Houston government tightening its grip on legislative committee work

Progressive Conservative MLAs in Nova Scotia are increasingly using their majorities on legislature committees to reject witnesses, turn down or refocus topics and allow deputy ministers to choose who will represent their departments at meetings.

Shortly after coming to power in August 2021, Premier Tim Houston promised to roll back some of the restrictions imposed by the Liberals on the public accounts committee, once the most powerful standing committee at Province House.

At the time, Houston called it "the right thing to do in terms of accountability." 

"The decisions that a government makes, they should be willing to defend in public forums and my government will be no different," said Houston.

But just over two years after making those promised changes, things have soured. Routine agenda-setting meetings are now rife with political posturing and partisan sniping over committee business.

Cape Breton University political scientist Tom Urbaniak said he's worried.

"I've become increasingly discouraged with the low quality of committee deliberations. The committee proceedings have become too scripted, too curt," said Urbaniak, adding that he's also concerned about constraints on witnesses.

Controlling the agenda

Last fall, PC members of the public accounts committee blocked attempts by the opposition parties to have the union that represents paramedics testify, just before the release of a report on ambulance services by Auditor General Kim Adair.

The move drew harsh criticism, particularly from the Official Opposition. But when the Liberals were in government, they used their majority to block opposition topics from coming before the newly created health committee.

The PCs were the Official Opposition at that time and accused the Liberals of having blinders on and only being interested in "listening to the stories that they want to hear." 

In December, during a particularly testy agenda-setting meeting, the chair of the public accounts committee rebuked Liberal MLA Brendan Maguire for calling Progressive Conservative Nolan Young a "dirty little bugger" when he proposed removing a government department from a witness list.

And last week, opposition members looked exasperated as PC backbenchers voted to change a title for an upcoming meeting of the health committee from what the NDP had proposed, which was "privatization of health care in Nova Scotia."

Instead, PC members chose "private-public partnerships in health care" because they felt the opposition topic "might be a little more misleading to the public of Nova Scotia."

Although opposition members reluctantly agreed to that change, they took a harder line on other motions to allow deputy ministers to decide for themselves if they should appear before committees.

For decades, deputy ministers have been regularly called to answer questions about their departments, the programs they administer and the money they spend.

Liberal MLA Kelly Regan called the motion to allow deputies to decide who to send to meetings an attempt "to shield [deputy ministers] from responsibility."

"This is the ranking civil servant responsible for whatever program, whatever department that we're talking about," the former cabinet minister told committee members at the Jan. 9 meeting. 

"These are the people who are responsible for these programs within government, and they should be here. It's part of their job."

New Democrat Susan Leblanc agreed.

"They are the ones who run those departments," said Leblanc. "They are the ones who should be able to best answer the questions."

But John White, the PC representative for Glace Bay-Dominion, took issue with the claim that he and his colleagues were providing cover for senior government officials. 

"We're not saying deputy ministers can't come," said White. "We're saying that we want to have the people who have the best information for it. The deputy ministers can gladly attend."

For his part, Urbaniak shares the opposition members' concerns.

"Although they will answer questions cautiously, as they should, it does give us a window on what sort of advice and information ministers are getting," he said. "More junior public servants are not well placed to shine light on that sort of thing."

Urbaniak also takes issue with placing any "awkward or artificial constraint" on witnesses who come before a legislative committee.

"Excluding witnesses often excludes information, often excludes things from coming to public light," he said.

Rather than continuing to place restrictions on the committees' work, he offered this bit of unsolicited advice to the party in power: "Let the committees breathe. Let interesting things happen in the committees. Let ideas bubble up in the committees."

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