The Halifax Regional Municipality’s District 3 is an unusual mix of communities. Within the district stretching from south Dartmouth to the beaches beyond Eastern Passage, there are four distinct subdivisions of the population, but they only get to elect one candidate as councillor in the October 19 municipal elections.
Driving away from downtown Dartmouth on Pleasant Street, you'll see the first part of District 3, the military-industrial complex. Not to be confused with the theoretical economic foundations of the Western world, this part of District 3 is literally a straight mix of heavy industry and military housing complexes. Some non-military homes are wedged between petroleum refineries where the warm summer air constantly reeks of tar.
Eastern Passage is just beyond that, as the coastline changes from the harbour and rolls out into the ocean. This community grew out of Fisherman’s Cove, a fishing village more than 200 years old. Today, it features land-lease communities and older suburbs, and the population is predominately a mix of military families; families that have lived in The Passage for a long time; and families that are both.
Further down the shore at the edge of the district, travellers will hit Cow Bay. This used to be a farming community and one of Canada’s oldest tourist destinations—Cow Bay lore says people were visiting Silver Sands and Rainbow Haven beaches going as far back as 1773. More recently it’s become a widely respected surfing destination, with Cow Bay’s breaks and its close proximity to neighbouring District 2’s famous Lawrencetown waves making for an attractive place for surfers to live.
Rounding out the District 3 electorate is Portland Hills, Cole Harbour’s soulless, super-subsidized luxury McMansion district. This area provides some interesting political challenges for the councillors of District 3, because Portland Hills is organized and better funded (see the suburban subsidies) than the rest of the district, so there is intense local pressure put on District 3 councillors to make decisions that benefit Portland Hills residents—often at the expense of the other three communities in the district.
During this election, to try and determine which candidates are equipped to face the complex challenges facing the city in the four years to come, The Coast sent out a substantial candidate questionnaire. For those candidates who filled out the questionnaire, The Coast followed up with more detailed questions to further test their policy chops. This information is central to what we can tell the public about the candidates in each of our voting guides.
Given the competing interests of its population makeup, District 3 is one of the strangest districts in Halifax’s municipal politics. True to form, only one of the three candidates running for its seat on council managed to respond to our questions. So our analysis of this race starts with him.
Keith Morrison
District 3 candidate Keith Morrison had strong answers to most of the questions in The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. He demonstrated a good grasp of the long-term fiscal thinking that a councillor requires. For example, he pointed to some recently announced capital projects, like the Mill Cove Ferry. Morrison highlighted the fact that beyond the costs of building the terminal, there will be an ongoing municipal expense to staff, maintain and run the ferry, which won’t be cheap. He’s concerned that these predictable costs don’t seem to have any offsetting revenue-generation mechanisms.
In a follow-up interview to discuss the exam, Morrison explained that he'd like to see the municipality decrease government spending when it is redundant or wasteful. Not to say his experience as a military clerk pre-disposed him to believe that governments spend inefficiently, but in the military, it is common practice for departments to spend every last cent of their budget just to prove they need at least that much in the next fiscal year. Morrison believes that there are likely minor things akin to year-end buying blitzes in the HRM that could save the city money. And if it turns out that in Halifax major things like bringing private contracts back in-house would save money, he’d want to see Halifax take back control of the public services the city provides.
Morrison is still new to the policy game, and his answers to the questionnaire belied his inexperience, specifically when he wrote in the questionnaire that he doesn’t agree “that all suburban areas need to change.” However, Morrison demonstrated an ability to think through the implications of policy choices and develop ideas to mitigate them. In the follow-up interview, he caught the inconsistency in his policy positions about the need for suburban change and said he’d need to do more research. It speaks volumes about the absolute state of our politics that being open to changing one’s mind is cause for optimism, but hey, here we are. And Morrison cleared this (depressingly low) bar with flying colours.
As Morrison’s been campaigning, residents have frequently asked him about what he would do as the chair of the Board of Police Commissioners—doubtless because the incumbent he’s challenging in the election, councillor Becky Kent, is currently serving as BOPC chair. But it must be stressed at this juncture that any incumbent councillor’s positions on boards or committees are not district-specific. Morrison would not automatically become BOPC chair if he’s elected, and he has no interest in taking on that role.
His website can be found here: https://votekeithin3.ca/
Becky Kent
The incumbent for District 3 is Becky Kent, an experienced politician who’s spent 20 years in public office between serving on Halifax Regional Council and being elected to join NDP premier Darrell Dexter’s provincial government. She has not filled out The Coast’s questionnaire, but a fair amount can be gleaned from her record of public service, including her current role as chair of Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners, which is supposed to be the public’s watchdog over the police department.
Kent consistently demonstrates a style of governance far more suited to precedented times. That is to say, back when the policy choices made by people with power hadn’t been fully implicated as the root cause of things like the climate crisis or the inefficiency of policing. Sadly those choices—made in the past and reinforced by the precedented class of politicians—are often what’s causing the issues the best politicians of today are trying to solve.
Thanks to multiple studies and reports—from the Defunding the Police report to the Wortley Report to the Mass Casualty Commission—it’s clear the city of Halifax needs to change the way it does policing. Police experienced massive mission creep and are now considered the one-stop shop for all society’s ills. This is, naturally, unsustainable and is one of the big reasons policing needs to change. As this changes, Halifax is also changing how it spends its public safety money. On top of police officers, the city is also spending money on things like civilian mental health teams, crossing guards and bylaw officers to take some non-policing jobs away from the police. However, whenever council debates new public safety spending, Kent frequently buzzes in to remind everyone that we also need to spend money on police.
It may be true that Halifax will need to spend more on police after increasing spending on non-policing public safety alternatives. But that’s a decision to be made with careful consideration from council. The chair of Halifax’s independent oversight body being unabashedly pro-police spending does not inspire confidence that Kent is ready for the challenge of these unprecedented times when her go-to move is reaching into the bag of status quo spending solutions and hoping for the best. It also chafes that Kent will often advocate for massive increases in police spending but will then balk at raising taxes to cover anything else.
Her website can be found here: https://www.votebeckykent.com/
John Paul
Has not completed The Coast’s candidate questionnaire. If candidates complete the questionnaire after the stated deadline of September 18, The Coast will attempt to complete a review in time for October’s election. Until then, we cannot determine if this candidate is worth your vote and would advise sticking to the known candidates in your district. If you would like The Coast to assess John Paul’s potential as a councillor, please ask him to complete the questionnaire. Paul does not seem to have a website.
Analysis
As a long-time politician, Becky Kent has a distinct incumbency advantage. She is also adept at playing politics, a skill especially vital in multifaceted District 3. She tends to make policy decisions that are less in line with what one would expect from a former NDP MLA, but quite in line with someone whose power base resides firmly in Portland Hills.
Although Keith Morrison is at a distinct disadvantage on the name-recognition front, anyone who votes for him can expect decent policies. If he continues thinking about things and changing his mind with new information, he can be expected to clear the low bar of competency set by previous generations of politicians. As a renter who does not live in Portland Hills, Morrison will also likely pick up votes from people in The Passage who feel like they’re getting short-changed by the status quo, which unfortunately for Kent, she’s been a part of on and off since 2004 when she first got elected.
