A tale of two cities

How democracy doesn't work in NL

NL Premier Andrew Furey took a guided tour of pipes in a building in South Korea rather than deal with what he called an “existential threat” to his province and his country. In Nova Scotia, Premier Tim Houston passed new laws.

All governments in Canada are supposedly in favour of free trade among provinces.

But not all provinces are the same.

The difference between Newfoundland and Labrador on the one hand and Nova Scotia on the other shows how the political system in Newfoundland and labrador doesn’t work for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

Just look at Halifax and St. John’s.

Bill 36 appeared in the Nova Scotia legislature on 25 February 2025. It’s called the Free Trade and Mobility within Canada Act. Handful of sentences, literally. easy to understand. Lets goods and professional and trades people move into and out of Nova Scotia without unnecessary hindrance, as long as it involves a province with the same rules.

One section said originally that someone who held a licence to practice a profession or skilled trade in one province would automatically have the same licence in Nova Scotia.

Bit of a problem as for some professions and trades there is a need to have someone locally registered so that people know who is legally practicing at any given moment. This is especially important where there’s a chance of a malpractice complaint. Besides, the delay in registering someone from another province in Nova Scotia is typically measured in hours for some professions to a couple of days in another. No big hang-up and it’s all about administration. A few simple changes and the system can trim timelines down even further.

A group of regulated professions realized the original wording of Bill 36 would cause them huge problems. They asked for and got a meeting with Premier Tim Houston before the draft law moved from being announced and made public to being debated in the legislature. The Premier met with them, learned some things the people who drafted the law wouldn’t have known, accepted their arguments and their simple solution to meet the government’s need, and promised an amendment. The amendment eventually appeared.

The Nova Scotia legislature has a standing committee of the House that reviews every new law as it goes through the House. Anyone with an interest in the law can appear in front of the committee or send in comments in writing. The folks who met the Premier also appeared in front of the committee. The politicians learned some new things along the way, the regulated professions and trades learned some new things, the public learned lots of new things, and everyone found a way to move forward with a problem fixed, simply.

Took about a month to fix the problems with the draft law and pass it through the House of Assembly.

A month.

And in that month, there was lots of discussion, most of it in public.

That’s public discourse.

There’s nothing fake about the authenticity and sincerity here.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the details of legislation appear in the morning of a day when the House is sitting. The only thing anyone outside government knows before then is the title of the draft law. The House sits fewer productive days now than it has in almost 30 years and most of what does pass through the House is lightweight administrative changes ot a handful of existing laws.

There’s a media briefing and a briefing for the opposition parties in the morning. This is the first time any of them will know what the draft law says.

They have only the time between the briefing and about 3:00 PM that same day to look through the law and see what it says (if they can figure it out), scribble down some notes, and get ready to debate it. reality is they have no time to find anyone with special knowledge to help them understand what may have been intentionally hidden or, as in the case of the 2008 expropriation, may be accidentally screwed up. Before 5:00 PM, the bill will be done and approved.

No public discussion.

No public awareness.

No committee to examine the bill in detail, hear feedback, fix mistakes, or make it better.

Any person or group interested in the law may not even know it has happened until it’s reported as passed by news media, if they report it at all.

Example: a draft law for regulated trades and professions passed the House of Assembly in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2022. There was no time to deal with any of it, including question whether it was even needed - it wasn’t - and the whole thing had no real impact on anyone. It was a sham. It passed the House in a couple of hours with no real debate.

Other draft laws aren’t shams and those pass through the House within a couple of hours, literally or maybe four hours spread out over two days, one right after the other. You can scan the Progress of Bills table for the legislature to see how it works.

Everyone in Canada knows what the Government of Nova Scotia is doing about the threat American tariffs pose.

No one anywhere, least of all in Newfoundland and Labrador, knows what the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is doing - if it is doing anything at all - on interprovincial free trade or anything else, not even the handful of business leaders the Premier and Deputy Premier chat with on video conference every now and again about the tariff impacts.

When they do find out, it will likely be after it’s too late to point out problems and mistakes or offer better ideas.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, there’s no public discourse.

There’s just the hypocritical call by the outgoing Premier who has wiped out public discourse that we need to “elevate” it.

All very Orwell and DoubleSpeak.

All very Trump.

And no likelihood the rigged leadership to replace Andrew Furey will bring back public discourse no matter how much we need it.

Period.

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