Rick Perkins, Jessica Fancy-Landry, Mark Embrett and Patrick Boyd are four of the candidates running in South Shore-St. Margarets.
QCCR has interviewed four of the candidates running in the riding of South Shore-St. Margarets in the April 28 federal election.
Conservative Rick Perkins, Liberal Jessica Fancy-Landry, the Green Party’s Mark Embrett and Patrick Boyd of the People’s Party of Canada spoke to us about various issues, including those specific to Queens County. Independent candidate Hayden Henderson did not respond to our request for an interview.
The riding covers more than 8,000 square kilometres and stretches from Tantallon outside Halifax to Clark’s Harbour in southwestern Nova Scotia. It was redrawn after the 2021 election and lost some its areas to the riding of Halifax West.
Conservative Rick Perkins defeated Liberal incumbent Bernadette Jordan in the 2021 election by about 1,800 votes. In that election, the NDP candidate got about 19 per cent of the vote.
This time, however, there is no declared NDP candidate. And the riding has lost some of its suburban Halifax voters after it was redrawn in 2023.
QCCR will be airing each of the four interviews with the candidates at 99.3 FM in Liverpool at 2:30 p.m. each day, beginning Thurs., April 24 through to April 27.
You can also follow the links below to listen to each of the interviews.
Jessica Fancy-Landry is the Liberal candidate in the riding of South Shore-St. Margarets. (Jessica Fancy-Landry)
Jessica Fancy-Landry is trying to take back the riding of South Shore-St. Margarets for the Liberals in the April 28 federal election.
She’s up against incumbent MP Rick Perkins, who won the seat in the 2021 election over Liberal MP Bernadette Jordan by about 1,800 votes.
Fancy-Landry, a Bridgewater resident and first-time candidate, is a teacher at Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin.
She’s also a community volunteer, including serving as past board chair with the Rural Communities Foundation of Nova Scotia.
Fancy-Landry grew up in Caledonia, Queens County. We asked her about various local issues in the campaign, including the commercial fishery and the prospect of a new kraft pulp mill in Liverpool.
The interview was recorded on April 9 and edited for length.
Listen to our interview with Jessica Fancy-Landry below:
Mark Embrett is the candidate for the Green Party in South Shore-St. Margarets. (Rick Conrad)
Mark Embrett is trying to make a breakthrough in the federal riding of South Shore-St. Margarets for the Green Party of Canada in the April 28 federal election.
The Queensland resident is an implementation scientist with Nova Scotia Health.
In the 2021 election, the Green Party captured just under three per cent of the vote in the riding.
Embrett told QCCR in this instalment of candidate interviews that he realizes the Green Party likely won’t form government, but he said it’s important to have a party raising issues around equity, the economy and the environment.
The interview was recorded on April 7 and edited for length.
You don’t need your voter information card from Elections Canada to vote in the April 28 federal election. (Elections Canada)
If you haven’t received your voter information card yet for the April 28 federal election, Elections Canada says not to worry.
You can still vote without it.
Elections Canada told QCCR there have been delays in getting the cards to some parts of the country.
The Liverpool post office hadn’t begun receiving the cards for its customers until the middle of this week.
The cards contain information on where and when you can vote, details about your polling station and your name and address.
Elections Canada spokeswoman Francoise Enguehard says you don’t need the voter information card to cast your ballot.
“What is important for people to know is that you do not need a voter information card to vote,” she said in an interview. “And you don’t need it either to verify where you have to vote.
“The voter information card can serve as one ID to vote. But it doesn’t really change the way people have to prove their identity and they have to prove their address. So if people have a driver’s licence or they have a municipal or provincial ID, as civil servants would, then they can use that. And it you don’t have it, you need two things both with your name and one that proves your address.”
To prove your civic address, you can also use a property tax bill, a statement from your house or tenant insurance or a utility bill that contains your physical address.
You can also have somebody else vouch for your identity at your polling station.
“It’s the honors system. You say you are who you are and where you live. But the person must be registered at the same polling station and and the person can only vouch for one individual.”
Enguehard said she doesn’t know the reason for the delay in Liverpool.
“We send 28 million cards to electors all across the country. Sometimes it can happen that there is a delay in getting a polling location. So until you have the polling location, you cannot print the voter information card. Sometimes out of the 28 million, a few of the cards, the information is incorrect and new voter information cards have to be issued. So all of that can cause delays.”
She said those who haven’t yet received a voter information card should be getting one in the next few days.
Regardless, you can use the “My voter information” section on the Elections Canada homepage at elections.ca or call 1-800-463-6868 to make sure you’re registered to vote.
The South Queens Chamber of Commerce is organizing a meet-and-greet in Liverpool with candidates in South Shore-St. Margarets. (Elections Canada)
Voters in Queens County will get a chance to meet some of the candidates vying to be the next MP for South Shore-St. Margarets.
The South Queens Chamber of Commerce and Main and Mersey Dining Room and Coffee Bar in Liverpool are teaming up for a candidate Q&A on Mon., April 21 from 4 to 6 p.m.
Ashley Christian is president of the chamber of commerce.
“The idea is a casual meet-and-greet forum,” Christian said. “What we’re going to be doing is casual networking and then allowing each of the candidates five to 10 minutes to introduce themselves to the group and then we intend to take questions from the floor. So we expect one hour of a more formal question-and-answer period and then another hour of just casual networking.”
Christian said she expects three of the five candidates to be at the event: Liberal Jessica Fancy-Landry, the Green Party’s Mark Embrett and Patrick Boyd of the People’s Party of Canada.
Conservative Rick Perkins, who is running for re-election, could not make it.
Christian did not know whether Independent candidate Hayden Henderson will be at the event. Henderson is the outreach director for the youth wing of the NDP. He was a last-minute addition to the ballot after the NDP’s Brendan Mosher dropped out and has since been endorsed by the NDP.
“We really wanted to give the citizens of Queens County an opportunity to meet everyone, hear their platforms, hear what’s important to them and ask them questions,” Christian said.
Rick Perkins, Jessica Fancy-Landry, Mark Embrett and Patrick Boyd are four of the candidates running in South Shore-St. Margarets. Not pictured is Hayden Henderson.
Four people will be trying to unseat Rick Perkins as the South Shore-St. Margarets representative in the April 28 federal election.
Perkins beat Liberal MP Bernadette Jordan in 2021, after running unsuccessfully against her in 2019.
Since the last election, the riding has been redrawn, with part of it being absorbed into Halifax West. Nominations closed on Monday.
Liberal Jessica Fancy-Landry will be trying to take the seat back from Perkins. The teacher at Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin is originally from Caledonia and lives in Bridgewater.
Green Party candidate Mark Embrett is an implementation scientist with Nova Scotia Health and lives in Hubbards.
Patrick Boyd is running for the People’s Party of Canada. He runs a consulting firm.
The NDP don’t have a registered candidate in the riding. Their declared candidate Brendan Mosher dropped out at the last minute. According to a Facebook post on his candidate page on Tuesday, he said that he decided against running “after a long consideration and some last minute delays.”
He edited the post to say that Hayden Henderson would be running for the party in the riding.
Henderson is listed on the Elections Canada website as an Independent. According to the federal agency, “if an endorsement by a political party cannot be confirmed within 48 hours of the prospective candidate submitting their nomination paper, … the word ‘Independent’ (will) appear under their name on the ballot.”
Perkins won South Shore-St. Margarets in 2021 by about 2,000 votes, or 40 per cent. Jordan got 37 per cent, while the NDP’s Olivia Dorey captured 19 per cent.
QCCR plans to publish interviews with all candidates.
Voters will head to the polls on Tuesday in Nova Scotia’s provincial election. (Rick Conrad)
UPDATED NOV. 26, 10:10 a.m.
Election Day is Tuesday in Nova Scotia, with polls open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
But many Nova Scotians have already voted, though early numbers are down from the 2021 election.
According to Elections Nova Scotia, 160,698 people have voted in early, advance and community polls at returning offices around the province. That also includes write-in ballots.
In the 2021 provincial election, 176,793 votes were cast early. But in 2017, that number was 118,623.
As of Sunday, there were 788,427 registered voters in Nova Scotia.
According to Elections Nova Scotia, 1,950 of 9,270 eligible voters have cast ballots in early voting in Queens.
Election officials did not mail out individual voter information cards this year because of concerns about the impending Canada Post strike.
Naomi Shelton is the spokesperson for Elections Nova Scotia.
She said voter cards would have been mailed out beginning Nov. 14. Postal workers hit the picket lines on Nov. 15.
“So we wanted to make sure we had one clear path, one clear message for voters,” Shelton said in an interview. “So instead we put together a voter awareness campaign. So that is a multimedia campaign that has radio ads, a variety of traditional print mediums as well as social ads.”
Three people are running in the riding of Queens. Incumbent PC MLA Kim Masland is trying to win her third election in a row. She’s being challenged by Liberal Cathy De Rome and New Democrat Brian Skabar.
If you’re not sure where to vote in your community, you can use the Where Do I Vote tool on the Elections Nova Scotia homepage or call 1-800-565-1504. Or you can vote at the Queens returning office in the post office building on Market Street.
John Simmonds, chairman of the Astor Theatre Society, addresses a members’ meeting on Thursday at the Liverpool theatre. (Rick Conrad)
The board of the Astor Theatre Society on Thursday clarified who can vote and who can be nominated to its board at its upcoming general meeting.
Some members who signed up in the past two months were concerned that the Astor would not allow them to vote.
About 50 people turned out for the members meeting on Thursday evening at the theatre. Board chairman John Simmonds explained that all members in good standing will be able to vote at its upcoming annual general meeting.
“There’s been controversy over conflicting bylaws and conflicting interpretations and we’ve tried to remain as quiet as we could on those issues. But it was necessary to do a lot of research to make sure we were on good ground in what we were proposing. Every member who is in good standing who is over 18 years of age and a resident of Nova Scotia can vote at the AGM.”
The meeting was held in response to a request from the ad hoc group Queens County Community Theatre Advocates. That group was formed after the resignation of associate artistic director Ashley-Rose Goodwin in March.
The group said it was concerned about recent decisions made by executive director Jerri Southcott and the Astor Board. The group said that as Astor members they wanted to hold the board accountable.
In an April 25 update to the group’s members, one of the founding members of the group Kevin Colwell wrote that the Astor appeared to be taking a “restrictive” approach to voting at the upcoming AGM. He said that in discussions with the Astor, it appeared they were planning to prevent anyone who became a member after Dec. 31, 2023 from voting.
He called on group members to attend the May 2 members meeting and the May 9 AGM.
About 50 people were at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool on Thursday evening for a meeting on voting at the upcoming annual general meeting. (Rick Conrad)
The issue over voting arose because of confusion about which set of bylaws was valid.
Simmonds said Thursday that until the board did a “deep dive” into their archives, even they were unsure of the proper voting procedures. So they hired Marjorie Hickey, a lawyer with McInnes Cooper in Halifax, to look into it and give an opinion.
“It outlines in great detail exactly what all the steps were, how the three sets of bylaws compare and contrast, where we stand legally now. And she has confirmed through case law and others that we are in good position now using the 2017 bylaws.”
As a result of that legal advice, the Astor has also changed the date of the May 9 AGM to June 24.
According to its most recent bylaws, the Astor will appoint people to replace three directors who resigned in the past couple of months.
There will be four open spots on the board of directors at the June AGM. Any member can be nominated to sit on the board.
“So hopefully this will set the record straight on where we stand and where we propose going with all of this,” Simmonds said. “It will be a true democratic process at the AGM in terms of nominations. We look forward to having many of you putting your name forward.”
Some members of the Queens County Community Theatre Advocates were at the meeting. But they didn’t want to comment until they could read the lawyer’s report to the Astor.
Simmonds said after the meeting that he believes it addressed many concerns from community members. He said the board believes it’s on solid legal ground.
“We’re very comfortable that we’re in good shape now with our current bylaws. And that allows us to move forward and alleviates a lot of the issues and controversy brought to us by the community,” he said in an interview.
“It clarified things that we didn’t know ourselves. So it was new to us. So once we digested it all ourselves and came up with a final conclusion verified by the lawyer, … all the rest of what went on in the past is not really relevant now.”
Simmonds said the Astor will announce the new appointed members of the board in the next week. He said it will also send notice about the June 24 annual general meeting to all members and advertise it in local newspapers and online.
Queens County voters may get an electronic voting option in October. (Elections Nova Scotia Facebook)
Queens County voters are getting closer to having the option to vote online or by phone in this October’s municipal election.
Councillors asked CAO Cody Joudry in January to prepare a report on the feasibility and costs of introducing electronic voting to Queens, while keeping the traditional paper ballot.
Twenty of 49 Nova Scotia municipalities offered an electronic voting option in 2020. Elections Nova Scotia used electronic ballots in the July byelection in Preston. And it plans to allow e-voting in the 2025 provincial election.
Joudry says in a report to council this week that more than 40 municipalities are expected to offer electronic voting as an option this year.
Joudry recommends that councillors vote to keep the traditional paper ballot, while also introducing online and telephone voting. Joudry estimates that adding an e-ballot option would cost an extra $20,000, for a total of $70,000.
Joudry also recommended that Ian Kent be appointed the new returning officer for the municipal election. Kent was recently hired by Elections Nova Scotia to replace Ted Bulley as the provincial returning officer for Queens, after Bulley’s retirement. The province’s returning officer has traditionally performed the same role in municipal elections.
Darlene Norman, mayor of Region of Queens. Photo Credit: Darlene Norman
By Rick Conrad
Voters in the Region of Queens may be able to cast a ballot online in October’s municipal election.
Mayor Darlene Norman says she’s confident the region will be able to introduce electronic voting as an option this year.
Councillors asked CAO Cody Joudry at their first meeting of 2024 to prepare a report on the feasibility and costs of introducing electronic voting to Queens, while keeping the traditional paper ballot.
“I expect the cost to come back much more than pure paper voting, but it may not,” Norman said in an interview after the meeting.
“But a combination (of voting options) would be good. … Younger people say that it’s the thing that we need, but it would be interesting to do it.”
Twenty of 49 Nova Scotia municipalities offered an electronic voting option in 2020. Elections Nova Scotia used electronic ballots in the July byelection in Preston. And it plans to allow e-voting in the 2025 provincial election.
District 3 Coun. Maddie Charlton said it’s time that Queens offers an electronic option in addition to the traditional ballot, to make it easier for people to make their choice.
“I think it’s important for us to move forward with this.”
District 6 Coun. David Brown said it would also help encourage people in more rural areas of the municipality to vote.
“With our widespread rural areas, it’s hard for people to get out to the polling station. Having the electronic option will get more people involved.”
The Kiwanis Club of Liverpool is closer to taking over the canteen at Queens Place Emera Centre.
The region would lease the facility to the club for one year rent-free. The club would be responsible for ensuring food safety and insurance compliance. Kiwanis volunteers would operate it along with members of the Queens County Blades and the Queens County Minor Hockey Association.
The three organizations would share proceeds from concessions sales.
Because of the Christmas holidays, staff couldn’t have a final agreement ready for councillors to review at their Tuesday meeting. They voted to wait until they see the contract before giving their final approval.
David Schofield, president of the Kiwanis Club of Liverpool, said Tuesday that his group is excited about running the canteen.
“I think it’s a good opportunity not just for the Kiwanis Club but also for the figure skating club and Queens County minor hockey who we’ve asked for their support as well, because we don’t have enough volunteers in our organization to do it. … A lot of people have made comments about not having a canteen available (at Queens Place), so I think it’s win-win-win-win.”
Steve Burns, manager of events, promotions and sponsorships, told councillors that it would likely take a couple of weeks after the contract is signed to get all the necessary permits in place for the Kiwanis club to take over.
District 6 Coun. David Brown asked staff for recommendations to address the problem.
He said the 40 so-called “grey box” sites on private roads throughout the county consume half of the region’s garbage collection budget.
“These are places that have large tax revenues for us that we don’t provide a lot of services for,” Brown said. “And nobody wants to see a mountain of garbage every time they drive into beautiful, pristine wilderness.”
Mayor Darlene Norman says it is a “huge problem”.
“And people in the Labelle and Molega area, some people are paying $10,000 property tax out there for no services. It is an issue that has to be dealt with.”
Councillors asked staff to prepare an inventory on burnt out streetlights in the region, and press Nova Scotia Power to fix them more quickly.
District 1 Coun. Kevin Muise said many residents have complained that several streetlights haven’t been working in some areas for up to three months. He’s concerned about safety for motorists and pedestrians.
There are six streetlights out on Shore Road in Mersey Point alone, council heard. Many are out for longer than the 60-day service guarantee.
Nova Scotia Power is supposed to maintain the lights, but the region pays for them, even when they don’t work, Norman said.
“We are paying for a tremendous amount of street lights which are burnt out.”
