Andrew Younger's secret recording dominates question period

Ousted Liberal cabinet minister Andrew Younger wasn't at the legislature, but his ears must have been burning because every single question from the opposition benches on Friday was about him and a secret recording he made last winter.

On the recording, the premier's chief of staff Kirby McVicar is heard talking to Younger about his "path back" into cabinet. At the time, Younger was on a forced leave of absence from cabinet and facing the possibility of testifying at the trial of a former girlfriend and ex-Liberal staffer who was charged with assaulting him.

McVicar suggests during the recorded conversation that the court case is one of the obstacles Younger is facing before he can get his cabinet job back.

"There's a couple of things that are on that path. And the first one is this ... the end comes to the legal situation that has arisen around. And hopefully that doesn't go ... you know ... it gets tossed and that's the anticipation, and great," McVicar said on the recording. 

Question period

Opposition leaders wanted to know Friday if there was a link between that February offer and Younger's decision last week to invoke parliamentary privilege to avoid testifying.

"He offered him a way back to cabinet if the trial went away," said PC Leader Jamie Baillie. "That's the issue here and the premier should at least be upfront with Nova Scotians about what he knew about that."

"Did the premier's chief of staff really use the offer of a cabinet position to get Mr. Younger to either shut up or do whatever it took to make that trial go away?"

Interim NDP leader Maureen MacDonald had similar concerns and also wanted to know if the chief of staff was operating on direct orders.

"It's unclear really if Mr. McVicar was representing the premier when he outlined the path back to cabinet," she said, adding it was important to get to the bottom of "the extent to which the premier's office was involved in massaging the process that led to Younger not going to court."

'It doesn't make sense'

Premier Stephen McNeil dismissed any suggestion there was a link between the two events.

He saw a fatal flaw in Baillie's assertion that making the court case go away was a precondition to Younger's return to cabinet.

"He went back in cabinet while the proceedings were still before the court," the premier said.

"If Mr. Baillie was correct, why was he back in the executive council before it went away? They just — it doesn't make sense."

As to MacDonald drawing a similar conclusion, McNeil said his office was told by Younger the night before he was supposed to testify that he would be using parliamentary privilege, but he says no one in the office actually knew what that meant.

"I didn't know," he said. "90 per cent of the members of this House didn't know."