two vast oceans, for part of each year.
Canada hasn’t kept up with a world that changed. And here we are now: Multilateralists who lost two United Nations Security Council elections, free-traders subjected to coercive trade bans, and old allies left out of new security groups.
Sino-Canadian relations have changed a lot since Justin Trudeau’s first China trip in 2016, when he and his family walked along the Great Wall. The years that followed brought frictions over Hong Kong, Uyghurs, the Meng Wangzhou case and China’s arrest of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
Adrian Wyld and Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press
In 2018, the Trudeaus paid respects at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism’s holiest shrine. Five years later, allegations that India had killed a Sikh separatist in Canada sparked protests in both countries, such as this one at Toronto’s Indian consulate.
Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press; COLE BURSTON/AFP via Getty Images
In the day-after frenzy of his 2015 election victory, Mr. Trudeau delighted Liberals at a victory rally with a simple message to the world: “We’re back.”
“I think that there was a sense at the time that the world was changing quickly,” said University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris, who was a foreign-policy adviser to Mr. Trudeau during his first months in power. “In hindsight, it’s jaw-dropping how fast some of those changes have been.”
Russia was expelled from the G8 for invading Crimea in 2014; now, there is a full-scale war in Europe. There is an overt superpower rivalry: In October, while U.S. President Joe Biden dispatched fleets to monitor the Mideast war, China’s Xi Jinping hosted 20 leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, to talk about a new world order. Rising swing-nations are flexing power, and foreign interference comes in myriad forms, from social media to foreign police stations.
Mr. Trudeau’s first month in office was marked by a dash through four global summits, and being mobbed by selfie-seekers in Manila. But the Canada he thought would be welcomed back is more alone than before.
ButMr. Trump’s tenure also amounted to awarning that the U.S. relationship is more fragile than Canadians assumed. Many Americans don’t see Canada as part of a North American bloc or an indispensable partner.
President Xi Jinping gestures to Mr. Trudeau at their meeting in Beijing in August, 2016.Wu Hong/Reuters
In 2016, Mr. Trudeau travelled to China with gifts for Mr. Jinping – medallions bearing the image of Norman Bethune struck for his father Pierre’s visit to China in 1973 – courting a stable relationship and mooting a possible free-trade deal.
That appears misguided now, but Australia, often cited as an example of middle-power realpolitik with China, had signed a free-trade agreement with Beijing the year before. It was the late days of Western hopes that trade engagement with China would make Beijing a more constructive global player. Win-win.
Now the promise of win-win has deflated. It popped for Mr. Trudeau in 2018, when Beijing retaliated for Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou by arresting Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. Then Beijing cut off canola imports from Canada. And froze meat imports.
China’s big economy gives it leverage, which it uses in geopolitical disputes, from banning Norwegian salmon when dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 to responding to Australia’s call for a COVID-19 inquiry by levying tariffs on Australian barley, beef, cotton and wine – despite the free-trade agreement.
Other countries learned the lesson: Deeper ties, including trade, can be used for coercion, a dynamic dubbed “weaponized interdependence” by American political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman.
Riyadh’s reaction was swift when Chrystia Freeland, then the foreign affairs minister, tweeted about the plight of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi and his sister Samar.CP, Reuters, X (formerly Twitter)/The Canadian Press, Reuters, X (formerly Twitter)
Ms. Freeland’s 2018 tweet calling for the release of jailed Saudi dissidents, and another from her department in Arabic, led Saudi Arabia to freeze investment, obstruct trade and recall Saudi students. India’s response to Mr. Trudeau’s assassination allegation didn’t just force out 41 Canadian diplomats, but suspended visa processing to upset the Indo-Canadian community. The dispute actually bolstered the popularity of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Those are not uniquely Canadian experiences. Türkiye accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of ordering the assassination in Istanbul of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Germany complained Türkiye intimidated Turkish-Germans during election campaigns.
The idea that India, a democracy even if Mr. Modi’s government has eroded its protections, would plot to assassinate Canadian and U.S. citizens – if true – shows it is testing the reach of its new global power. So does its response to each accuser. Mr. Modi dismissed Mr. Trudeau’s calls to co-operate in an investigation. But India responded to allegations of related assassination plots revealed later in a U.S. federal indictment by convening a committee of inquiry.
The U.S. was already pressing its complaints with India behind-the-scenes when Mr. Trudeau made his shocking allegation on Sept. 18 – but Washington, and other close allies, responded by expressing concern, not condemning India. The U.S., after all, is courting India – which has skirmishes with China but buys oil from sanctioned Russia – as a partner in its rivalry with China.
“The Americans aren’t going to manage our relations with India for us,” said Carleton University professor Fen Hampson, the author of several books on foreign policy.
“We have to handle our own interests in those things. They’re not easy to handle, because you can’t stop every assassination. So you need to have other ways of building up your influence and your strength.”
What should Canada do?
“I would say there needs to be a really fundamental mindset shift,” argues Amrita Narlikar, the Hamburg-based president of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies.
Hard power such as military capability is important and will become more so with geo-economic shifts, she said. But it takes time to build, and other steps are important.
Trade is no longer just trade in the age of weaponized interdependence, so countries should try to increase economic security, including realigning global supply chains to ensure that strategically important sectors, such as high-tech, pharmaceuticals and key minerals, depend on trusted partners, she said. Canada would still have transactional relationships with some countries, but its interests require building closer political relationships beyond its old allies.
Prof. Narlikar argues that Canada still approaches the broader world by trying to fit potential partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America into the same paradigm as its European allies, with even its oft-repeated commitment to multilateralism looking like Western-rules “old-world multilateralism.”
She compared Canada’s approach with that of the circle of European trade officials who have stuck with the same narrow, technocratic approach over years of failed global talks, which she has criticized as the “Brussels bubble.”
“I think there is a Canada bubble,” she said.
A key first step is to recognize that the Global South – the many post-colonial and developing countries who felt left out of the power structures of the postwar order – matters. A second step, she said, is to differentiate among them, separating out countries Canada cannot consider a partner but expanding its conception of those with “like-minded” values with whom it can build trust.
As an example of missed opportunities, Prof. Narlikar points to the influential BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The members have serious differences but still meet regularly and now, new members – Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – are joining. Western countries such as Canada should seek to build ties with some, she said, cultivating a deeper understanding of their politics, and avoid pushing countries such as Brazil or India into the same corner as countries with very different values such as Saudi Arabia.
“We in the West need to know what our red lines are,” Prof. Narlikar said. “But there needs to be a recognition that there are other countries that are also democracies.”
Mr. Nijjar’s friend Gurpatwant Singh Pannun was also the target of an assassination plot that was never carried out, U.S. officials said.Ted Shaffrey/The Associated Press
Drawing those red lines isn’t always clear. Right now, India looks like a case in point.
The allegation that agents of New Delhi were involved in the shooting death of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, now echoed in a U.S. federal indictment, has made deterring Indian interference in Canada – and protecting Canadian Sikhs – a national-security priority.
The U.S., however, has responded very differently to an alleged plot to killU.S. and Canadian citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, signalling it does not want the case to derail its strategically important relationship with India.
Canada-India relations have been marked by suspicions over diaspora politics for decades, with India accusing Canada of being soft on separatist extremists in the Sikh-Canadian community since the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182, which killed 329, including 268 Canadians.
The movement to carve a separate Khalistan from northern India is now marginal in India, but New Delhi still complains that the energetic, pro-Khalistan activism in Canada is a foreign-based threat – though former Canadian intelligence officials insist they did not find violations of Canadian law. Canadian officials told Indian counterparts that support for separatism is a matter of free speech.
Mr. Modi’s government has now accused Mr. Trudeau of being motivated by politics – presumably pro-Khalistan Liberals. Omer Aziz, who worked as a foreign policy adviser in the Liberal government in 2017, said the government was certainly concerned about support from Sikh Canadians, and could have conducted more diplomacy.
“There was a major disconnect. Just saying it’s a free-speech issue and we can’t really address it,” Mr. Aziz said. “We could have assuaged their concerns somewhat.”
Montrealers take part in a pro-Israel rally on Oct. 10, days after the Hamas attacks.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Canada is far from alone in having to negotiate the impact of diaspora politics on its foreign relations. The opposing, vociferous demonstrations over the Israel-Hamas war illustrate that governments can face intense domestic pressure about overseas events. Mr. Trudeau’s government’s initial stand-by-Israel rhetoric after Oct. 7 has shifted to calls for a ceasefire, dividing his own caucus of MPs.
And there is a long history of politicians using stands on issues abroad to win votes in communities or compete for parts of them.
“The foreign policy of this government, and it is not unique to this government, is very much driven by identity politics,” Prof. Hampson said.
The federal government promotes a feminist foreign policy that appeals to women voters, he said, and successive governments have used foreign statements to appeal to Ukrainian-Canadians or Tamil-Canadians.In a democracy, the views of communities will be considered, Prof. Hampson said, but they can predominate if there is a weak sense of national interests.
“The bigger question,” said Prof. Paris, “is how important are we as a country?
“How much importance are we as a country, and our governments, going to place on foreign policy? Because the more foreign policy is recognized as critical to Canada’s future prosperity and security, the more Canadian interests are going to drive our foreign policy across the board.”
Jean Chrétien, then Canada’s prime minister, serves fries at a Canadian fast-food outlet in Beijing in 1998.Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press
In Canada, however, defining interests has not always been seen as a necessity.
In 1995, Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government issued a foreign-policy white paper that reported the Cold War had ended, replaced by an era of multilateral co-operation. It listed promoting Canadian values and culture as a key goal.
When bureaucrats were asked to update it five years later, they decided to state the obvious: that the U.S. was key. “We would bring that front-and-centre and admit that this was our key relationship,” said Randolph Mank, then-director of policy at the Foreign Affairs department. His team proposed measures to secure the border and keep goods and people flowing.
Political strategists and then-foreign affairs minister John Manley were not enthused. It wasn’t what Canadians wanted to hear about their role in the world. Then Sept. 11 happened. Keeping borders open became the national priority. Mr. Manley became border czar. Canada’s interests were made clear.
A generation later, a changing world is pressing Canada to put the recalculation of its interests ahead of the tales it tells itself about its role in the world: among them, the notion that “the world needs more Canada” and the implication that foreign countries are waiting to hear Canada’s views.
There is arguably a consensus now that the U.S. economic relationship is crucial, but it has been clear for decades that diversifying, notably with Asia, is in the national interest. Canadian sovereignty requires defences against foreign interference and resilience against coercion. Advancing Canada’s interests involves building influence with allies and other partners, with diplomacy and hard power.
In October’s speech, Ms. Joly addressed many of these issues, promising more tools of power in the military, intelligence and cybersecurity. She said she’d make relationships with Japan and South Korea as close as those with Britain and France, and “invest” in the ASEAN nations of Southeast Asia as Canada has in Europe.
But in reality, that speech was an assertion of what Canada should do – if it had the will.
For two decades, successive Canadian governments promised deeper efforts to engage the ASEAN nations but failed to follow up. To his credit, Mr. Trudeau has re-engaged, attending ASEAN summits in 2022 and 2023 and launching free-trade talks. That is welcome, but overdue, said one senior ASEAN country official. Canada has yet to embrace the mindset of a Pacific country, he said.
Mr. Trudeau and son Xavier chat at this past September’s ASEAN summit with Indonesian President Joko Widodo and his wife Iriana.MAST IRHAM/Pool via REUTERS
Across the Indo-Pacific, maritime security is a key concern that brought together Japan, India, Australia and the U.S. in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Canada was not asked to join. Why not?
“That’s a realistic appraisal that there’s not much in the way of military assets that we can bring to that particular conversation,” said Mr. McKay, the Liberal MP.
What matters is not just being left out of a group, but that Canada is not seen as a useful security partner in the Pacific. The U.S. asked Canada to lead a mission to Haiti, which Mr. Trudeau declined – but the Prime Minister really didn’t have a choice because the Canadian Armed Forces could not mount a force. European allies, concerned by Russian aggression, are happy Canada sent troops to Latvia, but the Forces are struggling to meet a commitment to build up a NATO brigade.
Mr. Trudeau came under fire in April when a leaked U.S. document revealed he had privately told NATO allies Canada would never meet the alliance’s target of spending two per cent of GDP on defence. But that was political realism: Canada hasn’t hit that level since 1987. In fact, Mr. Trudeau’s government has increased military spending slightly compared with that of his Conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, who raised spending during the Canadian mission in Kandahar and then let it drop.
Capacity has declined. Major weapons systems such as frigates and fighter jets date from the 1980s and 90s and are still to be replaced, with smaller fleets. General Wayne Eyre, Chief of the Defence Staff, has warned the understaffed Forces can’t meet its mandate. In November, Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee said in a video that the Royal Canadian Navy he leads is in a “critical state.”
Canadian soldiers must often make do with limited staff and aging vehicles.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Canada won’t be a major military power, to be sure, but its influence with increasingly stretched allies will be linked to how useful it is in security matters. A Canadian military presence would lend weight with other partners in regions such as the Indo-Pacific. At home, the fact that the U.S. sees protecting Canada’s North as part of its own security has afforded this country protection, but there is still a potential risk to its sovereignty. A lack of participation in North American defence might one day lead an indebted, America-first U.S. to cut Canada out of joint defence decisions.
Global security and protecting sovereignty require the increasingly vital domestic tools of foreign policy in an era of widening foreign interference. Beijing’s efforts to meddle in Canadian politics or press Chinese Canadians make a compelling case for an upgrade of intelligence and legal tools such as a foreign-agent registry. The fact that the U.S. foiled an alleged Indian assassination plot and Canada did not adds to the ample evidence that national-security policing is inadequate.
Those are not quick-fix adjustments. If relations with India are frozen, Canada can redouble efforts with other Asian countries. Resilience requires building stronger ties outside Canada’s habitual circle, greater self-reliance, influence with allies, hard power and security.
They are also not the things Canadians have wanted to hear about their role in the world. But the series of little shocks of geopolitics reaching into this country are now a feature of the planet, and they are likely to get bigger. That requires a recalculation of interests in the world, and a recognition that foreign policy is critical to Canadians, even at home.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
