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The Speaker of the House has ordered 36 people be temporarily banned from Nova Scotia’s Legislature.
In March, protesters interrupted House business by singing in the gallery, leading to an adjournment that delayed a final vote on the controversial provincial budget until the following day.
After the adjournment, some protesters escalated to jeering at MLAs in the chamber and blocking vehicles from leaving Province House grounds.
Speaker Danielle Barkhouse shut out the public from the legislature for a week to assess security, and said that participants in the protest, once identified, may be banned.
More than four months later, notices of bans are being delivered.
Christine Saulnier received one by registered mail last week.
“To me this is about silencing those who ask questions, who are trying to hold the government to account,” she said in an interview.
In an emailed statement, Barkhouse said the nature and motivation for interrupting legislative proceedings is immaterial. The only issue is that proceedings were interrupted, “and for that there should be consequences.”
“If you interrupt a court proceeding, if you interrupt a play, if you interrupt service at a fast food restaurant, you’re going to encounter consequences.
“This is no different. If you don’t enforce the rules, then those rules don’t exist. There’s a time and place for protest and the gallery of the legislature isn’t one of them,” Barkhouse said.
Passage of the Nova Scotia government’s budget bill stalled late Tuesday night when a group of singing protesters shut down the final vote to approve the budget.
Chief Clerk James Charlton said the length of bans varies depending on people’s behaviour. People who didn’t protest, but didn’t leave when the Speaker ordered the gallery to be cleared face a three-month ban. People who interrupted House business by demonstrating face a six-month ban, and people who also “verbally abused MLAs” face a one-year ban.
Bans take effect September 1. The House is scheduled to resume Sept. 8.
“In other jurisdictions such as Ontario, a protest like this would result in a lifetime ban from the gallery subject to a right of appeal after one year,” Charlton said in an email.
“The Speaker decided that this would be a more moderate response.”
Saulnier, director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said she was humming along in the legislative gallery as others sang. She’s banned for six months.
Saulnier said a ban from Province House may be appropriate under different circumstances – for instance, if there were an “actual threat” to elected officials – but she said she does not think this case meets the bar.
“I fundamentally reject that anybody that was there that evening did anything inside the legislature that should have been a concern to anybody.”
Charlton said the prohibitions were ordered by the Speaker after consultation with himself and the Sergeant-at-Arms, David Fraser. He said the decision came after an “extensive review of security footage from inside Province House combined with internal access database compilations and open-source data.”
Dalhousie Law professor Wayne MacKay said the law in this area is “probably a little surprising” to most people. While this may seem like a limit on freedom of expression that could be challenged in the courts, things are complicated by parliamentary privilege.
“The Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] does not apply to that exercise of privilege in the legislative setting,” he said in an interview.
The ways in which legislative officials exercise that privilege seems to be “immune” to court challenge, he said, even though such immunity contradicts the rule of law.
“That appears to be the state of the law in Canada at this time,” he said.
But he added that there is no immunity from these bans being debated in the court of public opinion.
“Quite apart from the legal limits, I think it is a bit disturbing when people are banned from the legislative assembly, the people’s house, for as long as a year,” said MacKay.
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