Public works road work.
There's a long history of "pavement politics" in Atlantic Canada.
As with some other rural areas, politicians in eastern Canada had a reputation for using road work to pay off favours or to solicit votes. The more egregious examples have gradually become but a memory. But, to adapt Faulkner, this past isn't dead, it may not even be past.
The opposition Progressive Conservatives in Nova Scotia have delighted this week in pointing out that an NDP cabinet minister had his road chip-sealed even though it didn't appear to be listed on the official plan.
Then, a day later, the Tories said that work on a road near the home of Robert Chisholm, the MP and former provincial politician now running for the federal NDP leadership, was "first up" for crews in August.
"The NDP are directing the priorities of the expensive provincial government chip-sealing crew," Tory MLA Chuck Porter said in a statement. "You only have to look at their first choices to know what their priorities are."
These allegations are a sideshow for a province embroiled in serious issues -- including the threat of another paper mill closing, contentious moves toward redraw electoral boundaries and controversy over MLA pensions -- and the government has slammed suggestions of improper influence.
The NDP's denials would have carried more weight, though, were it not for the region's history.
Paving and politics were long entwined in Atlantic Canada, stemming from a blurring of the lines between the interests of political parties and the public.
It was only in recent years that new governments in Prince Edward Island stopped the routine practice of firing public workers and hiring partisans. And Kathy Dunderdale, Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, mentioned in an interview earlier this fall that she can remember seeing paving machines with political signs on them (though not, she hastened to add, signs for her party).
And a Cape Breton Post editorial in early September cited open political influence over roadwork. It quoted Cape Breton Regional Municipality Councillor Brian Lahey explaining that he directs the work based on public requests: "The people that call me first, that's the way I give them to our engineers. I'll say, 'Here's my list of roads, and do this road first, second, third, on the list.' That's how I work it."
On a provincial level, Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter said Tuesday that there is "a fair, transparent, open process for road paving in this province, something that never, ever happened when the Progressive Conservatives were in power."
With a comfortable majority and half a mandate to go, the NDP here will ride this out without difficulty. But it could prove uncomfortable for Mr. Chisholm as a federal leadership candidate. Trying to take his place on the national stage will not be helped by having his name dragged into the murk of rural politics.