Taryn Grant
CBC News
August 11, 2021
Originally published here
Former Liberal backs NDP
The NDP scored an unlikely endorsement on Tuesday: a former Nova Scotia Liberal Party candidate.
Jo-Ann Grant describes herself as a lifelong Liberal. She ran for the party in 2009 in Chester-St. Margarets, finishing third.
But Grant said during an event with NDP Leader Gary Burrill on Tuesday that she no longer feels the party reflects her values and that she will instead be voting NDP.
She said the deciding factor was the way the Liberals have handled the potential sale of Owls Head provincial park to a private developer so the Crown land can be turned into golf courses.
“The more I heard and the more I read, I became quite dismayed about it and realized that since they were taking this firm position of not backing down on the [potential] sale, that I could no longer support the Liberal Party,” said Grant.
Burrill said Grant’s concern about Owls Head is something he and his fellow candidates have heard a lot about on the doorstep.
“I think part of the background for this is it speaks to what is the real sincerity of what the Rankin Liberals have to say about the environment,” he said.
“I think people have a sense that the climate change emergency is not just a matter of saying the right things; it’s of deeply having a sense of the urgency of the matter and then moving forward to do the right things.”
As he has previously, Burrill pledged that an NDP government would end the negotiations related to a potential sale of Owls Head and protect the land.
