HALIFAX - After a year of falling public support and questions surrounding his leadership, Nova Scotia Tories closed ranks in support of Premier Rodney MacDonald on Sunday as the party wrapped up its annual general meeting in Halifax.
MacDonald finished a weekend of speeches, policy sessions and gladhanding with a 30-minute question-and-answer session to mark the first anniversary of his election as party leader.
The 35-year-old premier easily handled a series of softball queries from a membership apparently firm in its resolve to move ahead united.
"Now the work part begins, and this is where we hold your feet to the fire because the party's over,'' said Stephen Taylor, a delegate from the Halifax-area riding of Hammonds Plains-Upper Sackville.
"It's time to go to work and you've turned a corner.''
Taylor's sentiments reflected the mood of many delegates, who said they were impressed that MacDonald used a lengthy and wide-ranging speech on Friday to admit he had made mistakes, though he didn't offer specifics.
Among the issues that have dogged MacDonald were two sudden policy reversals -- first to implement gas price regulation and then to scrap the province's ban on Sunday shopping.
MacDonald suffered another embarrassment last month when his human resources minister, Ernie Fage, resigned after news broke that he was under investigation for allegedly leaving the scene of an accident smelling of alcohol.
The premier's admission of a rocky first year in office was something that needed to be said, according to Halifax-area delegate Roger O'Neil.
"Unfortunately, I think politicians all too often deny everything,'' said O'Neil.
"The public knows he's made some mistakes, he knows he's made some mistakes, he fessed up to them and now can move on.''
Once portrayed as the fresh-faced successor to former premier John Hamm, MacDonald freely admitted at several points over the weekend that the past year had been anything but a smooth ride.
"We went through challenging times on various issues and, whether it was Sunday shopping or gas regulations, you gain something from each one of those issues and you learn,'' he said.
One of the apparent lessons has been that the government can't trust the media to get its message out.
MacDonald said the government would be mailing out a glossy quarterly newsletter to highlight initiatives such as provincewide high-speed Internet and the Atlantic Gateway concept, which aims to make Nova Scotia the entry point for trade from Europe and southern Asia.
But he denied there was a "media bad, government good'' message at work.
"I can't control what you're going to report, nor should I, nor do I want to,'' MacDonald told reporters.
"But what I want to do is get our message out as a government, and I want Nova Scotians to know it, and I want them to know where their tax dollars are being spent.''
The premier also defended the $232,000 yearly pricetag as an appropriate use of taxpayers' money, because the newsletter is "non-political'' -- something NDP critic Frank Corbett doesn't buy.
"It's not the media's job to play ball,'' said Corbett. "He's got a finance minister telling us that we're in a tight fiscal spot, so maybe there's better ways to spend our tax dollars than on Tory propaganda.''
MacDonald also used the weekend meeting, which touted the "New Nova Scotia,'' to re-brand the Tories as environmental crusaders.
He said the majority of future government decisions would be put through a "green filter'' to measure the potential environmental impact.
But the premier was short on specifics about who would be responsible for overseeing the government's greening.
"Those details will be worked out as to the particular minister or how the structure will be set,'' he said.
The premier will also be armed with a series of grassroots policy resolutions adopted by party members -- 25 in all, but none of them binding on the government.
One of the more prominent messages was for the government to eliminate the clawbacks on social assistance when recipients begin new jobs.
"We've shown that we are a party that is not only interested in getting together for a good time, but more importantly we talked about a lot of important issues,'' said MacDonald.
