Politics is ‘still a boys’ club,’ says Nova Scotia star Liberal candidate Lenore Zann, a former NDP MLA

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Nova Scotia MLA Lenore Zann said that when she decided to run for the federal Liberals, some constituents asked whether she would become a backbencher who simply follows orders.

Her message to them? “Obviously, if you think I might be that, you haven’t been watching me very closely.”

In June, Ms. Zann announced that she was leaving the provincial New Democrats after a decade in office to run for the federal Liberals.

She had thought about it for months, she said, but had hesitated as she watched the SNC-Lavalin scandal unfold. “I took seven months to decide, and I was watching very closely to see what the fallout was and, for a while there, it did not look good at all,” she said.

“I believed her,” she said of former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, who left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet over what she said was inappropriate pressure she faced to give the Quebec company a deal to avoid criminal prosecution. Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion said this week that Mr. Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act in this case.

In Ms. Zann’s opinion, women have a harder time being heard in many levels of government.

“That’s the way the boys play the game. And it’s still a boys’ club,” she said.

Ms. Zann is running for the Liberals in Cumberland-Colchester, a rural riding in Nova Scotia that has traditionally been Conservative. It went Liberal – along with the rest of Atlantic Canada – in the 2015 red sweep, owing in part to the fact that a former Conservative MP was the Liberal candidate.

Outgoing Liberal MP Bill Casey, who defeated former Conservative MP Scott Armstrong, and who used to be a Conservative himself, said he encouraged Ms. Zann – and others – to seek the Liberal nomination.

“She is new to the party, but the party certainly got behind me and I think they’re going to get behind Lenore because she is working hard," he said.

Mr. Armstrong, who is running for the Conservatives again, said after knocking on doors for months, he feels that “the Conservative vote has definitely come home.”

“The SNC-Lavalin scandal, which has now come back, really hurt [Mr. Trudeau’s] credibility with a lot of voters across the riding,” he said.

Mr. Armstrong said now Ms. Zann has to defend “all the terrible decisions that Liberals have made, the same decisions she’s criticized, so that’s a challenge she’s going to have to face."

Ms. Zann, 59, was born in Sydney, Australia, and moved to Canada with her parents when she was eight years old. After a year in Saskatchewan, they settled in Truro, N.S.

She moved to Toronto to study theatre and spent most of her life in entertainment. She got her big break playing Marilyn Munroe in the musical Hey Marilyn! in Edmonton. She had some of her biggest successes doing voiceovers for animated children’s shows, including providing the voices of Rogue on X-Men and Wendy Waters on Rescue Heroes.

In her home in Truro, Ms. Zann is relaxed and cheerful in a sunroom facing her backyard. Trees blow in the warm wind and her pool gurgles as her two shih tzus grunt.

Ms. Zann said that leading up to her decision in June, she asked constituents for their opinions about her running for the Liberals and that “people were excited.” Some asked if she would become a “clapping seal … those backbenchers that just do whatever they’re told.” But she is “not that kind of person, and never will be,” she said.

“Even when I was a backbencher with the NDP, I was very vocal about what I believed in, but I do it around the table, I don’t take my dirty laundry out to the public because I don’t believe that’s the way you have solidarity in your caucus."

Ms. Zann was the NDP’s environment critic and said it is well known that she is not a fan of pipelines. She said she was not happy when the Liberal government purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline, but added that it is difficult to make decisions that are good for the entire country.

Ms. Zann said she travelled to Ottawa before Christmas to accompany Mr. Casey to a meeting with the Auditor-General about the RCMP’s plan to move a 911 call centre from Truro to Halifax. While in Ottawa, Ms. Zann said she met with Mr. Trudeau and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

She said the Prime Minister told her that he would love to work with her. “We connected on a human level and I really liked him,” she said.

Ms. Zann said she told Mr. Singh during their meeting that it would be difficult for the NDP to win that riding.

Mr. Singh told The Globe and Mail that he was “really supportive” of Ms. Zann running for the NDP. But he said she was now running for the Liberals, who he described as favouring “corporate friends at the expense of Canadians.”