Today’s editorial from The Coast

It appears premier Tim Houston is about to do something he’s had quite a bit of practice with recently: walk back sweeping changes that his government sought to pass. First, Houston withdrew widely-panned changes to the Auditor General Act that would have given the province the power to fire Nova Scotia’s top watchdog without cause and keep her reports out of the public eye. (The Coast’s Lauren Phillips dove into the story last week—take the time to read her report if you haven’t already.) Yesterday, Houston relented on his government’s plan to limit access to reporters at Province House by scrapping scrums in favour of pre-vetted interviews across the street. After pressure from CBC News, AllNovaScotia and other outlets, the premier will now scrum without a moderator, at the legislature and with opposition members present.

The main thing I’ll be keeping my eye on, though, is a comment Houston made during question period this week. Last week, the governing Tories tabled a massive bill that would, among other things, amend the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The changes would allow departments to refuse access requests from the public that they deemed “trivial, frivolous or vexatious,” and require applicants to include “sufficient particulars” in their requests—changes that Nova Scotia’s outgoing freedom of information commissioner, Tricia Ralph, said “poses risk to access rights to Nova Scotians.” She’s right. https://newsletter.thecoast.ca/p/black-on-screen?_bhlid=c06439d43308ecc090df5e6e5f68e6d6401a70e3&utm_campaign=black-on-screen&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=newsletter.thecoast.ca

So it looks like when we fight back against these authoritarian moves of The Honourable Tim Houston, he caves. That means we need to keep alert to these autocratic decisions, the obfuscation of detail necessary for the public to understand the basis for his decisions, and openly express our opposition to what it is he’s proposing. We need to be loud enough to force a walk-back!