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FREDERICTON – The high cost of housing was at the centre of the New Brunswick election campaign on Thursday.

Both the Liberals and the Greens announced plans to make housing more affordable if they are elected to govern on Monday.

In Fredericton, Green Party Leader David Coon said his party would reform the property tax system to ensure residents are not hit by large property tax or rent increases. Coon said property assessments in New Brunswick continue to soar because they are tied to industrial rates, a system the Greens would change if elected.

“No one should ever be taxed out of their home,” Coon said in a statement. “We need to overhaul this system …. Homeowners shouldn’t have to bear the burden of subsidizing corporate taxes.”

Coon promised to change the property assessment system for apartment buildings to reward landlords who are charging low rents. To do that, he said, the Greens would base assessments on rental income rather than property value.

As well, the Green leader repeated his promise to impose a rent cap tied to each rental unit, not just the tenant, to prevent new property owners from evicting people in order to cash in on steep rent increases.

In Saint John, Liberal Leader Susan Holt said her party would establish a fund to help the non-profit and community sectors build more affordable housing.

“This fund will allow them to do even more to help New Brunswick close the gap in the housing supply, especially for affordable housing options,” Hold said in a statement, which did not include how much money would be put into the fund.

Earlier in the campaign, the Liberals announced proposed initiatives focused on homeowners, tenants, and private developers. Among other things, the Liberals are promising to build 30,000 homes, impose a three-per-cent rent cap, reform the property tax system, eliminate the provincial sales tax on new, multi-unit developments and increase investments in New Brunswick-built modular housing.

Meanwhile, Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs planned to make a campaign stop in a mall in Woodstock, N.B., and speak to the media, but he did not have any other public events on his schedule.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s health authority says the wait-list for family care has dipped by about 15,000 people in four months — a drop the premier credits to programs aimed at reducing the doctor shortage.

The figures for Oct. 4 indicate there were 145,114 people on the registry, compared to 160,234 when figures were last publicly released on June 1.

However, the numbers are still far higher than the summer of 2022 — after the Progressive Conservatives took office — when there were slightly more than 100,000 people seeking to be attached to a doctor or other family care practitioner.

Premier Tim Houston told reporters Thursday that programs introduced by his government to attract and retain doctors have helped stabilize the number of people without access to primary care. It is a positive sign, he added, that 11,501 people found a family care practitioner in September, the biggest number since the registry was created.

Nova Scotia Health had stopped publishing the monthly update for four months as it made calls to people on the list to verify if they were still looking for a doctor. As a result of its research, about 7,800 people were removed from the list, the authority said.

Karen Oldfield, chief executive of Nova Scotia Health, said in a news release the organization is “cautiously optimistic” the downward trend will continue in the number of people waiting for doctors. She credited the drop to ongoing recruitment efforts, including the creation of an assessment centre to help certify foreign-trained doctors more quickly.

Houston noted that 10 new doctors are expected to start later this fall, which will further reduce the numbers on the wait-list.

“It took a while to stabilize the system, and it’s now improving,” the premier said.

However, both opposition parties said the new figures were hardly anything to celebrate, given the fact the absolute number of people looking for a doctor has grown since the Tories took office in 2021.

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill said, “The numbers are bad. We’ve got twice as many people that need a family doctor as when Tim Houston started (governing).”

“If the best they can come up with is 145,000 people who still need a family doctor, this is a worsening crisis in our health-care system and the premier needs to be more focused on dealing with this,” Churchill said.

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said she’s taking the figures with “a grain of salt” because she doesn’t have a clear picture of the methodology being used to take people off the list.

The overall wait-list number, she said, is still an “indictment of a government that was elected to fix health care.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

VANCOUVER – Elections BC says more than a million British Columbians have already cast their ballots in advance voting before Saturday’s provincial election, smashing a record set during the pandemic election four years ago.

The elections body says 1,001,331 people have voted, representing more than 28 per cent of all registered electors and putting the province on track for big overall turnout.

They include about 223,000 people who voted on the final day of advance voting on Wednesday, the last of six days of advance polls, shattering the one-day record set just a day earlier by more than 40,000 votes.

The previous record for advance voting in a B.C. election was set in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when about 670,000 people voted early, representing about 19 per cent of registered voters.

Some ridings have already seen turnout of more than 35 per cent, including in NDP Leader David Eby’s Vancouver-Point Grey riding where 36.5 per cent of all electors have voted.

There has also been big turnout in some Vancouver Island ridings, including Oak Bay — Gordon Head, where 39 per cent of electors have voted, and Victoria — Beacon Hill, where Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau is running, with 37.2 per cent.

Advance voter turnout in B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad’s riding of Nechako Lakes was 30.5 per cent.

Total turnout in 2020 was 54 per cent, down from about 61 per cent in 2017.

Stewart Prest, a political-science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, said many factors are at play in the advance voter turnout.

“If you have an early option, if you have an option where there are fewer crowds, fewer lineups that you have to deal with, then that’s going to be a much more desirable option,” said Prest.

“So, having the possibility of voting across multiple advanced voting days is something that more people are looking to as a way to avoid last-minute lineups or heavy weather.”

Voters along the south coast of British Columbia who have not cast their ballots yet will have to contend with heavy rain and high winds from an incoming atmospheric river weather system on election day.

Environment Canada says the weather system will bring prolonged heavy rain to Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Whistler and Vancouver Island starting Friday.

The dramatic downfall of the Official Opposition BC United Party and voter frustration could also be contributing to the size of the advance vote, said Prest, citing “uncertainty about the B.C. Conservative Party as an alternative.”

But Prest said it’s too early to say if the province is experiencing a “renewed enthusiasm for voting” or not.

“As a political scientist, I think it would be a good thing to see, but I’m not ready to conclude that’s what we are seeing just yet,” he said, adding “this is one of the storylines to watch come Saturday.”

Overall turnout in B.C. elections has generally been dwindling compared with the 71.5 per cent turnout for the 1996 vote.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said more than 180,000 voters cast their votes on Wednesday.

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