Time flies when you’re having fun. Ask Darrell Dexter. Next month, he will celebrate his second anniversary as the province’s first NDP premier.

In two years – probably less – he will try to become Nova Scotia’s first NDP premier to win a second majority government … or, perhaps, settle for a minority … or, failing one of the above – and politics being politics – not be Ignatieffed in his own riding.

His fate then may well depend on what happens in Ottawa today.

Today, Dexter leads a high-level, high-profile delegation of business and government leaders to Toryland. Its goal: To browbeat, sweet talk and cajole Stephen Harper’s newly re-elected, no-reason-to-like Nova Scotia majority government into spreading some largesse our way.

The stakes are billions of dollars high.

Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding, for example, wants a sweet piece of the navy’s upcoming shipbuilding program. At a Ships Start Here kickoff pep rally Friday, Dexter touted consultants’ reports claiming the project could generate 11,500 spinoff jobs and inject more than $800 million per year into the provincial economy.

“Winning this bid,” Dexter declared, “would equate to hosting the Olympics each year for 30 years.”

And then, of course, there’s the Lower Churchill, a $6.2-billion Newfoundland-Nova Scotia power-generating and transmission project Dexter has grandly called “our Canadian Pacific Railway.” Dexter is fond of metaphor and simile.

If Lower Churchill happens – and Harper promised to make it happen during the federal campaign – Nova Scotia workers would be in line for a chunk of its 45,000 person-years worth of work. And the Lower Churchill itself would become a stable source of forever energy for Nova Scotians – and for future industrial development.

While Dexter will remind Ottawa of the prime minister’s Lower Churchill pledge, he will stickhandle more delicately past Harper’s seeming reluctance to cough up $47 million to help finance Halifax’s infamous downtown convention centre. Please!

And, among those many other supplications, Dexter will also pitch yet another provincial capital project: A new stadium.

If Dexter can convince Ottawa to fund any or all of the above, it will mean construction boots on the ground in time for the next provincial election.

Which could make Dexter’s hopes for re-election more likely.

Which, of course, is the idea.