ARICHAT - Nova Scotia's Liberal Leader, a former cabinet minister in the governments of Stephen McNeil and Iain Rankin, is blaming Premier Tim Houston and his PC administration for the federal imposition of carbon pricing and the resulting increase in gasoline, diesel and home-heating costs that took effect on July 1. 

Opposition Leader Zach Churchill claims the Tories had no specific replacement for the cap-and-trade system implemented in Nova Scotia by his party's government prior to its defeat by Houston's PCs in 2021. Churchill also lambasted Houston for waiting until days before a deadline to submit an alternative to carbon pricing to the federal government last August, and for insisting on an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the issue in the dying days of June. 

In the spring session of the legislature, Churchill's Liberal Party proposed three measures to help Nova Scotians deal with carbon pricing and other rising costs in their day-to-day living: a freeze on the provincial portion of gasoline tax, an end to so-called "bracket creep" within the income tax payments of low-to-middle-income residents of the province, and a full school lunch program to assist the children of less-fortunate families. 

Churchill, a former Liberal Minister of Health and Wellness, also insisted that Houston's current pledge to keep issuing deficit budgets until his government has allowed for improvements in Nova Scotia's troubled health-care system is ill-advised and offers no clear direction for the spending of billions of health-care dollars. 

The Yarmouth MLA also suggested that the province should put a greater emphasis on affordable housing development in rural areas, as opposed to directing its efforts solely to urban communities such as the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) and the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM). 

As he nears the one-year anniversary of his ascension to the leadership of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party, Churchill is optimistic that more people are now seeing the party as a viable alternative to the governing Tories and that this momentum will build as the current four-year governing term reaches its midway point in August.