What have we heard about education and child care this election campaign?

An election no one wanted, called late last month, will bear fruit Nov 26.

As reported by the CBC, a recent telephone poll of 800 Nova Scotians from Narrative Research suggests that premier Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservatives have maintained a significant lead throughout the campaign. However, nearly a quarter of those polled are still in play.

Of the 800 people asked how they would vote on Tuesday, 24% were undecided, 5% refused to say and another 5% said they weren’t planning to vote.

Of the 526 decided voters:

44% said they’d vote PC
28% said they’d vote for the New Democratic Party
24% said they’d vote Liberal
3% said they’d vote Green
1% said they’d vote independent

So, what does it take to convince undecided voters to choose a party or a candidate? Maybe it’s simple. Maybe you acknowledge a problem voters care about in a truthful, accountable way and outline a clear, well-researched plan to address it.

The leaders of the three top provincial parties running for election have had opportunities to do this.

First, through the party platforms themselves and announcements regarding these. Reading these platforms can feel daunting, but keep them around for Nov 27—and the years that follow—to assure yourself you did hear that campaign promise that’s since disappeared or still needs work.

See here where the PCs promise, for example, to guarantee every Bachelor of Education graduate a teaching job, create a new School Code of Conduct and hire two police officers within the Department of Education to oversee school safety province-wide.

See here where the Liberals promise, for example, to spend $4.3 million on schools to hire more educators, invest in training for school staff and add new curriculum to address mental health.

See here where the NDP promise, for example, to invest in child care spaces in underserved areas across the province by creating a centralized waiting list, to bring back school boards and to enforcing air quality and water testing standards in schools.

The second way for parties to speak to voters is through debates. For ease, let’s say there have been two: the live debate on CBC on Nov 12, and the pre-recorded roundtable on CTV on Nov 21. While moderators set the questions, leaders give opening and closing remarks and can steer the conversation to topics they choose.

Both debates have focused on healthcare, housing, transit and traffic, the cost of living and—of course—the federal carbon tax. However, there has been little discussion of the environment and almost nothing on gender-based violence.

Education—public education, post-secondary education, early childhood education and child care—has also not received much attention.

This is surprising considering the crisis of school violence; teacher shortages due to difficult working conditions; overburdened and outdated school infrastructure; an underfunded post-secondary education system that’s led to skyrocketing tuitions; alarming rates of child poverty; and a continued shortage of child care province-wide.

This election campaign has a shocking lack of focus on education despite there being numerous pressing issues: violence in schools, air quality, poverty, and staff recruitment and retention. It's almost like we forget that kids are people who also need services.
— Nova Scotia Parents for Public Education (@NSPFPE) November 17, 2024

Here’s a recap of how Houston, NDP leader Claudia Chender, and Liberal leader Zach Churchill addressed these issues in both debate appearances.

School violence, school policies

Houston: “The first thing we did when we came into government was we sat down and we listened to teachers.” The premier said that approach what led to the Ideas for Education program, which led to the new provincial cell phone policy “to get cell phones out of the classroom.” He said a teacher told him recently how engaged his students were throughout a lesson because they weren’t on their phones. “So, there’s a lot we can do to support teachers and educators.”

Overcrowded schools

Houston: “You can’t talk about education without supporting educators, families and students.” He said the solution is government support, which he says his government has done.

He said he intervened in the negotiations with the Nova Scotia Teachers Union this past spring to avoid a strike and get “a deal done that supports teachers, supports students and makes money available.”

He added that “investing in education is something new for the teachers—that’s why they’re so so pleased right now, because under the Liberal government, [when] Churchill was the minister of education, teachers went on strike when they weren’t supported, and under the NDP government, teachers marched in the streets against the NDP government” because according to Houston, both governments cut funding to education. He said his government is not cutting but investing in education, and “will continue to do that” by such actions as “we’ve announced we’re building new schools. But you know when the best time to build a school was? To start it? Four years ago, five years ago.”

Chender: “Education is an enormous issue… overcrowding is an enormous challenge, and this is only made worse by the fact that in the last three and a half years, we’ve seen one new school open in HRM. This is where half of the population lives, and we hear the minister of education talk all the time about how great portables are, but our school infrastructure is failing.”

She said aging school builds means they’re unsafe, and students and educators have difficulty learning and teaching. She said that the NDP has pushed Houston’s government “for any transparency or any plan around school capital” and hasn’t gotten it, but instead “this government sits on it until it’s time for an election and then promises community schools like we’re back in the old days of pantyhose and rum.”

She said the solution is “a clear capital plan” that engages communities. “In order to do that we should have school boards, something that [Churchill] got rid of, and that [Houston] promised to bring back, and then didn’t.

Churchill: “The overcrowding that we’re having in our schools, the overcrowding in our hospitals, the overcrowding in our traffic and congestion, the overcrowding of our housing market, are all linked to the premier’s drive to double our population. So we do have to deal with that.” He pivoted to discussing how Liberals would address the cost of living.

He said, “the schools that [Houston] has cut the ribbons on were started five to seven years ago when I was minister of education.”

On spending, he said his government introduced the pre-Primary program, which “every four-year-old in the province now has access to for free.”

Post-secondary funding

Houston: When responding to questions about doctor shortages, he mentioned funding for Cape Breton University’s new medical school and building the first-ever student housing at Nova Scotia Community College campuses as a partial reprieve from the housing crisis.

High rates of child poverty in the province

Houston: “I know the NDP might minimize the school lunch program. People may minimize that, but I would not minimize that for one second. It’s supporting a lot of families. It means a lot to Nova Scotians. I’m proud to deliver that in Nova Scotia.”

Chender: The NDP leader replied that her party not only supported Houston’s current program in the Legislature, but also supported a universal lunch program before Houston.

However, she said that more than school lunches is needed to address this crisis. The solution is to create affordable housing because “housing is the biggest driver of cost.”

Churchill: He said the solution is to help with housing, grocery prices and energy bills, and that the Liberals will “give funding to the organizations that are helping families.”

Child care

Houston: “We’ve opened up 4,000 childcare spaces. We know there’s a big need. We also know that there is an issue with the agreement with the federal government, and that’s because the Liberals signed that agreement on the eve of an election so they could have something to campaign on. It’s very restrictive.”

Churchill: He said child care spaces are now “a big issue” and that there are “hundreds of people, hundreds of families waiting to get child care. That’s impacting parents’ ability to get back to work. It’s impacting the cost of living for our families.”

He said the problem is that the current federal-provincial funding agreement for new child care spaces doesn’t allow private child care centres, which he says are small businesses run mainly by women, to expand their capacities “at a time when the market needs more child care spaces.” Churchill said that’s something “we have to deal with so that families have access, not just to pre-Primary [care], but [so children aged 0-3 years old] have access to more child care.”

The general election will take place on Nov 26. Information on where to vote can be found here.