N.S. Liberals release platform promising more housing, tax cuts and boosts to health care

Nova Scotia Liberal Leader Zach Churchill released his party's election platform on Monday, describing the document as a contract with voters to build more housing, reduce taxes and potentially remove the impact of the carbon tax on the price of gas.

"If we're being honest, every party has broken promises to Nova Scotians after they've been elected," Churchill said during a news conference in Halifax.

"This is a contract with Nova Scotians. If you vote for a Nova Scotia Liberal government, this is what we will deliver for you and we will hold ourselves accountable to it."

• Read the Nova Scotia Liberal Party election platform

The Liberals are promising to help build 80,000 new homes by 2032, a figure that would include 4,000 new units spearheaded by non-profit agencies and 2,000 new co-op units.

Placing rules around fixed-term leases

The party is pledging to maintain the rent cap until there is a vacancy rate of three per cent, create a residential tenancies enforcement unit and prevent the use of fixed-term leases for a tenant for more than one year. A provincial rent bank would be established to give zero-interest loans to renters finding themselves in a bind.

Churchill said housing growth would also be enhanced by reducingred tape around building materials and construction approaches, incentives to get property owners to develop large pieces of vacant land and an effort to get more women working in the skilled trades.

"Less than nine per cent of that workforce is women. We're leaving half of our population out of the skilled trades."

On health care, the Liberals reiterated their pledge to build 20 new collaborative care clinics and expand 20 existing sites.

There would be an emphasis on recruiting more physician assistants and providing student loan relief of up to 20 per cent a year for five years to people working in the province in in-demand health-care professions.

Promises around health care

The party is promising to begin work on a newhospital for the Annapolis Valley region, improve access to recreation as a form of preventive medicine and expand early screening for illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

"We know that when we catch these illnesses earlier, they are more affordable to manage and, of course, allow people to live higher-quality lives with less invasive procedures," said Churchill.

The party is vowing to bring in an increased focus on women's health research with a dedicated cabinet minister to oversee the initiative, create an independent agency to managerequests for out-of-province medical care andmake parking free at Nova Scotia Health sites.

Churchill has previously touted affordability measures such as reducing the HST by two percentage points, removing the HST from grocery items still subject to the tax and reducing income tax.

The platform also calls for increasing the heating assistance rebate to $1,000 a year, doubling the seniors care grant to $1,500 and ensuring wind development projects in the province benefit Nova Scotians first.

Slowing population growth

On economic development, Churchill says he'd abandon a call by Tory Leader Tim Houston to double the population, favouring instead a plan that focuses on recruiting people and their families from in-demand job sectors and growing at a rate determined to be sustainable by the province's Labour, Skills and Immigration Department.

"We want to grow, we're pro-immigration," said Churchill.

"But we cannot overflow the bucket of people at a time when we cannot support them."

Churchill repeated an earlier commitment to work toward an Atlantic region cap-and-trade system that could replace the federal carbon tax. He said he's discussed the idea with newly elected New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt and he thinks the premiers of P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador could also be interested.

He said estimates suggest cap-and-trade would reduce the price at the pumps by 10 cents a litre compared to the federal carbon tax.

Platform costs

The Liberals are promising to work with Halifax Harbour Bridges on a six-lane replacement for the aging A. Murray MacKay Bridge, ban the use of non-disclosure agreements in cases of sexual assault and harassment, proclaim the Coastal Protection Act and reduce the small business tax to one per cent.

The total cost of the platform would be $661.1 million in the first year, decreasing over four years to $460 million. The Liberals say they'd run deficits in their first three years in power before being in a surplus position by the fourth year of their mandate.

Churchill called the platform a "reasonable, small-c conservative estimate" based on the expectation that provincial revenues would continue to increase on the economic sidebut decrease on the population side.

Opposition weighs in

In a release from the Progressive Conservatives, Shelburne candidate Nolan Young accused Churchill of trying to please Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with the platform.

Young said a Liberal commitment to only spend within the budget the Tories have spent $1 billion a year outside their budgets would mean deep cuts to pay for the platform.

NDP Leader Claudia Chendersaid in a statement that Churchill had eight years as a cabinet minister when the Liberals were in power to push for some of the items proposed in his party's platform.

"We need a change from the status quo and the Liberal platform mostly proposes more of the same," Chender said.