As the Nova Scotia government moved at warp speed through the sitting at Province House, the leader of the Official Opposition had had enough.
The government doesn’t like to be held accountable, that leader said, and wanted to avoid scrutiny.
The year was 2020. The leader of the Official Opposition was Tim Houston.
“This government doesn’t want to be here,” the PC leader told reporters as then-premier Stephen McNeil and his Liberal government rushed their budget through a 14-day sitting.
“This is the place where opposition parties, where media, where Nova Scotians can hold the government to account on their record, and they don’t want to be here.”
That was then, this is now.
On Friday, as the 2025 fall sitting wrapped after just eight days, Houston described his government’s own warp speed approach as efficient and productive.
It was an even shorter sitting for the premier, who missed two days to attend meetings in Ottawa and headed to a Halifax Tides soccer match upon his return Thursday while debate was ongoing at the House.
Opposition leaders Claudia Chender of the NDP and Derek Mombourquette of the Liberals had a less favourable view of the government’s handling of the sitting.
Houston and the Progressive Conservatives were attempting to get out as quickly as possible to avoid daily media and opposition scrutiny and before the public could fully appreciate what was happening, they said.
Regardless of one’s view on Houston’s approach, the government cannot be accused of taking its time this sitting.
The PCs called extended hours almost right away and five of the nine government bills passed were omnibus, meaning they combined changes to multiple pieces of legislation in a single bill.
That’s not something that has been common practice in Nova Scotia historically, with the exception of a piece of enabling legislation that comes with the budget each year, but it’s becoming a well-used tool in Houston’s toolbox.
There are times where it can make sense.
The PCs updated the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act this sitting. In doing so, they made changes to several pieces of related legislation at once.
Those changes included giving the privacy commissioner more independence and oversight for municipalities — but not order-making power as Houston previously promised. There were also changes around the rules for notification of privacy breaches and the PCs extended the timeline the government has to respond to requests.
In the case of the bill that dominated most of the debate during the sitting, however, the connections seemed less obvious.
Bill 127, dubbed the Protecting Nova Scotians Act, affected seven existing pieces of legislation and created one new one, all packaged in a single bill.
It included new rules around the collection of social insurance numbers, enhanced requirements for bouncers working at bars, greater latitude for health-care professionals to share someone’s personal health information if they fear a mental health crisis, and broadening the rules in the Crown Lands Act against blocking logging operations on Crown land and increasing the penalties for doing so.
Houston and his team struggled to articulate obvious connections for all of that, and it was difficult to ignore that the Crown Lands Act changes were coming as Mi’kmaw land protectors are currently at the site of a forestry operation in Cape Breton. Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton was up front with reporters on Friday that the government wants to see that forestry work resume.
But Rushton had little to say about his portion of Bill 127 during debate in the chamber and that, too, is a development that’s come with the Progressive Conservatives’ increasing embrace of omnibus legislation.
Custom is that during debate in the House the minister responsible for changes in a bill will stand and discuss them at some point, along with attempting to address concerns and questions raised by opposition MLAs and members of the public.
That is happening less and less as the PCs mash more and more legislation together. In the case of Bill 127, despite there being questions about most facets of the bill, most ministers who have their fingerprints on it did not speak in the House during debate.
In the absence of ministers standing in the chamber to account for the changes, the job of getting answers falls to reporters who cover the legislature. But that job becomes more difficult as bills get larger and more complex and there is less time at Province House to get through everything and track down the necessary information.
Pros and cons
Whether that’s by design of the government is left to the eye of the beholder.
But for Houston, being out of the legislature as soon as possible does have political advantages.
The short-term road ahead could be bumpy for the PCs, as they contend with a ballooning deficit, a proposed rate increase by Nova Scotia Power and a fraying relationship with First Nations leadership in the province.
Against that backdrop, not being available on a daily basis in downtown Halifax to the people whose job it is to cover him and his government means the premier and his team get to choose when and where they are available for questioning, and they have greater control over the messaging they share with the public.
Whether things wrapping up at the legislature as quickly as they just have is advantageous for the public, particularly those hoping to understand the government’s actions and intentions, is perhaps a different matter.
