Politics of Nova Scotia | |
---|---|
Polity type | Province within a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy |
Constitution | Constitution of Canada |
Legislative branch | |
Name | General Assembly |
Type | Unicameral |
Meeting place | Province House, Halifax |
Presiding officer | Speaker of the House of Assembly |
Executive branch | |
Head of state | |
Currently | King Charles III represented by Arthur LeBlanc, Lieutenant Governor |
Head of government | |
Currently | Premier Tim Houston |
Appointer | Lieutenant Governor |
Cabinet | |
Name | Executive Council |
Leader | Premier (as President of the Executive Council) |
Appointer | Lieutenant Governor |
Headquarters | Halifax |
Judicial branch | |
Court of Appeal | |
Chief judge | Michael Wood |
Seat | Law Courts, Halifax |
The politics of Nova Scotia take place within the framework of a Westminster-style parliamentary constitutional monarchy. As Canada's head of state and monarch, Charles III is the sovereign of the province in his capacity as King in Right of Nova Scotia; his duties in Nova Scotia are carried out by the Lieutenant Governor, Arthur LeBlanc. The General Assembly is the legislature, consisting of the Lieutenant Governor and fifty-five members representing their electoral districts in the House of Assembly. [1] The Government is headed by the Premier, Tim Houston, who took office on August 31, 2021. The capital city is Halifax, home to the Lieutenant Governor, the House of Assembly, and the Government. The House of Assembly has met in Halifax at Province House since 1819. [2]
The role of the Crown is both legal and practical; it functions in Nova Scotia in the same way it does in all of Canada's other provinces, being the centre of a constitutional construct in which the institutions of government acting under the sovereign's authority share the power of the whole. [3] It is thus the foundation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the province. [4] The Canadian monarch—since 8 September 2022, King Charles III—is represented and his duties carried out by the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, whose direct participation in governance is limited by the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy, with most related powers entrusted for exercise by the elected parliamentarians, the ministers of the Crown generally drawn from among them, and the judges and justices of the peace. [5]
The Nova Scotia House of Assembly (French : Assemblée législative de la Nouvelle-Écosse; Scottish Gaelic : Taigh Seanaidh Alba Nuadh), or Legislative Assembly, is the sole chamber of the unicameral General Assembly of Nova Scotia. The assembly is the oldest in Canada, having first sat in 1758; [6] in 1848, it was the site of the first responsible government in the British Empire. Bills passed by the House of Assembly are given royal assent by the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia [7] in the name of the King in Right of Nova Scotia.
When established in 1758, the General Assembly consisted of the Crown represented by the Governor (Lieutenant Governor post-confederation), the appointed Nova Scotia Council holding both executive and legislative duties and the elected House of Assembly (lower chamber). In 1838, the Council was replaced by an executive council with the executive function and a legislative council with the legislative functions based on the House of Lords. In 1928, the Legislative Council was abolished and the members pensioned off, resulting in a unicameral legislature with the House of Assembly as the sole chamber.
There are 55 members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) representing 55 electoral districts. [8] Members nearly always represent one of the three main political parties of the province: the Nova Scotia Liberal Party, the Progressive Conservative Association of Nova Scotia, and Nova Scotia New Democratic Party.
The Government of Nova Scotia exercises the executive power. The chief body of the Government is the Executive Council, also known as Cabinet. [9] The Premier of Nova Scotia is President of the Executive Council. [9]
Government | Anti Confederation | Liberal | Con | Liberal | ||||||||||
Party | 1867 | 1871 | 1874 | 1878 | 1882 | 1886 | 1890 | 1897 | 1897 | 1901 | 1906 | 1911 | 1916 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Liberal | 36 | 24 | 22 | 6 | 24 | 28 | 29 | 25 | 34 | 36 | 32 | 26 | 31 | |
Conservative | 2 | 14 | 12 | 32 | 14 | 10 | 9 | 13 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 12 | 12 | |
Independent | 4 | 1 | 2 | |||||||||||
Total | 38 | 38 | 38 | 38 | 38 | 37 | 38 | 37 | 38 | 38 | 38 | 38 | 43 |
Government | Liberal | Con | Liberal | PC | ||||||||||
Party | 1920 | 1925 | 1928 | 1933 | 1937 | 1941 | 1945 | 1949 | 1953 | 1956 | 1960 | 1963 | 1967 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Liberal | 29 | 3 | 18 | 22 | 25 | 22 | 28 | 27 | 22 | 18 | 15 | 4 | 6 | |
Conservative | 3 | 40 | 24 | 8 | 5 | 5 | ||||||||
Progressive Conservative | 8 | 13 | 24 | 27 | 39 | 40 | ||||||||
United Farmers | 6 | |||||||||||||
Labour | 5 | 1 | ||||||||||||
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
Total | 43 | 43 | 43 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 37 | 37 | 43 | 43 | 43 | 46 |
Government | Liberal | PC | Liberal | PC | NDP | Liberal | PC | ||||||||||
Party | 1970 | 1974 | 1978 | 1981 | 1984 | 1988 | 1993 | 1998 | 1999 | 2003 | 2006 | 2009 | 2013 | 2017 | 2021 | 2024 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Liberal | 23 | 31 | 17 | 13 | 6 | 21 | 40 | 19 | 11 | 12 | 9 | 11 | 33 | 27 | 17 | 2 | |
Progressive Conservative | 21 | 12 | 31 | 37 | 42 | 28 | 9 | 14 | 30 | 25 | 23 | 10 | 11 | 17 | 31 | 43 | |
New Democratic | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 19 | 11 | 15 | 20 | 31 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 9 | |
Cape Breton Labour | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||||||||
Independent | 1 | 1 | |||||||||||||||
Total | 46 | 46 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 52 | 51 | 51 | 55 | 55 |
Of the registered voters in 2017, 53.4% voted. Voter turnout has decreased from 82% turnout in 1960. [10]
Party | 1968 | 1972 | 1974 | 1979 | 1980 | 1984 | 1988 | 1993 | 1997 | 2000 | 2004 | 2006 | 2008 | 2011 | 2015 | 2019 | 2021 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Liberal | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 6 | 11 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 11 | 10 | 8 | ||
PC | 10 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 4 | |||||||||
NDP | 1 | 1 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | ||||||||||
Reform / Alliance | ||||||||||||||||||
Conservative | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 | ||||||||||||
Total | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 |
Neil McLeod was a Prince Edward Island lawyer, judge, politician, the fifth premier, and Leader of the Opposition during the amalgamation of the Prince Edward Island legislature. He was born at Uigg on the island to Roderick McLeod and Flora McDonald, Baptist immigrants from the Isle of Skye in Scotland. He was educated at the Uigg Grammar School and in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, articled in law at Charlottetown and was called to the bar in 1873. Four years later, his marriage to the beloved Isabella Jane Adelia Hayden, the Methodist granddaughter to Irish Roman Catholic immigrant and merchant John Roach Bourke, furthered Gaelic intersections among Islander cultural enclaves. McLeod was the child of immigrants from the Isle of Skye. Between 1886-1893, transcriptions by parliamentary reporters and petition amanuenses identified him as both "Neil McLeod" and "Neil MacLeod." Reporters included his 5th Queens district next to his name in order to distinguish him from Angus MacLeod. Charlottetown dailies that reproduced passages from the transcriptions also replicated the spelling variation during this period. Historians continue to research his positions on the 1882 replacement of French-language texts with bilingual readers for French Acadians, late nineteenth-century prohibitions on Canadian Gaelic, and corporal punishment in Prince Edward Island schools. During this period, McLeod practiced law with partner Edward Jarvis Hodgson before joining the McLeod, Morson, and McQuarrie law firm. He also served as Commissioner for the Poor House and as a "trustee" to the public Prince Edward Island Hospital for the Insane, which replaced the Lunatic Asylum following a Grand Jury inquest. In 2019, mental health officer and occupational therapist Tina Pranger examined the presents and pasts of the Hillsborough Hospital, providing a summation of previous assessments of the inquest by historians and curators.
The Legislative Assembly of Ontario is the legislative chamber of the Canadian province of Ontario. Its elected members are known as Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs). Bills passed by the Legislative Assembly are given royal assent by the lieutenant governor of Ontario to become law. Together, the Legislative Assembly and Lieutenant Governor make up the unicameral Legislature of Ontario. The assembly meets at the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen's Park in the provincial capital of Toronto.
The Nova Scotia House of Assembly, or Legislative Assembly, is the deliberative assembly of the General Assembly of Nova Scotia, and together with the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia makes up the Nova Scotia Legislature.
The General Assembly of Nova Scotia is the legislature of the province of Nova Scotia. It consists of one or more sessions and comes to an end upon dissolution and an ensuing general election. Today, the unicameral legislature is made up of two elements: the lieutenant governor and a legislative assembly called the House of Assembly. The legislature was first established in 1758.
Province House in Halifax is where the Nova Scotia legislative assembly, known officially as the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, has met every year since 1819, making it the longest serving legislative building in Canada. The building is Canada's oldest house of government. Standing three storeys tall, the structure is considered one of the finest examples of Palladian architecture in North America.
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In Canada, a lieutenant governor is the representative of the king of Canada in the government of each province. The governor general of Canada appoints the lieutenant governors on the advice of the prime minister of Canada to carry out most of the monarch's constitutional and ceremonial duties for an unfixed period of time—known as serving "His Excellency’s pleasure"—though five years is the normal convention. Similar positions in Canada's three territories are termed "commissioners" and are representatives of the federal government, not the monarch directly.
By the arrangements of the Canadian federation, the Canadian monarchy operates in Nova Scotia as the core of the province's Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. As such, the Crown within Nova Scotia's jurisdiction is referred to as the Crown in Right of Nova Scotia, His Majesty in Right of Nova Scotia, or the King in Right of Nova Scotia. The Constitution Act, 1867, however, leaves many royal duties in the province specifically assigned to the sovereign's viceroy, the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, whose direct participation in governance is limited by the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy.
By the arrangements of the Canadian federation, the Canadian monarchy operates in Prince Edward Island as the core of the province's Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. As such, the Crown within Prince Edward Island's jurisdiction is referred to as the Crown in Right of Prince Edward Island, His Majesty in Right of Prince Edward Island, or the King in Right of Prince Edward Island. The Constitution Act, 1867, however, leaves many royal duties in Prince Edward Island specifically assigned to the sovereign's viceroy, the lieutenant governor of Prince Edward Island, whose direct participation in governance is limited by the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy.
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The Government of Nova Scotia is the government of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. The powers and structure of the province are set out in the Constitution Act, 1867. In modern Canadian use, the term "government" refers broadly to the cabinet of the day chosen from the Nova Scotia House of Assembly and the non-political staff within each provincial department or agency – that is, the civil service.
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