Five Progressive Conservative MPs voted against opposition attempts during Thursday’s meeting of Nova Scotia’s law amendment committee to add a child care fund to a bill that blocks upcoming politicians’ salary increases.
The House bill would block a binding 12.6 percent pay increase recommended in a report by an independent pay review panel. This would be the first increase in MLAs in about a decade. All three parties said they supported rejecting the wage increase.
The bill only addresses the pay raise, but New Democrat MP Lisa Lachance noted the report also makes non-binding recommendations designed to make the House more accessible to a more diverse group of people. Among the recommendations is a fund to cover childcare for MLAs when they do House business and an inquiry into why a seat reserved for a Mi’kmaw representative was never filled.
“I’m actually disappointed that you’re going to call the House and you haven’t actually spent some time on the other critical issues raised in this report, binding or non-binding,” Lashans told Tory MPs sitting across the table.
“Public Trick”
Tory MLAs Trevor Boudreau, Chris Palmer, Kent Smith, Dave Ritsey and Brad Johns, the committee chairman, voted against Lachance’s amendment. They also voted against a similar amendment by Liberal MLA Brendan Maguire, who, along with the call for a childcare fund, wanted consultation with Mi’kmaw legal scholars to investigate why no one had ever taken the designated Mi’kmaw seat .
Maguire said he believes the only reason Premier Tim Houston called the legislature to address the wage increase was to curry favor with the public. The government’s bill also includes cutting the prime minister’s salary by about $11,200. Like LaChance, Maguire said he was concerned the government was not interested in addressing the other recommendations in the report.
“It was a public relations stunt,” he said. “I think [the government] they thought they could come in and get a hit in the polls.”
The Tory MLA says the work is already being done
Smith said the government did not see the need to support a special childcare fund for MLAs because a program to create universally affordable day care was already in motion. He said he trusted his colleague Carla McFarlane, the minister of L’nu affairs, to look into issues related to the special place of the Mi’kmaw.
Although Houston said he thinks the non-binding recommendations are worth considering, neither he nor any of his colleagues on the panel on Thursday provided a timeline for when that might happen. Opposition MLAs say they are worried these issues will be forgotten without a commitment to action.
Before discussing the amendments, the committee heard from two people on the bill.
The salary increase is reasonable
Hammonds Plains resident Tim Pratt said he’s concerned that blocking the pay raise represents a political game that ends up making it harder for some people to run for office.
Pratt said the job of MLA is an important, difficult, time-consuming task that requires compensation that reflects the seriousness of the position and makes it affordable for anyone who wants to put their name on the ballot.
“To be able to say, ‘You know what, I’m going to step out of my role and take less money to serve,’ is a privilege,” he told the committee.
“You have to be able to have the means and the financial security in your home to be able to take that pay cut that it would take to serve. … We have to understand that a pay freeze will further exacerbate this problem.”
MLAs make about $89,000 a year. The Prime Minister, party leaders, cabinet ministers and the Speaker of the House receive additional compensation.
Hammonds Plains resident Tim Pratt says MLAs freezing their own salaries and setting aside the recommendations of an independent panel is politicizing the issue. (Michael Gorman/CBC)
Pratt suggested that if MLAs don’t want the increase, they can donate the extra money, which amounts to about $11,000 a year, to charity. He said a further step that could address public concerns about MLA salaries would be to tie any increase to the amount of income allowances being raised.
“Income support has not kept up with the pace of inflation – not close – and all parties had a chance to link this to something, but no party did.”
The other presenter on Thursday was Jay Goldberg, the interim Atlantic director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Goldberg congratulated the MLA for the decision to forego the salary increase and reduce the salary for the position of premier. He also urged the MLAs to address the issue of bracket creep.
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