MLA who promoted N.S. border protest to run as Independent in next election

A Nova Scotia MLA who has been removed from the Progressive Conservative caucus after promoting a blockade that disrupted traffic on both sides of the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border will be re-offering in the next provincial election.

In a public Facebook post, Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin announced Monday that she will be running as an Independent candidate for re-election as MLA for Cumberland North.

“I’m the only candidate in Cumberland North who doesn’t have to answer to a party leader in Halifax,” she wrote. “I’m not a career politician. I’m a registered nurse. I have owned and operated my own businesses. I have put people to work and met a payroll.

“Above all, I’m a fighter who doesn’t back down in the face of adversity.”

After Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin announced on June 22 — the day before the so-called Atlantic bubble was set to begin — that people travelling from New Brunswick would have to follow a modified self-isolation, Smith-McCrossin encouraged her constituents to form a blockade on the Trans-Canada Highway in protest.

The initial blockade was near Exit 7 of Highway 104 and protesters set up another right by the border the next day, which led to traffic chaos, disrupted commerce and forced the cancellation of more than 100 medical appointments.

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Smith-McCrossin has said she didn’t organize the protests, but she did promote the initial blockade to her nearly 10,000 followers on Facebook.

“I will never apologize for doing my job to represent my constituents,” she wrote in a previous Facebook post.

“As PC leader, Mr. Houston has every right to change his mind after he previously supported me … But my conscience will not allow me to sacrifice fighting for my constituents, the job I was sent to do in 2017, to comply with a party leader, just because he changed his mind.”