Halifax lawyer calls fines in Nova Scotia’s new education bill ‘vindictive’ and ‘childish’ towards union

A labour and employment lawyer in Halifax is weighing in on the Education Reform Bill, which is currently making its way through the Nova Scotia legislature.

The contentious bill will eliminate English-language elected school boards across the province on March 31.  It will also see principals, vice-principals and other senior supervisory staff move out of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU) to a new association called the Public School Administrators Association.

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In addition, the bill would impose a substantial increase to some of the current fines for illegal job action. For unions, the penalty would rise to $100,000 a day from $10,000 a day. The individual fine for teachers would remain $1,000 a day.

“Aside from the legalities of it, it seems sort of very vindictive and a way of getting back at the union for daring to stand up,” said lawyer Ron Stockton.

“It seems rather childish actually.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "Aside from the legalities of it, it seems sort of very vindictive and a way of getting back at the union for daring to stand up," said lawyer Ron Stockton.</p><p>"It seems rather childish actually."

Stockton said Premier Stephen McNeil is using the government’s legislative power to unbalance the playing field.

“We have a regime in place that’s been in place for a number of years, a long time,” Stockton said. “It’s not that there’s been a lot of violations of that section of the Trade Union Act and up to now, when he’s triggered this debate.”

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McNeil says he disagrees with the belief that the hike in fines is punitive in nature. He told media after the bill’s introduction that the increase will bring the fees in line with what other unions would face if they took illegal job action.

But Stockton says the increase is another example of the McNeil government “breaking the social contract.”

“We have rules, we have contracts in place, we have laws under which we operate but for this government, none of that seems to matter. They don’t have to play by the rules because they can make them,” he told Global News.

“We’ve had back-to-work legislation, wage restraint legislation, which is all bad enough but this sort of is a step further.”

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Stockton says what makes this bill different is that it is directed at a specific group of people — in this case, unionized public school teachers in the province — and says that McNeil is disrupting the democratic process.

“People have the right to associate, the right to strike under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a right to expect that their laws will be upheld and respected. (McNeil) started by introducing legislation to avoid the ability to bargain collectively, which is probably in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and now in support of that, he’s targeting these people with huge fines.”

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As for what happens next, that’s still unknown.