The Nova Scotia government has taken a giant step backward in accountability and transparency with the introduction this week of a contentious omnibus bill, political observers and access to information experts say.
Among other things, the bill will make it possible for Premier Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservatives to fire the province’s auditor general without cause, effectively eliminating the independence of a key officer of the legislature, said David Johnson, a professor of political science at Cape Breton University.
“It is an example of enormous and unwarranted executive overreach,” he said in an interview.
“There’s a desire from the premier to control the message … it’s sad that the premier is seeking to have this type of control, to turn an independent officer into an employee of the premier’s office …. It smacks of a control-mania.”
Houston, who is a chartered professional accountant, has argued that Nova Scotia is merely falling in line with other provinces — Manitoba and Alberta have similar legislation, which requires two-thirds of the legislature to approve such a firing. Houston’s Tories control more than two-thirds of the seats in the legislature after the party won 43 of 55 ridings in the Nov. 26 election.
On Thursday, Nova Scotia auditor general Kim Adair urged the government to withdraw the amended legislation, which would also give the government the power to withhold her public reports for reasons of “public interest.”
“The ability to remove the auditor general without cause, combined with the ability to control our public reporting, impacts the independence, integrity and objectivity of the office,” Adair told a news conference.
“These changes could mean any report the government doesn’t like wouldn’t be made public.”
The auditor general’s office has played a key role in keeping the government and all members of the legislature accountable for their actions.
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In February 2010, auditor general Jacques Lapointe released a bombshell report that exposed excessive and inappropriate spending of constituency funds. He found some members had used public money to pay for cameras, computers, extensive office renovations, custom-made furniture, a model boat and an espresso maker, among other things.
Four Nova Scotia politicians were charged in February 2011 after Lapointe asked the RCMP to investigate. All four later pleaded guilty to various charges, and the legislature’s spending and disclosure rules were overhauled.
In recent years, Adair has released a series of reports criticizing the government for spending money without approval from the legislature. The 2010 Finance Act is the only one of its kind in Canada. Earlier this month, Adair said extra-budget spending had risen to $7 billion over the last 10 years.
“(Adair) is defending the role of the legislature to be in control of the public purse,” Johnson said. “If they need extraordinary spending initiatives, then they should be bringing that to the legislature for approval, not dealing with financial management through executive fiat.”
On another front, the Houston government intends to use its majority to change the province’s freedom of information law to make it possible for the heads of public bodies to dismiss information requests for being frivolous, excessively broad or interfering with operations.
Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and Access Council of Canada, said the Tory government’s move reflects a broader trend in the country, where public bodies receiving access requests are being given more opportunities to ignore them.
“It mirrors what I’ve seen happening in other jurisdictions,” Polsky said in an interview from Calgary. “It gives the power to the public body to say, ‘No, we decided we won’t (respond to your access request) because we have decided your request is vexatious’ …. It gives them carte blanche.”
Polsky said Nova Scotia is copying the more restrictive rules in Alberta. “This is a monkey-see, monkey-do legislative landscape,” she said. “Whether it’s diminishing the public’s access to information … or diminishing the right to privacy …. Once one jurisdiction manages to get it passed into law, other jurisdictions point and say, ‘You see, they can do it.’”
Nova Scotia NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that aside from concentrating power in the premier’s office, Houston’s government is also limiting debate in the legislature.
“We are in the legislature so rarely,” Chender told a news conference. “We have such rare opportunities to move legislation that will help the lives of Nova Scotians, and we have spent all of our time … watching (the introduction of) legislative instruments that consolidate executive power.”
Attempts by governments to reduce public scrutiny and stifle criticism are becoming increasingly common, said Tom Urbaniak, a political science professor at Cape Breton University. “This populist movement that we’re seeing across the democratic world weakens institutions that can provide objective information in favour of spin and propaganda,” he said in an interview.
Urbaniak said there’s no doubt the auditor general has annoyed the government by repeatedly drawing attention to lax spending rules, and he agreed with the argument that the province’s access to information law is being undermined.
“We’re seeing a significant scaling back of the access to information regime in Nova Scotia,” he said. “It will make it much easier for the executive, the cabinet, to decide whether a request is too broad or frivolous or vexatious.”
He’s also noticed the lack of debate in the legislature.
“It seems the government will only keep the legislature going as long as it takes to pass these bills,” Urbaniak said. “Our House of Assembly seldom meets, if you compare it to most of the rest of the democratic world. We have a real case in Nova Scotia of an ailing democracy.”
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