Some weeks ago, discussing Tim Houston’s verbal assault on “special interests”, I speculated about whether the Premier would carry his hostile approach into the first full session of the legislative assembly. Now, as anyone who pays attention to Nova Scotia politics would know, we have the answer. It’s a resounding affirmative, as Houston took his Trump-lite act to a new level when the current session began on February 14.
During the four weeks since then there has been much commotion in Nova Scotia politics, including a noisy protest last week accusing the Houston government of undermining democracy. Public criticism focused initially on legislation – later withdrawn – to curtail the power of the auditor general. Added to that proposal are efforts to limit debate in the legislature, establish political control over communications, bring universities to heel, fire civil servants without cause, override municipal transportation policy, and the big one – lift bans on fracking and uranium mining.
When the House of Assembly resumes sitting after March break we will find out how many of those controversial measures are pushed through, continuing the established trend, through several administrations, of centralizing power and eroding government accountability. But whatever happens to those initiatives, the first session of the 47th legislature will be notorious for the way in which the re-elected Conservatives have already embraced the Trump-Musk “days of thunder” tactics in demolishing political norms in this province, starting with the Speech from the Throne.
As is the tradition with a newly-elected assembly, the session that began on Valentine’s Day started with a throne speech, a remnant of our colonial past or our proud British parliamentary tradition – take your pick. The speech is composed by the government but read by the Lieutenant Governor, in this case the recently-appointed former Halifax Mayor Mike Savage.
The affable Lt-Gov Savage mouthed some of the feel good bromides and soaring aspirations that traditionally make up the bulk of such speeches. But he was also obliged to read excerpts that came off, on Cupid’s big day, more like My Bloody Valentine than the movie version of Romeo and Juliet. The vilification of those development-skeptic “special interests” that began with a leaked memo and continued with a front-page ad in the Chronicle-Herald featured prominently – and incongruously – in the throne speech.
The Lt-Gov intoned nonsense about how our economy has “become captured by special interests” who have been given “vetoes that impoverish our fellow Nova Scotians,” ending with a call that sounded ominously like vigilantism. “We must not let special interests polarize our province at the expense of our fellow Nova Scotians. We must stand up for the interests of our fellow Nova Scotians.”
I can’t say for sure that using the throne speech to attack a specific group or idea is unprecedented – we’ve got 265 years of history to go through to figure that out. However, while some recent throne speeches – especially during the first term of the McNeil Liberals – have ventured into partisan territory, I would challenge any Houston government apologist to find anything remotely resembling the tone of a throne speech that in places came across more like a Poilievre rally than an outline of a government’s legislative priorities.
Many MLAs – as well as members of the public – may not have known what to expect in a speech from the throne, especially the 20-plus newcomers from the PCs and NDP. Even members elected for the first time in 2021 would have little history with the ritual, given that the Houston government began it’s rule with a throne speech in 2021 but dispensed with the exercise thereafter.
That unfamiliarity with past practice may explain why there has been so little reaction to that Valentine’s day spectacle: the traditional 15-gun salute prelude, followed by an escort of armed forces top brass who joined a group of high court judges and a chamber of MLAs to hear a Lieutenant Governor in a be-medalled century-old military uniform read an untraditional speech attacking a group of citizens. It’s like going to church and finding the devil has taken over the pulpit.
But as unseemly as it was, the throne speech invective was mild compared with the tirades against those “special interests” that a few days later dominated the budget speech, that other traditional staple of responsible government.
Although he brought down a budget featuring a deficit of at least $600 million and a rise in net debt of $1 billion, Finance Minister John Lohr’s speech glossed over such fiscal challenges and devoted more time to attacking the “special interests” than anything else.The speech that Lohr read into the record suggested that not only were the actions of these people impoverishing Nova Scotians, they were condemning their fellow citizens to early graves.
“Allowing special interests to control policy has kept too many Nova Scotian families locked in the cycle of poverty,” Lohr recited. “When we give small groups a veto over development, it costs years off the lives of our fellow Nova Scotians…Better incomes lead to longer and healthier lives. It means more time with grandchildren, more opportunities for the next generation, and less pressure on our health care system.”
There is more in the speech in a similar vein, but I was gob-smacked by the following supercilious balderdash that blames those “small groups” for among other things, forced child labour.
We want lumber, but special interests don’t want us harvesting here. We want solar panels and electric vehicles, but special interests don’t want us to mine the building blocks of this technology here. This attitude forces us to rely on others, and forces democratic nations to rely on supply chains full of human rights and environmental abuses. When we refuse to mine cobalt here, it is mined elsewhere, and frequently in places with fewer protections for the environment and workers. It happens in places where child labour is widespread and children are exposed to toxic dust. Forced labour, low wages, violence, and environmental damage: When someone says, “Use it but don’t mine it,” that is the outcome.
The outsized weight of special interests and the professional protestor class ends. We are ready to stand up for you, for your families, for the hope that our children can have a better life than ours. We want prosperity for this generation and for every generation that follows. We want a province that is resilient and self-reliant. We want to wake up one day no longer needing equalization payments.
Unlike throne speeches which have traditionally been bland and boring, some partisan shots can be expected during a budget speech. But it is doubtful there has ever been a budget speech like Lohr’s devoting so much space to divisive ranting against imaginary bogeymen. The vibe of the three budget speeches of Lohr’s immediate predecessor stand in stark contrast. In 2022 Alan McMaster introduced what he described as “a compassionate budget…a budget that brings people back together.” In 2023 he said “this budget is about empowering people.” And in his final budget before resigning to run federally McMaster thanked staff in his department, PC MLAs for contributing their ideas “and for the important role opposition members play in asking questions about this budget.”
Tim Houston would have Nova Scotians believe that the change in the tone of his government is the result of Trump’s re-election and his tariff threats, but that doesn’t wash. As discussed here hyper-partisanship was evident before and during the fall election campaign. Pre-campaign it was the series of disingenuous attacks against the Trudeau Liberals – on the carbon tax, asylum seekers, the Isthmus of Chignecto and so on. And the campaign was unique in the way the PCs went after individual candidates from the other parties in pursuit of Houston’s stated ambition to win all the seats in the legislature. Now, with a super majority in hand, Houston appears intent on governing as though he had indeed won all 55 seats, dismissing opposing views, whether voiced in the legislature or in civil society.
As he did in the case of the auditor general, Houston may end up backing down on a few more of the contentious items in the package of legislation that has arrived during Nova Scotia’s version of Trumpian “days of thunder.” Negative public reaction may be enough to convince him that unity is essential to getting us through perilous times and that compromise is therefore in order. And violating conventional norms by using the throne speech and the budget speech to turn Nova Scotians against one another may become a one-off, a bad idea never to be repeated. As a long-ago CBC reporter used to say, “we’ll be watching.”
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