Halifax West

Halifax West covers a broad swath of Halifax Regional Municipality’s western suburbs, from the densely settled neighbourhoods of Fairview and Clayton Park through the bedroom communities of Bedford and Timberlea to the rural reaches of Hammonds Plains and the Atlantic shoreline near Terence Bay. Growth corridors along Larry Uteck Boulevard and Hammonds Plains Road brought waves of new residents through the 2010s, giving the riding a population exceeding 100,000.

Candidates

Geoff Regan (Liberal) — Regan was serving as Speaker of the House of Commons heading into the 2019 election, a position he had held since December 2015 when he was elected on the first ballot by members of the 42nd Parliament. A Dalhousie Law School graduate, he had first won Halifax West in 1993, lost the seat in 1997, and recaptured it in 2000. He previously served as Minister of Fisheries and Oceans under Prime Minister Paul Martin. His wife, Kelly Regan, was a provincial MLA in the Nova Scotia legislature.

Fred Shuman (Conservative) — Shuman was a small business owner and decorated military veteran who had served as a paratrooper and helicopter pilot in the United States Army. He continued to fly helicopters on contract after settling in Nova Scotia.

Jacob Wilson (NDP) — Wilson was a construction worker and labour activist from Bedford who held a political science degree from York University. At 25 years old on election night, he was one of the youngest candidates in the riding’s race.

Richard Zurawski (Green Party) — A meteorologist with nearly four decades of experience as a science reporter for CBC, CTV, and Global Television, Zurawski was also a sitting Halifax regional councillor. He had previously run for the Greens in Halifax West in the 2015 election. During the 2019 campaign, he undertook a hunger strike to draw attention to climate change.

About the Riding

Halifax West functions primarily as a residential base for workers commuting to employers in downtown Halifax, Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park, and federal government offices throughout the region. Bedford, once a separate municipality before Halifax’s 1996 amalgamation, serves as the riding’s main commercial hub, while the Bayers Lake Business Park provides a major retail and employment centre. Mount Saint Vincent University, situated in the Rockingham area, is an important local institution. The Bedford Institute of Oceanography, a federal marine research facility on the shores of Bedford Basin, is another notable employer. Heading into 2019, residents expressed concerns about traffic congestion along the Bedford Highway corridor, housing affordability in the face of rapid population growth, health care access, and the adequacy of public transit connections between suburban communities and the Halifax peninsula. The riding had elected Liberal members consistently since 2000.