Nova Scotia Speaker working to identify, ban some protesters who disrupted vote

A rowdy protest is part of democracy and should not result in the public being denied access to the Nova Scotia legislature for more than one week, say opposition parties and a Halifax journalism professor.

Province House has been closed to the public since March 25, the day after protesters sang and yelled from the gallery to delay a vote related to the new budget. Danielle Barkhouse, Speaker of the Nova Scotia legislature, has said the building will reopen when an investigation into the incident is complete — but she didn’t know when that would be.

The demonstration followed weeks of protests in front of the legislature over budget cuts for arts, culture and tourism, and for Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian communities.

Barkhouse has said that shortly after the gallery protest, some people blocked an elected member from leaving the parking lot. The legislature must remain closed to the public for now, she said last week, because elected members and staff deserve a workplace “free from threats.”

2:14 Nova Scotia budget has officially passed, as protesters continue to show concern

But protests like the one that took place March 24 at Province House are “just part of democracy,” Lisa Taylor, a professor at University of King’s College’s school of journalism, said in an interview Wednesday.

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The government’s decision to close the building, she said, “has got to be fake fragility …. And if it’s not, if it’s legitimate that government members were really that troubled by the protesters’ response, then this is just not the line of work for them.”

Taylor was a CBC journalist covering the legislature in 1994 when hundreds of construction workers stormed Province House to prevent the reading of a budget speech. What happened last week, she said, “was nothing compared to what (former premier) John Savage’s government endured when trade unions took over the house. And there wasn’t so much clutching of pearls then.”

In April 1994, she continued, “I swear it didn’t feel like another person could have been squeezed into the legislature that day, the public gallery was so packed … I was on the premier’s heels as he was rushed out of the building.”

Taylor said the legislature was briefly closed, but within a day or two it was reopened to the public. “Things went right back to normal.”

For her part, Barkhouse has said that during incidents last week inside and outside the legislature, elected members appear to have been “targeted solely to frighten, threaten or intimidate them. This is unacceptable.” On Tuesday, she said some of the protesters on March 24 may be banned from the legislature and an investigation would determine who did what during the protest and what sort of consequences they will face.

The Speaker has ramped up the number of police and security agents within and surrounding Province House, and she said the front desk will  soon have technology to scan IDs and capture visitors’ picture, name and address. Currently, only names and addresses are collected by security.

On Wednesday, Opposition NDP Leader Claudia Chender said the Progressive Conservative government is using last week’s protest as an excuse to avoid hearing direct criticism from the public.

“This is not the first time people have yelled from the gallery at Province House …. People get upset and we trust the law enforcement and the cameras and the metal detectors and all of the other measures in this house to keep us safe when it does,” she said.

“There is no excuse for keeping this house closed.”

Chender said she has never felt unsafe within the legislature, and interim Liberal leader Iain Rankin said the same.

“It’s important that government owns the decisions that they make and that they face the public. That’s not what we’re seeing here. We’re seeing a gradual withdrawal from public scrutiny,” Rankin said.

Both opposition leaders called for the house to reopen.

Premier Tim Houston said Wednesday he likes when members of the public are in the legislature, but “the behaviour that happened on that particular night, I guess was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was way, way over the top.”

Houston, however, wasn’t at the legislature on March 24 — he was at an energy conference in Texas. He said he saw videos of people behaving badly, including of protesters leaning over the gallery railing and screaming at elected officials.

“Those particular individuals have definitely had a wide-ranging impact on all Nova Scotians, and that’s a shame. They should be embarrassed of themselves,” the premier said.

Tom Urbaniak, political scientist at Cape Breton University, says the disruption of legislative process should not be encouraged, “because when taken to an extreme, it prevents legitimate lawmaking from happening.”

In an interview Wednesday, he said the province ought to address security concerns quickly and reopen to the public.

“We can’t have a situation where the Speaker can keep telling the public, ‘Well, your fellow citizens ruined it for you’ …. You can’t be in a situation where you’re punishing the general public because of the actions of a few.”