Candidates square off for the Battle of the Johns in Glace Bay-Dominion

Now that nominations for the Nova Scotia general election have closed, it's official: the next MLA for the riding of Glace Bay-Dominion will be named John.

The question is, will it be Liberal candidate John John McCarthy, the New Democratic Party's John Morgan, or the Progressive Conservatives' John White?

No matter who wins, the candidates say voters clearly want their provincial representative to fix the health-care system and improve general living conditions.

White is a teacher at Glace Bay High School who came within a couple of hundred votes of beating Liberal cabinet minister Geoff MacLellan in the last election. MacLellan is not reoffering.

White said the area is troubled by high rates of child poverty and drug use.

He runs a local youth group and a charity that provides meals for 300 families at Christmas and said that's one of the reasons he is running for office.

"It's weighing on me, because when I'm done picking the 300, I see 100, 200 more on the table and that kills me that there's that much poverty in this town," White said. "I can volunteer as much as I want. I can't fix this unless I get my hands on the levers of government."

The PC Party's solutions for health care include building more long-term care beds to relieve stress on emergency rooms and hiring more doctors and nurses.

White said the party would also create a separate department for mental health and addictions and provide universal access to those services.

That and addressing poverty through better job training and net pay will go a long way toward solving the drug and poverty issues in Glace Bay-Dominion, he said.

"I'm not a politician. I'm a disgruntled citizen and all my life experiences showed me that I can't trust the people who have their hands on the government levers to fix the issues we're having here at home," said White.

"You can tell me the town's doing good, but 40 per cent child poverty rate, the needle exchange box on Commercial Street is one of the busiest in the province. Just look around at the signals and the signs. Our kids are leaving, our age is increasing. Nothing is being done, so you can't tell me things are getting better."

White said he has learned from the 2017 election campaign, when he was constantly chasing the incumbent and came close to unseating him.

"We know what we're doing this time and we're not looking in the rear-view mirror."

The Liberals' John John McCarthy is also a Glace Bay high school teacher and volunteers with the Ring 73 boxing club.

McCarthy said in addition to health-care concerns, seniors need better access to recreation facilities and programs, and the troubled youths he sees in school need the same.

"These kids are not your typical mainstream kids, where they are in every class, so they have some issues and come from tough backgrounds and my job was to keep them in the building," he said.

"My job was to make them feel like they're part of the school. My job was to make them feel good about themselves."

McCarthy said the problems in health care have been long-standing, but the Liberals are now making strides with hospital redevelopment, virtual medical visits and adding university spots for doctors and nurses.

"To me, that's a start and there's plenty more to do," he said.

Need for affordable housing

McCarthy also said the riding needs more affordable housing.

"I was one of those low-income family kids. I lived in the housing groups for X amount of years while I was in my teenage years and there were vacancies. Now, you can walk down there and there is no more vacancies. So those types of things need to be put forth and rebuilt again."

It's McCarthy's first time running for office, but he is not intimidated. He said he loves talking to people about issues at the doorstep.

"I'm not going to say I'm a smooth-talking politician by any stretch, but I'm a doer."

The NDP's John Morgan is a lawyer and former three-term mayor of Cape Breton Regional Municipality.

He said he is running to try to address the chronic underfunding of CBRM by the province, which he said is particularly acute in Glace Bay-Dominion.

Morgan said his career has been focused on looking out for "the little guy."

"Sometimes the little guy is a collection of people in communities that are being treated unfairly by other areas," he said. "So part of what this campaign is about is ensuring that our region as a whole is treated fairly, that we have funding that allows us to have fair levels of services in the region so that people can succeed and thrive in their home communities."

Morgan said he has heard health care "horror stories" at the doorstep and said voters are also concerned about the deterioration of recreation facilities.

Population decline

Glace Bay is one of the few communities of its size without a public pool, for example, and that is a result of provincial underfunding of the municipality, he said.

The lack of services in all areas of government has led to population decline which has further hamstrung CBRM's ability to provide local services and driven up its tax rates, Morgan said.

Just before the pandemic, increasing numbers of international students at Cape Breton University boosted the population for the first time in more than 20 years, but Morgan said that's not sustainable.

He also said it's a statistical manipulation to count temporary residents as permanent.

"You can't solve the population issue while you impose grinding austerity as the Liberal and Conservative governments have done to the region," Morgan said.

"That population decline, at its core, will continue."

As mayor, Morgan argued for better equalization funding from the province.

The NDP is promising to provide an economic stimulus of $50 million a year for three years, but Morgan said even that is not enough.

He said municipalities need better funding to ensure they provide reasonably comparable levels of service for reasonably comparable levels of taxation.

"If we don't abide by those principles of government, the region will simply continue to implode."

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