No. 105, Financial Measures (2021) Act - Second Reading

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and briefly address the Financial Measures (2021) Act. As usual, and as described by the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, the majority of this bill contains amendments required to other Acts of the Legislature for the budget to be enacted. The minister spoke of some of those.

We've spoken in the past to the contents of this budget and our opinions thereof, and normally I would stand in my place at this time and reiterate a few of those points. But instead, Mr. Speaker, I will focus on the same clause that my colleague the member for Northside-Westmount just spoke of, which is Clause 8.

Clause 8 increases the capacity for the provincial government to borrow money at any time, without having to bring the matter before the Nova Scotia Legislature. It is emblematic of the pattern we've seen over the past eight years of increasing disregard for our democratic systems and oversight, concentration of power, including crucial borrowing and spending power in Executive Council.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government authorized additional appropriations and used this not-yet-enumerated borrowing power on two separate occasions. Mr. Speaker, we don't seek to constrain the authority of government to spend in the face of an emergency, like a pandemic. The Minister of Finance and Treasury Board has said that the legal opinion they received was that this was allowed under existing rules, but that there was a desire to amend the legislation to allow it in the future or, as the member for Northside-Westmount so aptly and somewhat ironically put it, to bring clarity.

I understand, as I said, Mr. Speaker, that there may be occasions when government must act quickly to respond to emergencies and when financial resources will be required in that action, but this enumerated borrowing power is not restricted to emergency situations. In fact, there are no conditions at all that would constrain the government in their ability to borrow astronomical amounts of money without anyone in this Chamber ever knowing about it.

I would think that the government would respect the democratic function of this House enough that it would perhaps see our very existence as something of an impediment to this, but this bill clearly shows that that is not the case.

Given the requirement, the opinion that this government has received that this power must be clarified, it is our opinion that the very least that could be done, in the name of responsible government, is to file additional borrowing appropriations with the Legislature forthwith. That would bring clarity - and its synonym, transparency - to some of the functionings of the Department of Finance and Treasury Board and of our government.

The Minister of Finance and Treasury Board has expressed the view on a few occasions now that the primary means of providing checks and balances on government spending is our four- to five-year election cycle. Our caucus disagrees, Mr. Speaker. We disagree in principle, based on the fundamental principles of parliamentary democracy, but this disagreement is strengthened by our electoral environment, a first-past-the-post system where more Nova Scotians voted for Parties other than the Party that currently holds power.

Members of the Legislative Assembly are elected to represent their constituents in this House and to hold the government accountable. Our tools for this task are debate and questioning. The adversarial nature of the work that we do here is an anathema to some, but it is our system. In its best form, it can be well and professionally executed by people who disagree as passionately and as respectfully as they care about their communities.

A government that is not publicly willing to argue or even disclose their case and answer those questions is a government we might want to be wary of. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I look forward to hearing more on this at Law Amendments. (Applause)