Chris d’Entremont will be the Conservative candidate for West Nova in this year’s federal election.
The Yarmouth County resident secured the nomination after Tory nomination meetings Friday night in Yarmouth, Saturday morning in Cornwallis and Saturday afternoon in Berwick.
Specific voting numbers were not released, only that d’Entremont was the winner in a three-person field that also included Hannah Dawson-Murphy and Dan Mullen.
D’Entremont – who, at least for now, remains MLA for Argyle-Barrington – offered some thoughts the day after getting the nomination.
“I was very happy with the result,” he said. “I thank my supporters for believing in me. A big thank you to Dan and Hannah for a well-fought nomination. Now to get to winning West Nova."
Asked about his status as MLA for Argyle-Barrington and the process of getting a new MLA for the riding, d’Entremont said, “I’m still MLA for now. The legal opinion from Legislative Council is that we only cease to be MLAs when we are accepted as candidates in the eyes of Elections Canada. That only happens after the writ is dropped.”
He said he wants to make sure residents in the Argyle-Barrington riding have representation.
“Last two times a constituency was vacated, the premier waited until the last possible minute to call a byelection,” he said.
The 2019 federal election is scheduled to be held on or prior to Oct. 21.
The 49-year-old d’Entremont was first elected to the Nova Scotia legislature in 2003 in the former constituency of Argyle and was re-elected in the provincial elections of 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2017.
While he was on the government side of the house, he held a number of ministerial portfolios.
His opponents on this year’s federal election ballot for West Nova will include Jason Deveau, who is running for the Liberals, and Judy N Green, who is running for the Green Party. The NDP have yet to announce a candidate.
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