Nova Scotia MLAs call for a new way forward as fall sitting winds down

With the fall session of the Nova Scotia legislature poised to end sometime today, MLAs from all three parties are pledging to find a more constructive way of working with each other.

The session, which started on Oct. 12, quickly devolved into a protracted battle of wills between the Tories and Liberals, with the government extending hours to midnight most days and the Liberals using a multitude of delay tactics to fill many of those hours.

But after weeks of extended hours, long debate, filibustering and sometimes frigid relations between government and opposition MLAs, the proceedings took a cordial turn on Wednesday.

The filibustering came to an end, the government agreed to pass two pieces of opposition legislation — one to mark a day for sickle cell awareness and the other to mark an awareness month for endometriosis — and bills that had been stalled started moving briskly along, setting the table for the fall sitting to wrap up today.

Government House leader Kim Masland said the legislature has not worked well this session and representatives for the three parties need to meet to find a new way forward.

"It's something that I think desperately needs to be done," she told reporters.

"We're all in this place for the same reason and that's to do the work of the people. What happened this session, to me, is not doing the work of the people."

Masland and Premier Tim Houston have expressed frustration at the Liberals using filibuster tactics to keep the legislature sitting. The Liberals have repeatedly called for recorded votes on motions, a move that halts business for up to an hour. In some of those cases, they would then vote with the government.

"To me it's a waste of time, it's a waste of taxpayers' dollars," said Masland, who defended the long hours as a means of moving the government's agenda along.

"This House is to debate policy, it's to debate legislation to make sure that we're doing good things for Nova Scotians."

Liberal deputy House leader Patricia Arab made no apologies for the way her caucus approached the session.

"Our job is not to oppose, our job is to hold account," she told reporters.

The extended time at the legislature has meant more question periods and more opportunities to probe issues facing the province and the way the government is responding, said Arab.

But she agreed with Masland that everyone must work together to improve how things operate.

Arab, a member of the former Liberal government, said that in her 10 years as an MLA the legislature has not worked the way it should.

"I don't think that it needs to be as difficult as both government and opposition tend to make it at times and there has to be a way for us to be able to come together and everybody come out a winner in terms of what the legislative goals are going to be," she said.

"There's a way that you can actually negotiate and work and be respectful of one another and move forward to make sure that everybody has had a good session."

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that could start with the legislature adopting a working calendar that outlines when the fall and spring sessions will take place and the hours MLAs will sit.

Chender said the last few weeks at the legislature amounted to "a standoff between the two worst ways of doing things."

"The worst way of doing things as a government, which is to have total disregard for the actual content of the legislation — how it's debated and what the bill looks like in the end and how the public understands it — and the worst in a way of tools available to the opposition, which is endless delay, which of course frustrates everyone and makes this a difficult place sometimes."

While the NDP would some times use delays, Chender said the tactics were reserved for bills they believed the government was trying to rush through without giving the public enough time to understand them or contemplate the implications. She pointed to bills related to housing development in Halifax Regional Municipality and a new service agreement with the rest of the province's municipalities, as examples. 

Compared to other provinces, Chender said Nova Scotia's legislature stands out to her as the "least thoughtful, democratic and human-friendly way of dealing with government business." She said her caucus would participate in any efforts to change that.

"I hope this has been a wakeup call to all parties that, you know, this is what it looks like when it goes all the way off the rails, and it doesn't really serve anyone."

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