Under his leadership, the Nova Scotia government spent more than $100 million paving roads, building bridges, extending electrical transmission lines and improving public education.

[3] However, he also faced the reality that the financially strapped Nova Scotia government could not afford to participate fully in federal relief programs that required matching contributions from the provinces.

[5] He articulated a philosophy of provincial autonomy, arguing that poorer provinces needed a greater share of national tax revenues to pay for health, education and welfare.

[6] He contended that Nova Scotians were victims of a national policy that protected the industries of Ontario and Quebec with steep tariffs forcing people to pay higher prices for manufactured goods.

According to biographer John Hawkins, I. D. "Ike" MacDougall "was a gifted performer who before an audience could cut an opponent's well-marshalled arguments until they fell amid roars of laughter.

[45] Privately however, Macdonald rejoiced that the government couldn't risk calling a by-election telling one supporter years later, "If the truth must be told, I was sometimes afraid that they would open up a seat and deprive me of this sort of ammunition".

The governing Conservatives, desperate to avoid electoral defeat,[46] had enacted changes requiring that new voters' lists be drawn up by government-appointed registrars immediately before each election.

[66] The three-man Jones Commission included Harold Innis, a prominent economic historian who had studied disparities between highly developed manufacturing regions and marginal ones that depended primarily on exploiting natural resources.

Macdonald could take satisfaction in its finding that high tariffs had sheltered central Canadian manufacturing at Nova Scotia's expense and that federal subsidies to the province were "seriously inadequate".

It also argued that Ottawa should establish equity among provinces and that redistribution of federal tax revenues should be based on need, an idea that became central to Macdonald's thinking about federal-provincial relations.

Among other things, the Commission called on the Macdonald government to continue paving roads; to undertake a program of rural electrification to keep young people on family farms; and, to establish a professional civil service that would defend Nova Scotia's interests against federal bureaucrats in Ottawa.

[69] But biographer Stephen Henderson writes that Macdonald went well beyond these practical steps to promote Nova Scotia as a beautiful and rustic place peopled by colourful Scots, Acadians, Germans and Mi'kmaq.

"They witnessed the provincial state constructing an elaborate network of modern roads; they read books and brochures extolling the beauty of the province, and they heard their premier waxing romantically about the pure, simple nobility of their ancestors.

[71] Historian Ian McKay writes that under his leadership, the provincial government gave money to the Gaelic College; bestowed Scottish names on key tourism sites and stationed "a brawny Scots piper" at the border with New Brunswick.

[72] Macdonald also helped assemble more than a quarter of a million acres (4,000 km2) for the Cape Breton Highlands National Park complete with a fancy resort hotel and world-class golf course.

[73] The Nova Scotia legislature recognized the growing power of industrial unions in the 1930s by passing what historian Stephen Henderson calls "Canada's first piece of modern labour legislation".

In January 1937, Premier Macdonald carried a bottle of bootleg rum to a meeting with union officials in Sydney, Cape Breton where they gave him a draft bill based on the American National Labor Relations Act.

[75] In his comprehensive history of Canadian patronage, journalist Jeffrey Simpson writes that the Liberals used road improvements to win votes, with highway crews "especially busy before and during election campaigns.

Nevertheless, the "wave of partisan hirings and firings" continued as committees in each riding "scrutinized employees for inappropriate political activity and rated prospective candidates based on what they or their families had done for the Liberal party".

Biographer Stephen Henderson writes however, that Macdonald wanted to remain as premier so he could present Nova Scotia's case to a Royal Commission on federal-provincial relations.

Canada's poorer provinces found it impossible to cope with widespread poverty and hunger while the federal government resisted taking full responsibility for unemployment relief.

Macdonald suggested that compensatory subsidies to poorer, less-populated provinces be based on need, not population, so that they could pay for government services available in other parts of the country without having to impose higher-than-average levels of taxation.

The provinces failed to agree on what should be done, but in April, the federal government went ahead on its own announcing it would levy steep taxes on personal and corporate incomes as a temporary measure to finance Canada's participation in the Second World War.

[100] Biographer Stephen Henderson maintains that Macdonald played a key role in the wartime conscription crises that beset the federal government in 1942, and again in 1944, as Prime Minister Mackenzie King tried to avoid imposing compulsory military service overseas.

[112] Less than two months later, Macdonald's Liberals swept the province wiping out the Conservatives for the first time since Confederation and winning all but two Cape Breton ridings where voters elected members of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or CCF, the forerunner of the present-day New Democratic Party, or NDP.

The Conservatives for example, drew attention to kickback schemes under which brewing companies, wineries and distilleries contributed to the Liberal party in exchange for the right to sell their products in government liquor stores.

Two projects that he pushed especially hard for, the Canso Causeway linking Cape Breton Island to mainland Nova Scotia and a suspension bridge spanning Halifax Harbour were completed after his death.

[129] Biographer Stephen Henderson writes that Macdonald deserves credit for the introduction, in 1957, of an equalization scheme designed to enable poorer provinces to provide comparable levels of services to their citizens.

Macdonald's advocacy of provincial autonomy however, fell victim to the centralizing tendencies of a post-war welfare state in which the federal government increasingly assumed greater control over national social programs.

[131] He served as honorary chair and fundraiser for the university's centennial celebrations in 1953 and raised money to support student research into the early history of the Scots in Nova Scotia.