At the heart of the various rationalizations Premier Stephen McNeil offers for why his government is skirting the law to avoid facing the legislature lies the dangerous fallacy that the place is superfluous.
McNeil’s political calculation — and the real reason he’s comfortable dismissing the legislature — is that most Nova Scotians don’t care if the house sits or not. While that may be true, a leader who believes in parliamentary democracy would be trying to dispel such apathy, rather than cynically feed it.
The cornerstone of the Westminster parliamentary system — ours — is that the government is accountable to the legislature.
McNeil is slithering through a loophole in the House of Assembly Act to satisfy the letter of the law, while betraying its spirit in order to avoid accountability, all the while chipping away at the aforementioned cornerstone, either in blissful ignorance or autocratic glee.
The Act requires that the legislature sit at least twice annually, basically in the spring and fall.
McNeil and company are dodging the requirement for a fall session by calling the house together on Dec. 18 to prorogue the current session — a pro forma exercise usually measured in minutes.
McNeil’s story — a fittingly tall tale — begins with the bizarre assertion that there’s no point in the legislature sitting this fall because Liberals are busy trying to figure out which of the three guys running to replace him is the least bland and, let’s face it, that’s not going to be easy.
Any law passed this fall would, according to McNeil, “create a path” that the next Liberal leader and premier may not want to follow.
That tells us that McNeil believes his government has completed its agenda, at least in the legislature. If so, the premier will depart public life with a litany and a legacy of broken promises. But that’s for another day.
Embedded in the notion that no new legislation should be passed is a wilful or worse misapprehension that the legislature exists to do the government’s bidding.
Granted, a majority government — and McNeil retains a bare majority — dictates what bills pass, but the role of the legislature that the premier conveniently chooses to disregard is that cornerstone principle that the government — even his government — must be accountable to the people’s representatives in the House of Assembly — the legislature.
Which brings us to the second part of McNeil’s tall tale, where we find his assertion that the legislature is, basically, superfluous.
McNeil maintains — with a straight face — that he’s been held accountable by participating in carefully orchestrated encounters with the news media.
Is it possible he doesn’t get it? It’s actually more likely that he’s relying on what must be a low regard for Nova Scotians and assuming we don’t get it.
I apologize in advance for the following rudimentary civics lesson and recognize that you don’t need it, but because Nova Scotia is governed by people who obviously do, here goes.
There’s a plaque at Province House — that’s where the Nova Scotia legislature doesn’t meet — commemorating the birth of responsible government in the British Empire. That happened right here in Nova Scotia in 1848, so we’ve had a good 172-year run.
Responsible government, by definition, is responsible to the people. In our system, the government fulfills that duty by being responsible — and accountable — to the elected representatives of the people and, in Nova Scotia, that’s the members of the legislature.
Journalists are no substitute for the legislature. No one votes for journalists and, speaking purely for myself, no one should.
One of the many troubling trends of the 21st century is the decline of democracy worldwide, measured in painstaking detail by outfits like Freedom House and the Varieties of Democracy Project. They’ve tracked the steady rise of autocratic and authoritarian tendencies in nations that were — and many that still qualify as — liberal democracies.
The battle to turn back that troubling tide is almost a binary choice. You’re either part of the problem — Donald Trump — or part of the solution.
McNeil’s made his choice. His disrespect for the vital role of the legislature to hold his government accountable damages that most essential of all our democratic institutions.
He’s sending the message that the legislature doesn’t really matter and if the legislature doesn’t matter why would anyone bother voting to decide who sits there.
Voter turnout in Nova Scotia’s last general election sunk to an all-time low, with less than 54 per cent of eligible voters casting ballots.
Rather than combatting the apathy reflected in that dismal turnout, McNeil fuels it, even counts on it.
