INTIMATE POLITICS ALLOWS FOR SOME HARD TRUTHS

In Nova Scotia, voters know their politicians well. So the leaders don't
need to be perfect, or even nice

HALIFAX - NOVA SCOTIA'S junkie-turned-cabinet minister has a new nickname:
St. Jane.

It's said with only a slight sneer, a nod to the way Nova Scotians shrugged
off news that elsewhere would have sparked a full-blown political freak show.

Imagine this: The new Tory minister of education admits she was a
needle-craving addict for years, that she has a marijuana conviction, that
her life on the seamy side of Halifax cost her custody of her only son,
that her heroin habit left her with a lifelong hepatitis C infection.

The reaction? A big yawn and a little sympathy. It was forgotten in a day.

The confession of Jane Purves is just the latest in a series of titillating
tales about the misadventures of those who govern this land.

Rookie Liberal MLA Brian ``Crusher'' Boudreau is in court next week,
accused of pummeling his brother in a fight over family land. (The nickname
is real - no kidding.) NDP MLA Reeves Matheson was charged with bilking his
Cape Breton law clients last year, disbarred and slapped with 12 criminal
charges, including theft, fraud and forgery.

NDP leader Robert Chisholm fessed up that he had been convicted of drunk
driving in his youth - but only after fibbing about the matter early in
this summer's election campaign. The nomination for one riding was
contested by two men who both had drunk driving convictions.

And then there is former Liberal Premier Gerald Regan. You need an abacus
to keep track of how many times he has been accused of mauling young girls.
He spent six weeks in court last year defending his honour with the costly
help of famed Toronto lawyer Edward Greenspan. Regan has not been convicted
of anything.

What's going on? How did the Nova Scotia legislature become a haven for
alleged thugs, thieves and former addicts in an era when moral values came
out of the closet as a political issue?

Across North America, the issue of character has been filling the
ideological vacuum left as parties converged around a
kill-the-deficit-and-cut-taxes agenda.

Forget U.S. President Bill Clinton's lust and the peek-a-boo dance of
Republican presidential wannabe George Bush over whether he likes to toot
cocaine.

Closer to home we have Ontario NDP MPP Peter Kormos, who in 1991 was
pressured to resign as consumer minister in the NDP government because his
aide was in trouble with the law. And then-tourism minister Peter North,
who was dropped from that NDP cabinet hours after a woman complained he
tried to pressure her into having unsafe sex.

Why are Nova Scotians so tolerant of behaviour that would not only cost
politicians elsewhere their jobs, but also be a severe blow to their party?

Politics is an intimate sport here, a contest among friends and enemies who
know each other well.

Fledgling Tory Premier John Hamm played on the same university tennis team
with Liberal Leader Russell MacLellan, the man whose job he just took away.
Hamm got into politics because of a chance encounter with another premier
who happened to be out walking his dog on a back road.

The druggie past of Nova Scotia's new education minister wasn't Halifax's
best-kept secret; it wasn't a secret at all.

Many people who voted for Purves have known her since she was a tot in the
toney south end of town. They knew all about her fall long before the sad
details were published in the paper.

But those same neighbours also watched Purves beat her addiction, regain
custody of her son and go on to run the newsroom of the Maritimes' largest
newspaper.

Purves is a smart, complex woman who became one of the region's leading
business figures by making up her own rules.

She has shunned the quiet tree-lined neighbourhoods that Halifax's other
power brokers call home, preferring to live in a clapboard house on the
wrong side of Halifax Commons, not far from where today's addicts still hang.

She took risks at her paper, where she was both loathed and loved by her
staff.

She became a top executive without ever learning to drive a car, a woman
who regularly walks kilometres to get where she wants to go.

Local voters know that the ``junkie'' label doesn't begin to describe the
full character of the formidable rookie who was picked over far more
experienced politicians for a top cabinet job.

Nova Scotia ridings are small. The average MLA represents just 18,000 men,
women and children. Compare that to Ontario, where each MPP tries to
represent the best interests of more than 110,000 people.

There are no parachute candidates in Nova Scotia. You don't usually win
unless you are born and bred in the community you want to represent. And
that community isn't likely to change much.

Unlike much of North America, there is no mass migration here, no waves of
people propelled by jobs, social ambition or the politics of their
homeland, to move again and again. Except for pockets of Halifax dominated
by military families and students, people here stay put.

When voters go to the polls, the candidates are usually more than names on
a ballot. They are neighbours who teased each other on the school
playground as children, danced at the same weddings and cried at the same
funerals.

That intimacy has given Nova Scotians a rare political luxury, the ability
to judge not whether someone is perfect, but if they are up to the job.
That intimacy has also helped them accept the uncomfortable, important
truth that good leaders are not necessarily nice human beings.