ARICHAT - During a swing through several Cape Breton communities, two first-term Liberal MLAs took aim at PC Premier Tim Houston's approach to health care and carbon pricing while expressing hope that their party's recent gains in public opinion polls will position them well for an upcoming by-election and the 2025 general election. 

Fred Tilley, the Liberal Caucus Chair and Finance Critic as well as the MLA for the urban Cape Breton riding of Northside-Westmount, has been showing the island and its communities to Clare MLA Ronnie LeBlanc, the party's Fisheries and Aquaculture Critic and its Critic for the Office of Acadian Affairs and Le Francophonie. The pair dropped into the Telile Community Television studios in Arichat in mid-June, where they were interviewed by Roundtable host and producer Adam Cooke. 

LeBlanc, a former Warden of the Municipality of the District of Clare, is hopeful that a bill he introduced just over a year ago calling for the enshrining of French-language education as a right for all Nova Scotians still has an opportunity to become law. A collaborative effort of the previous Liberal government and the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial (CSAP), the bill is still making its way through the various legislative channels. LeBlanc is hopeful to see this legislation passed into law before his next visit to Cape Breton, which is tentatively set for the fall. 

Tilley, a regular participant in the MLA panel discussions hosted by the Roundtable series, was similarly optimistic about a new Narrative Research quarterly poll that puts the Liberal Party at 31 per cent of popular support, only eight points back of the governing PCs - the smallest such gap since the defeat of the Liberals at the hands of Houston's PCs in the summer of 2021. 

With a by-election in Preston giving the Official Opposition the chance to add to its current 16 seats, Tilley said the mood among the Liberal Caucus is upbeat. At the same time, the party is focusing on Houston's combative approach against the new federally-imposed carbon pricing system, set to take effect in July, and the government's efforts to find general physicians for a list of Nova Scotians that has grown from 75,000 before Houston took power to nearly double that figure by late June.