Nova Scotia legislature's fall sitting highlighted by weird twists
Jean Laroche | CBC News | Posted: December 18, 2015 1:42 PM | Last Updated: December 18, 2015
From secret recordings to a snubbing and overnight debates, it's been far from a routine sitting
Even by Nova Scotia standards, this sitting of the Nova Scotia Legislature has been a weird one.
It started with a focus on secret recordings by a former Liberal cabinet minister and ended with the party in power bending over backwards trying to appease a deaf man snubbed by Liberal members of a legislature committee.
Andrew Younger got the ball rolling by releasing a recordings of a conversation he had with the premier's chief of staff Kirby McVicar last February.
It included some choice words by McVicar describing reporters.
"You've got to face these animals at some point," he said. "Eventually they're all going to scurry."
But it's the second recording, sent to the premier's office which it subsequently released, that did the most damage.
It included what appeared to be an offer by Kirby to get Younger's wife Katia a government job.
Kirby sealed his fate by trying to discredit Younger by talking about his medical problems.
Liberals also created their own problem when a deaf man requested the right to speak to the law amendments committee this week.
When Robert Tupper showed up in the last half hour of the committee hearings on Wednesday, rather than simply afford him his 10 minutes to present, Liberal committee members instead debated, then voted to block his appearance.
To make matters worse, those Liberals blew the first vote.
The Liberal chair compounded the problem by orchestrating a do-over, in front of an ever incredulous packed public gallery.
The premier's office was left scrambling to repair what was obviously a public relations mess.
The solution?
Another do-over, this time a special but purely symbolic sitting of the law amendments committee to hear Tupper's concerns.
The snubbed Tupper, in turn, snubbed that meeting.
A perhaps fitting end to what was a strange fall sitting of political intrigue and partisan pratfalls.