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HALIFAX, MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2026

Sixty-fifth General Assembly

First Session

3:00 P.M.

SPEAKER

Hon. Danielle Barkhouse

DEPUTY SPEAKERS

Marco MacLeod, Tom Taggart, Julie Vanexan

THE SPEAKER « » : Please rise for the playing and singing of "O Canada."

[The national anthem was played.]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. We'll begin the Daily Routine.

PRESENTING AND READING PETITIONS

PRESENTING REPORTS OF COMMITTEES

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

HON. SCOTT ARMSTRONG « » : As Chair of the Committee on Public Bills, I am directed to report that the committee has met and considered the following Public Bills:

Bill No. 186 - Support for Fire Protection Services Act.

Bill No. 187 - Birthplace of Ice Hockey Act.

Bill No. 193 - Powering the Economy Act.

Bill No. 196 - Community Colleges Act (amended).

Bill No. 201 - Justice and Social Services Act.

Bill No. 203 - House of Assembly Act (amended).

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Bill No. 205 - Elections Act (amended) and House of Assembly Act (amended).

THE SPEAKER « » : Ordered that these bills be referred to the Committee of the Whole House on Bills.

TABLING REPORTS, REGULATIONS AND OTHER PAPERS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

LISA LACHANCE « » : Speaker, I beg leave to table a document relative to a member statement that I will make, entitled "Lunenburg Mayor Says Cutting Bluenose II Funding is the Wrong Move."

THE SPEAKER « » : The paper is tabled.

As Speaker of the House of Assembly and pursuant to Section 163 of the Elections Act, I am pleased to table Elections Nova Scotia Financial Information and Statistics 42^nd Provincial General Election, November 26, 2024, Volume 3.

The report is tabled.

STATEMENTS BY MINISTERS

GOVERNMENT NOTICES OF MOTION

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Minister of Health and Wellness.

RESOLUTION NO. 370

HON. MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas March is Endometriosis Awareness Month, dedicated to raising awareness of this condition that affects approximately 1 in 10 women and gender-diverse people in Canada; and

Whereas endometriosis is a chronic, often painful, difficult to diagnose condition that can have significant impact on someone's quality of life; and

Whereas governments, health care providers, researchers, and advocates continue to work together to raise awareness and improve access to care and treatment options for those affected while recognizing further work is needed;

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Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House join me in encouraging all Nova Scotians to learn more about endometriosis to enhance understanding and compassion for those living with this condition and to support continued efforts to improve awareness, diagnosis, care, and research.

Speaker, I ask for waiver of notice and passage without debate.

THE SPEAKER « » : Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

The honourable Minister of Acadian Affairs and Francophonie.

RESOLUTION NO. 371

HON. COLTON LEBLANC « » : Madame la Présidente, à une date ultérieure je demanderai l'adoption de la résolution suivante :

Attendu que le mois de mars est le Mois de la Francophonie au Canada et dans le monde, une période où l'on célèbre le patrimoine culturel, l'identité collective et la diversité de plus de 300 millions de francophones; et

Attendu que les communautés acadiennes et francophones contribuent à la vitalité et à la diversité culturelle qui renforcent les liens entre la Nouvelle-Écosse, le Canada et le reste du monde; et

Attendu qu'aujourd'hui nous continuons d'honorer, de protéger et de promouvoir le français et tout ce que cette langue représente y compris plus de 400 ans d'histoire en Nouvelle-Écosse;

Par conséquent, qu'il soit résolu que tous les membres de l'Assemblée législative se joignent à moi et aux Acadiens et aux Acadiennes, aux francophones de la province pour reconnaître le Mois de la Francophonie et pour rendre hommage au rôle important que joue le français dans le paysage culturel, éducatif et économique de la Nouvelle-Écosse.

Je demande l'adoption de cette résolution sans préavis et sans débat.

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

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Whereas March is recognized as Francophonie Month in Canada and around the world to celebrate the cultural heritage, collective identity, and diversity of more than 300 million French speakers; and

Whereas the Acadian and francophone communities contribute to the vitality and the cultural diversity, strengthening Nova Scotia's connections within Canada and internationally; and

Whereas today we continue to honour, protect, and elevate the French language and all that it represents, including more than 400 years of history in Nova Scotia;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of the House of Assembly join me and all Acadians and francophones in the province in recognizing Francophonie Month and honouring the significant role of the French in Nova Scotia's cultural, educational, and economic landscape.

Speaker, I request waiver of notice and passage without debate.

THE SPEAKER « » : There has been a request for waiver.

Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

Bill No. 214 - An Act to Amend Chapter 18 of the Acts of 2006, the Midwifery Act. (Susan Leblanc)

Bill No. 215 - An Act Respecting a Women's Health Strategy. (Claudia Chender)

Bill No. 216 - An Act to Increase the Caregiver Benefit. (Rod Wilson)

NOTICES OF MOTION

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Timberlea-Prospect.

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RESOLUTION NO. 372

HON. IAIN RANKIN « » : Speaker, I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas this government is making drastic cuts to 287 programs that Nova Scotians depend on; and

Whereas Nova Scotians are mobilizing to express their outrage over these funding cuts, layoffs, and service reductions; and

Whereas MLAs from all parties have expressed their concern about impacts of these cuts and the government's inability to explain why certain programs were chosen over others;

Therefore be it resolved that the House suspend its consideration of Bill No. 198, the Financial Measures (2026) Act, and let all spending cuts be referred to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to be examined and to establish the rationale for why the government chose those cuts, determine what the full impacts will be to Nova Scotians, and make recommendations back to the House before Bill No. 198 may be read for a second time.

Speaker, I request waiver of notice and passage without debate.

THE SPEAKER « » : There has been a request for waiver.

Is it agreed?

I hear several Noes.

The notice is tabled.

The honourable member for Dartmouth North.

RESOLUTION NO. 373

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : Speaker, I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas too many Nova Scotians are struggling to find homes they can afford, and this reality is having a clear impact on survivors of gender-based violence as family conflict and intimate partner violence are amongst the top causes of homelessness across this province; and

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Whereas members of the Transition House Association of Nova Scotia receive about 14 calls for help every single day and are almost always operating at 100 percent capacity in an effort to provide help to every individual who reaches out; and

Whereas investments in second-stage housing would alleviate the pressure on women's shelters and allow them to help women transition out of temporary crisis shelters into long-term-solution housing;

Therefore be it resolved that on a future day, the House shall debate the need for increased investment in second-stage housing to support survivors of gender-based violence.

Speaker, I request waiver of notice and passage without debate.

THE SPEAKER « » : There has been a request for waiver.

Is it agreed?

I hear several Noes.

The notice is tabled.

STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Clare.

[3:15 p.m.]

FRANCOPHONIE MO.: FRENCH CULTURE - CELEBRATE

RYAN ROBICHEAU « » : Madame la Présidente, aujourd'hui je voudrais souligner le mois de mars comme étant le Mois de la Francophonie. C'est l'occasion de célébrer les communautés francophones qui ont contribué à façonner la Nouvelle-Écosse depuis plus de 400 ans. Le thème de cette année « Active ta francophonie » invite les Néo-Écossais à célébrer notre culture francophone dans leur vie quotidienne.

De nos communautés acadiennes, aux écoles francophones, et aux organisations culturelles présentes dans toute la province, nos citoyens francophones ont contribué de manière inestimable au caractère et à l'esprit de la Nouvelle-Écosse. Afin de mettre davantage en valeur notre culture acadienne, notre gouvernement a officiellement proclamé le mois d'août Mois du patrimoine acadien, dont la première édition était célébrée dans le cadre du Congrès mondial acadien en 2024.

Je demande à tous les députés de se joindre à moi pour célébrer nos communautés francophones tout au long du mois de mars et de reconnaître le rôle qu'elles jouent pour faire de la Nouvelle-Écosse la province accueillante et diversifiée que nous sommes fiers d'appeler notre foyer.

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Speaker, I rise today to recognize March as Francophonie Month. This is the time to celebrate the French communities that have helped shape Nova Scotia for more than 400 years. This year's theme, "Active ta francophonie," is an invitation for Nova Scotians to celebrate our francophone culture in our daily lives.

From our Acadian communities to the French-language schools and cultural organizations seen across this province, our francophone citizens have contributed immeasurably to the character and spirit of Nova Scotia. To further highlight our Acadian culture, our government has officially proclaimed August as Acadian Heritage Month, celebrating the first one as part of Congrès mondial acadien in 2024.

I ask all members to join me in celebrating our francophone communities throughout the month of March and recognizing the role they play in making Nova Scotia the welcoming and diverse province we are all proud to call home.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

SUZY HANSEN « » : Speaker, I beg leave to make an introduction in regard to my member's statement.

THE SPEAKER « » : Please do.

SUZY HANSEN « » : Speaker and members of this House, I would like for folks to turn their head to the West Gallery, I have Esther Medley, who is in the gallery on the west side, and I like the west side. Esther is also a performer, but in regard to my member's statement, it's about her mother, Ms. Nona Medley. (Applause)

THE SPEAKER « » : Welcome to the House. We hope you enjoy your time here. Thank you for coming.

The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

MEDLEY, NONA: MULGRAVE PARK ICON - RECOG.

SUZY HANSEN « » : Speaker, Ms. Nona Medley is a proud African Nova Scotian senior who has dedicated nearly 24 years of service to Mulgrave Park as a resident building manager with the Nova Scotia Provincial Housing Agency since June 1, 2002. She has faithfully overseen 5261 Richmond Street and 109 Connor Lane, home to more than 100 families. Ms. Medley's work goes far beyond maintaining buildings. She is a lifeline to residents. She leads with dignity, respect, and compassion, supporting families of every background and every circumstance.

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Generations of Mulgrave Park have felt her steady presence as a problem solver, a counsellor, a protector, and often the first person people call in crisis. She decorates for the holidays, comforts families during difficult times, and remains a calm stabilizing force during moments of community crisis. She was recently recognized for over 20 years of service. Ms. Medley's career is more than employment. It is a lifelong investment in her community. She truly embodies the spirit of a Good Samaritan, and Mulgrave Park is stronger because of her unwavering commitment. I would like all members of this House to help me to recognize such an amazing community member, Ms. Nona Medley.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Timberlea-Prospect.

KEDY, JO-ANN: PEGGY'S COVE VIC - RECOG.

HON. IAIN RANKIN « » : I rise to recognize a constituent of mine, Jo-Ann Kedy, who has been providing essential public service at Peggy's Cove Visitor Information Centre for 16 seasons. During that time, Jo-Ann has stood at Peggy's Cove welcoming people from around the world, many seeing the ocean for the first time. Day after day, she helped people understand both the power and danger of the ocean so they could return home safely.

Last season alone, Jo-Ann and her colleagues welcomed more than 60,000 visitors. What Jo-Ann describes and what so many Nova Scotians recognize is that these centres provide far more than directions. They provide safety, connection, and a warm sense of belonging. VICs are places of human navigation and community care, where people learn about our history, our connection to the land and water, culinary delights, festivals, and the beauty of our province. Jo-Ann and her colleagues have now been told their services to support our tourism industry are no longer needed. Closing the Peggy's Cove Visitor Information Centre is not the Bluenoser's way of hospitality, and a google search will never replace the comfort and safety of a warm welcome from a real person.

I ask the members of the House to join me in thanking Jo-Ann Kedy for her service in reaffirming the importance of keeping Nova Scotia's welcome both strong and human.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cole Harbour.

ENDOMETRIOSIS AWARENESS MO.: LEG. RECOGNITION - REAFFIRM

HON. LEAH MARTIN « » : I rise today to bring awareness to an issue that affects millions of people worldwide. March is Endometriosis Awareness Month, which brings a focus on the 1 in 10 people with a uterus who have chronic pain and fertility issues, causing a profound impact on their quality of life.

In Nova Scotia, we continue to champion this cause. In 2023, the Legislature proclaimed the Endometriosis Awareness Month Act, making Nova Scotia one of the few jurisdictions in Canada to formally recognize the significance of this cause.

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The legislation is a meaningful step forward and signals to Nova Scotians living with endometriosis that they are seen, their voices are heard, and their experiences matter.

I ask all members to join me in recognizing Endometriosis Awareness Month and reaffirming our commitment to the Nova Scotians who live with this condition every day.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

SUPREME COURT RULING: BILL NO. 148 OVERTURNED - CELEBRATE

PAUL WOZNEY « » : I rise today to celebrate the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia's decision to throw out Bill No. 148, the crowning legislative achievement of Stephen McNeil's Liberal government, in its entirety, as unconstitutional.

Three members of this House - the MLA for Halifax Atlantic, the MLA for Sydney-Membertou, and the MLA for Timberlea Prospect - despite overwhelming public outcry that Bill No. 148 was illegal and immoral, chose party approval over standing up for what was just. Many feel they abused their roles as legislators to pass unjust and unconstitutional law that has harmed tens of thousands of Nova Scotians. They took the easy road of party solidarity, and they owe Nova Scotians an apology, not only for the harms to public sector workers and the services we all rely on for more than a decade but also for the massive cost the Province will now bear to make restitution.

On behalf of those affected, I say to those members that their actions were unconstitutional and vindictive. While affected Nova Scotians celebrate real justice 11 years late, I rise to say, loud and clear, they were wrong and shame forever on them.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River.

CLYKE, TINA: DEATH OF - TRIBUTE

HON. DAVE RITCEY « » : I rise today with a heavy heart to honour the life of Tina Clyke of Truro, who passed away unexpectedly in a tragic accident on February 2^nd. Tina was truly one of those special people whose kindness could be felt the moment you met her.

For 22 years at Sobeys, she was more than a dedicated employee. She was a friendly face, a steady presence, and someone who made others feel welcome and valued. Her warm smile and genuine care left a lasting impression on co-workers, customers, friends, and neighbours. Above all, Tina's deep love for her family and friends was the centre of her life. She will be deeply missed, and her memory will continue to shine brightly in the hearts of all who knew her and loved her.

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I want to send my sincere condolences to Zina, Gordie, and the entire Clyke family. May you find strength and comfort in the days ahead.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier.

ARTS AND CULTURE IND.: DEVASTATING CUTS - RECOG.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : This government budget slashes $14 million from arts and culture: 72 grant programs fully or partially cut, 12 out of 28 museums closing, and artisan schools eliminated. Nearly 14,000 Nova Scotians work in the culture sector, more than farming, fishing, and forestry combined, contributing $1.18 billion to our GDP annually. Just two years ago, this Province made historic investments into arts organizations on three-year funding agreements. Those agreements have now been broken with no warning and no time planning.

I stand in solidarity with my community of Cape Centre-Whitney Pier, all of Cape Breton, and all of Nova Scotia, who are being affected by these disastrous cuts. I hope that this government walks back this budget.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sydney-Membertou.

CHRISTMAS, SKYE MARIE: COMM. SUPPORT - THANKS

HON. DEREK MOMBOURQUETTE « » : Speaker, I rise in my place to recognize a wonderful woman from Membertou, Skye Marie Christmas. She is a mother of three and she cooks for many in the community. It is a passion of hers. She started off small but now she does whatever she can to support those in the community that who to eat well.

She works at the Circle of Care in Membertou and is a disability services coordinator and I can tell you that I love seeing her positivity on social media all the time. I rise in my place to recognize Skye Marie Christmas, thank her for all the work that she does, and thank her for being wonderful to all the people that she feeds in the community.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank.

ARCHIBALD, EMMA: 2026 PARALYMPIC ATHLETE - RECOG.

HON. BRIAN WONG « » : Speaker, I rise today to celebrate once again a remarkable achievement by one of own from Fall River. Emma Archibald, a graduate of Lockview High School, has officially been named to Canada's Para nordic ski team for the 2026 Paralympic Winter Games in Milano Cortina. This is a dream years in the making and it's a proud moment for our entire province. Emma's journey is particularly inspiring because she didn't grow up on skis. Instead, she built her athletic foundation through a wide variety of sports, from track and field, to basketball, to soccer, and flag football. Her story is a powerful reminder that with strong family and community behind you and a willingness to try something new even the most ambitious dreams can come true.

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Whether competing for the University of Ottawa Nordiq team or representing Nova Scotia at the Canada Winter Games, Emma has always carried the spirit of her hometown with her. She is one of only 15 athletes representing the Para nordic ski team. I ask all members of the House to congratulate Emma on her achievement.

SPEAKER: The honourable member for Lunenburg West.

BROAD COVE ASSOC.: STEWARDSHIP AGREEMENT SIGNED - CONGRATS

HON. BECKY DRUHAN « » : Speaker, I rise today to recognize a significant milestone for the Broad Cove Community Association and the residents of Broad Cove. After more than two decades of dedication and volunteer commitment to protect and steward a stretch of treasured coastal land, a stewardship agreement between the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg and the Broad Cove Community Association regarding the adjacent beach land was signed in January.

I worked at a provincial level to help identify an appropriate pathway to move this forward and commend the municipality for affecting a solution. I'm so pleased to see the community of advocacy and the municipality's work come to fruition through this formal partnership. The milestone reflects the strength, perseverance, and pride that define the Broad Cove community, and this agreement ensures that its cherished coastal land will continue to be cared for.

I invite the members to join me in congratulating the residents of Broad Cove on the beginning of this important, new chapter.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Fairview-Clayton Park.

NAT'L. SOCIAL WORK MO.: COMM. ORGS. - RECOG.

LINA HAMID « » : Speaker, I rise today to recognize that March is National Social Work Month, a month that invites us to honour the vital contributions social workers make to Nova Scotia. I want to specifically recognize the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers for their tireless advocacy. Under the leadership of Executive Director/Registrar Alec Stratford, President Robert Wright, and their dedicated council, the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers does far more than regulate. They serve as a powerful conscience for our province.

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In the last year alone, they have been instrumental in advocating for an office for children and youth, African Nova Scotian Justice Institute expansion, and funding to intimate partner violence. They don't just manage cases, they fight for systemic change to ensure every Nova Scotian can thrive and live with dignity.

I ask all members of this House to join me in thanking thousands of social workers in our province and the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers for the unwavering commitment to social justice and the well-being of our community.

SPEAKER: The honourable member for Cole Harbour-Dartmouth.

IRISH HERITAGE MO.: CELTIC HISTORY - CELEBRATE

BRAD MCGOWAN « » : Speaker, I rise today to wish Nova Scotians a happy Irish Heritage Month. While the first Irish immigrants arrived in our province in the 1660s, the largest group reached our shores in the mid-1700s and the first half of the 1800s especially during the Irish famine of the 1840s. There is a Celtic Cross monument not far from this Legislature that reads: "Dedicated to the original Irish settlers of 1749 and to the contributions of the Irish community to Halifax, to Nova Scotia and to Canada" and what a contribution it was. Many worked as labourers and tradesmen helping to build Halifax Citadel, the Shubenacadie Canal, and wharves and warehouses that made the waterfront of our city.

Some Irish families moved inland to continue farming while others were drawn to the water and became fishermen. Irish heritage is a vital part of Nova Scotia's heritage, and their continuing contributions help keep our province strong. We celebrate Irish Heritage Month and, in particular, St. Patrick's Day.

[3:30 p.m.]

I wish Nova Scotians of Irish descent sláinte is táinte. Hopefully I didn't say that too terribly wrong.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Timberlea-Prospect.

RICHARDS, SOPHIE/EDISON, EMILY: KISS THE SEA OYSTERS - RECOG.

HON. IAIN RANKIN « » : I want to recognize the remarkable achievements of Sophie Richards and Emily Edison, two enterprising youth students from Bayview High School. In early 2025, these young women launched their own mobile oyster shucking business, aptly maned Kiss the Sea Oysters.

Since its inception, Kiss the Sea Oysters has brought a unique and engaging oyster shucking experience to 15 private and corporate events, delighting clients with their skill and hospitality. Balancing the demands of business ownership, academic studies, and varsity basketball, these young businesswomen exemplify dedication, time management, and resilience.

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Through their journey they are gaining invaluable lessons in leadership, teamwork, and community engagement. I invite all members of the House of Assembly to congratulate Sophie Richards and Emily Edison on their outstanding achievements. They are an inspiration to their peers and a testament to the promise of youth entrepreneurship in our province.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Armdale.

529 SPRYFIELD ROYAL CAN. AIR CADET SQUAD.: 75^TH ANNIV. - RECOG.

ROD WILSON « » : I rise today to recognize the 529 Spryfield Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron. The squadron provides a fun, free, and structured youth program for over 100 young people in our community. They teach leadership skills, discipline, and valuable life lessons. Celebrating their 75-year anniversary this year, the squadron offers a diverse range of activities, including drill and ceremonial treatment, and aviation studies.

Through this engaging program, cadets develop confidence, teamwork, and a strong sense of responsibility in a supportive environment and go on to become amazing adults. Thank you to the dedicated volunteers who make this organization possible and successful.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cumberland South.

THE SALTY SPOON: LOCAL RESTAURANT - RECOG.

HON. TORY RUSHTON « » : I rise today to recognize a new restaurant in Parrsboro - the Salty Spoon. Owners David and Lesley wanted to move to Nova Scotia for their love of the ocean. They found the perfect landing spot and dropped their home anchor in Parrsboro.

In 2025, David and Lesley renovated and opened The Salty Spoon, paying homage to the community's roots in shipbuilding, seafaring lore, and history. The café offers locally sourced coffee, and I can personally attest to the delicious food.

If you have a chance, stop by The Salty Spoon. You are always welcome on deck. I ask that members of the House join me in welcoming and congratulating David and Lesley on opening their new business and years of success for The Salty Spoon in Parrsboro.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Chebucto.

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THE CHEEKY NEIGHBOUR: LOCAL RESTAURANT - RECOG.

KRISTA GALLAGHER « » : Speaker, I rise today to recognize a Quinpool Road staple - The Cheeky Neighbour. A local favourite, The Cheeky Neighbour is a cozy diner that captures the warm, friendly atmosphere of our neighbourhood. The owner, Drew, is a familiar face on Quinpool Road and his hard work and humour is appreciated in Halifax Chebucto. The Cheeky Neighbour has been coined a must visit travel destination, has earned silver medal for Best Breakfast in the 2026 Coast Awards, and has found a place among Curated's Best of Halifax's Top 50 Restaurants.

I have mentioned The Cheeky Neighbour in the House before, but recently, The Cheeky Neighbour teamed up with Bryony House to host a fundraising dinner where profits went to support those experiencing intimate partner violence.

Please join me in applauding The Cheeky Neighbour diner for everything they do to give back to the community of Halifax Chebucto.

The honorable member for Bedford South.

BEDFORD BLUES MINOR HOCKEY: OUTSTANDING SEASON - CONGRATS.

DAMIAN STOILOV « » : I rise today to recognize Bedford Blues Minor Hockey. Bedford Blues Minor Hockey is the incredible organization that we support not only in Bedford South but also Bedford Basin, the next constituency, for an outstanding winter hockey season that saw more than eight teams bring home medals from tournaments across the region. This level of success is a testament to the hard work, skill, and dedication of these young athletes who proudly wear the Bedford Blues Jersey, as well as the commitment of coaches, volunteers, and families.

Beyond the hardware, the Bedford Blues program instils teamwork, discipline, sportsmanship, helping young players grow on and off the ice. Their achievements this winter reflect the strong community program that continues to develop talent and a love of the game. We can only hope that from this group will come the next Crosby, MacKinnon, Marchand, or Blayre Turnbull.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Dartmouth North.

HILL, RAYLEEN:

PAUL HARRIS FELLOWSHIP AWARD RECIP. - CONGRATS.

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : On December 8^th, I had the privilege of attending the Rotary Club of Dartmouth's annual holiday dinner at Brightwood Golf & Country Club. After a fantastic meal, the club presented medals to the recipients of the Paul Harris Fellowship Award, the highest form of recognition a Rotary Club can bestow. It is presented to a Rotarian or a member of the community who has made an outstanding contribution to the community.

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One of this year's recipients was Dartmouth North's Rayleen Hill, and it was a particularly touching moment when Rayleen was presented the award by her father and long-time Rotarian, Doug Hill. Outside of her contributions to the club, Rayleen has left her mark on Dartmouth through the work of her architecture firm, Rayleen Hill Architecture and Design. Many will recognize the Lake Banook racing judges' tower and the Kiwanis Community Building at Grahams Grove Park. Both of these beautiful and iconic buildings were designed by Rayleen Hill and her firm.

I would ask the House to join me in congratulating Rayleen on being named a Paul Harris Fellow and thank her for her contributions to our community.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Pictou Centre.

LEIL, CHIEF RYAN: POLICE LEADERSHIP - RECOG.

DANNY MACGILLIVRAY « » : I am pleased to rise in my place today to acknowledge an important member of the New Glasgow community, Police Chief Ryan Leil. Born in New Glasgow, Ryan advanced through the ranks in the New Glasgow Regional Police service before being appointed chief in September 2024.

Chief Leil is particularly recognized for his leadership in mental health-focused policing. He was instrumental in launching the Crisis Intervention Team program in Pictou County, a pioneering initiative in rural Nova Scotia. He also led efforts in opening a dedicated community police office downtown, fostering proactive engagement and problem-solving through relationship-building.

Chief Leil is also actively involved in efforts to bring more supportive housing to Pictou County, serving on a committee with myself and others in which we pursue this important work. As well as being the chief of police and actively involved in our community, Ryan is a family man. He is married to Kaylin Comeau, and they have two children, Davey and Kit. With a deep commitment to his hometown, Chief Leil blends operational skill with compassion, ensuring the police in New Glasgow is both effective and community-centred. Thank you, Chief Ryan Leil.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

BLUENOSE II: OPERATING BUDGET CUTS - RECOG.

LISA LACHANCE « » : I've got a story to tell of a proud ship that served people well, and Bluenose was her name. Bluenose II is Nova Scotia's ambassador, sailing out of Lunenburg each year to visit all of Nova Scotia and North America.

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During COVID-19, I can remember her sailing close to shore so that Nova Scotians could gather safely outside together and be reminded, indeed, of our Bluenoser spirit. Now, because of this government's budget, the Lunenburg Marine Museum Society is facing a $1.18 million cut for vessel operations, and crew salaries were slashed by 20 percent, almost $240,000.

The Lunenburg Marine Museum Society reports having met and served 60,000 visitors last summer, and they are concerned that they can't do the same thing with these budget cuts. Budget cuts that threaten the quality and quantity of the Bluenose II experience are like cutting your ambassadors around the world. This government needs to withdraw this budget, reverse the cuts, and make sure that Nova Scotia's heritage is protected.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Richmond.

RICHMOND ARTISTS ALLIANCE: COMM. EFFORTS - THANKS

HON. TREVOR BOUDREAU « » : I rise today to recognize the Richmond Artists Alliance Association for their commitment and contribution to the creative community of Richmond County. Co-founded by Elaine Mandrona and Archie Nadon, Richmond Artists Alliance Association began in an effort to provide the community space that would allow local artists and artisans to connect and showcase their work.

Their goal was recently realized when their new art gallery opened in the D'Escousse Civic Improvement Hall. In a short time, the alliance has grown to more than 40 members. They continue to welcome new members with a focus on work that reflects our region. They now have a goal of expanding to other areas in the hopes of promoting local talent across the province.

Please join me in thanking the members of the Richmond Artists Alliance Association for their continued efforts to bring recognition to the artisans of Richmond County.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

SPORTWHEELS SPORTS EXCELLENCE: LOCAL BUSINESS - RECOG.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : I rise today to recognize a business that has been contributing to an active, connected, and healthy Sackville for nearly eight decades. Founded as Mayhew Cycle Shop in 1947 by the Mayhew family, Sportwheels Sports Excellence has remained dedicated to helping friends and family stay active for four generations. They remain family owned and operated to this day.

[Page 2816]

Their dedication to an active Sackville is much more than words and a slogan. By maintaining partnerships with community and sport groups, every product sold at Sportwheels helps provide equipment and registration to local families in need. Not just a few families, either: Sportwheels has helped nearly 2,000 children access sporting opportunities.

I hope all present will join me in thanking Sportwheels Sports Excellence for contributing to the health and happiness of Sackville in a way that only the joy of sport can.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Sydney-Membertou.

BRETON CRAFTHOUSE: LOCAL BUSINESS - RECOG.

HON. DEREK MOMBOURQUETTE « » : I rise in my place to recognize a new business that opened in downtown Sydney: Breton Crafthouse. One of the oldest buildings in Sydney was transformed. It used to be a place where a lot of election offices were held.

Two guys I know took this business, and they own Breton Brewing. People are very familiar with Breton Brewing at home. They decided to expand, and now we have Breton Crafthouse in Sydney. It's spectacular, to say the least. It's become one of the mainstays in downtown.

I rise in my place to recognize my friends and everybody who was involved with this new, wonderful business in downtown Sydney, Breton Crafthouse.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cape Breton East.

DUNN, DR. REX: RETIREMENT - CONGRATS.

HON. BRIAN COMER « » : I rise today to recognize an extraordinary career in health care and to congratulate Dr. Rex Dunn on his well-earned retirement after nearly half a century serving the residents of Cape Breton.

Since arriving in 1979 as a vascular surgeon, Dr. Dunn has cared for thousands of patients and has become known not only for his clinical excellence but for his kindness, humility, and deep compassion for those he served. His leadership extends far beyond the operating room, including roles such as chief of staff at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, vice-president of Medicine of the Cape Breton District Health Authority, and president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia. Dr. Dunn has also been a devoted community builder, volunteering with organizations like CBU, the YMCA, the Sydney Rotary, and international missions to Guatemala.

[Page 2817]

On behalf of the House and the people of Cape Breton East, I thank my constituent Dr. Dunn for his lifetime of care, leadership, and service.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Lunenburg West.

WAVES SEAFOOD & GRILL: LOBSTER ROLL OFF CHAMPS. - CONGRATS.

HON. BECKY DRUHAN « » : I rise today to recognize the Dennison family and Waves Seafood & Grill of Bridgewater for earning the title of Nova Scotia's South Shore Lobster Crawl 2026 Lobster Roll Off Champion.

Since its 2018 launch, the Lobster Crawl has developed into a month-long celebration of the South Shore's peak lobster season. On February 3^rd, 10 restaurants from across the South Shore gathered at the Quarterdeck Resort for the ninth annual Lobster Roll Off. Waves Seafood & Grill captured top honours with their lobster slider roll, served on a Weagles' Bakery roll, a win that reflects their culinary talent and their strong local partnerships.

Representing Waves at the event were general manager Derick Dubblestyne and prep cook Natalie Nickerson, whose teamwork and enthusiasm helped deliver this winning recipe.

I encourage all members of this House to stop by Waves Seafood & Grill to sample their award-winning lobster slider roll. Congratulations to Waves.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier.

N.S. UNIONS: UNCONSTITUTIONAL BILL NO. 148 - CONGRATS.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : I also rise today to congratulate the unions within Nova Scotia and all union members on the court's decision to declare Bill No. 148 unconstitutional. This decision comes down more than 10 years after the Liberal government passed Bill No. 148. The legislation imposed a two-year wage freeze and removed the Public Service Award.

The PC government promised to repeal Bill No. 148, but that promise was quickly broken, and they continued to waste taxpayer money on legal challenges. The PC government lost on Friday.

Congratulations to the members of NSGEU, CUPE, CUPE Local No. 1867, NSNU, NSTU, Unifor, SEIU, IUOE, and CUPW, who all came together.

[Page 2818]

[3:45 p.m.]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

BLACK AND INDIGENOUS COMMS.: TARGETED CUTS - SOLIDARITY

SUZY HANSEN « » : Today I rise to stand with our Black and Indigenous communities.

The budget put forward last week gutted funding to African Nova Scotian and Indigenous culture and community organizations.

We have been inundated with emails and calls from the communities and members because these cuts are targeting Mi'kmaw-specific programs and African Nova Scotian-specific programs, affecting scholarships, services, and programs that were created to address historic and persistent systemic inequalities. I stand today with my brothers and sisters in Nova Scotia to urge the government to walk back the cuts to African Nova Scotian and Indigenous programs, services, education, and community organizations.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Lunenburg.

LILY JEAN: LOST FISHING VESSEL - CONDOLENCES

HON. SUSAN CORKUM-GREEK « » : I rise today to express profound sympathies to the people of Gloucester, Massachusetts on the loss of the fishing vessel Lily Jean, with all seven crew, on January 30^th. There is a long and deeply valued connection between the city of Gloucester and my hometown of Lunenburg. It was born of our shared ties to the ocean, from which so many in our communities have made and continue to make their livings.

Those ties have endured through friendships made amidst spirited competition, beginning in the years of the International Fishermen's Cup Race, heyday of the original Bluenose, and continuing through 74 years of international dory racing. Captain Gus Sanfilippo, skipper of the Lily Jean, is well known on our waterfront, having devoted more than 40 years to the sport. His daughter, after whom the boat was named, and his son, Anthony, also row. I ask colleagues to please join me in extending our condolences to the people of Gloucester.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

FRANCOPHONIE MO.: HISTORY AND CULTURE - CELEBRATE

LISA LACHANCE : Madame la Présidente, aujourd'hui je voudrais reconnaître que le mois de mars est le Mois de la Francophonie. Chaque année, on célèbre la culture et la langue qui ne tiennent pas seulement une place ici au sein de la Nouvelle-Écosse, mais partout au Canada, et bien sûr partout dans le monde. Le thème de cette année est « Active ta francophonie ». À Halifax, vous pouvez visiter le calendrier du réseau francophone de Halifax, Hého, pour en savoir plus sur différents évènements célébrant la richesse et la diversité de la culture francophone.

[Page 2819]

J'invite tous les membres de l'Assemblée à me joindre en célébrant le Mois de la Francophonie.

Speaker, today I would like to recognize the month of March as the Mois de la Francophonie which takes place every March. We celebrate to raise awareness around the French language and culture, not only here in Nova Scotia, but across Canada, and of course, around the world. This year's theme is "Active ta francophonie," which means to engage and mobilize your francophone identity, and/or support francophone and Acadian communities in your community.

Check out Halifax events on Hého, the francophone network. I invite all members to join me in celebrating this year's Mois de la Francophonie.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Clayton Park West.

BOWDEN, ANGELA: BLACK BOY, BLACK BOY PUBLISHED - CONGRATS.

ADEGOKE FADARE « » : I rise today to recognize and celebrate Angela Bowden, author of Black Boy, Black Boy. As a mother of Black sons, Angela understood something many families feel, but sometimes can't name, the shortage of books that speak directly to Black boys about their identity, their worth, their place in the world. Rather than accept the gap, she chose to fill it. Through this book, Angela affirms Black boys in their joy, their strength, their humanity, with powerful illustrations done by Ibe Ananaba.

The story comes alive in a way that allows young readers to see themselves reflected with pride and with confidence. Representation shapes identity, words shape belief, and belief shapes the future. I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating Angela Bowden for creating a resource that helps build confident, grounded, and empowered young Black boys.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Kings West.

MOUNT ALLISON UNIV.: ACAA WOMEN'S VOLLEBALL CHAMPS. - CONGRATS.

CHRIS PALMER « » : I rise today to honour and congratulate the Mount Allison University Women's Volleyball Team on winning their second consecutive ACAA Women's Volleyball Championship this weekend in Fredericton.

[Page 2820]

Why do I talk about a university from New Brunswick? It's because of the amazing Nova Scotian athletes who play key pivotal roles on that team: Kaia MacDougall from Dartmouth, Sarah MacInnis and Danielle Cumby from the Annapolis Valley, Mya Artibello from Antigonish, Anna Bezanson from Halifax, Isabel Crouse from Middleton, and First-Team All-Star Chloe "The Cannon" Palmer.

I'd like to congratulate Head Coach Robbie Crouse, from just outside of Brookfield, on an amazing season. Mount A is now off to the nationals in Manitoba.

I'd like all members of the House to join me in congratulating Mount Allison University Women's Volleyball. We all enjoy watching our kids excel, and we all take pride in that. Go Mounties.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Argyle.

BOUDREAU'S BOATBUILDING: LOCAL BUSINESS - RECOG.

HON. COLTON LEBLANC « » : I rise today to recognize Boudreau's Boatbuilding. In 2018, Jeramy Boudreau originally opened it up as a backyard shop - a hobby business - on Surettes Island, but the increased demand forced him to relocate to a larger, more spacious spot on Morris Island. It's now a fully functioning commercial and pleasure craft boat shop.

You may have seen but not heard the almost silent Violet Mac - powered by electricity - in the waters of Halifax Harbour. Built by Boudreau's Boatbuilding from a hull provided by the owner, this electric vessel has become one quiet step into the future of boating.

On behalf of this House, I congratulate Jeramy on the success of Boudreau's Boatbuilding and wish him continued success in the years ahead.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Hants East.

CORRIDOR COMM. OPTIONS FOR ADULTS: LOCAL ORG. - RECOG.

HON. JOHN A. MACDONALD: I rise today to recognize Corridor Community Options for Adults, a non-profit organization based in Elmsdale that has been supporting adults with intellectual disabilities since the 1970s. For more than five decades CCOA has served East Hants and the community beyond, offering programs and services that foster independence, inclusion, and an improved quality of life.

I am especially pleased to acknowledge the opening of CCOA's new building in the Elmsdale Business Park. This space has allowed the organization to expand its programing and social enterprises, including Rick's Riches Thrift Store and their wood products manufacturing, creating even more opportunities for individuals they support.

[Page 2821]

I want to thank the staff, volunteers, and participants for their dedication and vision. East Hants and the province are stronger and more inclusive because of Corridor Community Options for Adults.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Dartmouth North.

MOBILE FOOD MARKET: 10^TH ANNIV. - CONGRATS.

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : Today, I would like to congratulate the Mobile Food Market on recently celebrating its 10th anniversary. Since its inception, the Mobile Food Market has had one goal: to increase access to affordable, high-quality, fresh fruit and vegetables in communities with limited access to healthy food.

Today the Mobile Food Market operates three community markets each week, runs a permanent operational space in Dartmouth North, and partners with over 30 organizations. All Nova Scotians need access to fresh, affordable produce. They deserve to have that need met where they are and on their own terms. They are hungry to share in the human connection that food offers.

Thanks to Mobile Food Market, this is happening in Dartmouth North, Fairview, and North End Halifax, and as partners in organizations in Eastern Passage, Musquodoboit Valley, Eastern Shore, Clayton Park West, and Dartmouth East.

The Mobile Food Market will be deeply affected by the cuts that are coming in this budget. As a result, I am calling on this government to reverse the cuts to protect the Mobile Food Market and all the people it serves.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honorable member for Inverness.

INVERNESS FIRE HALL: COMM. IMPACTS - RECOG.

KYLE MACQUARRIE « » : The Inverness Fire Hall plays a central role in the life of our community. While its primary responsibility is emergency response - protecting lives, homes, and businesses - its impact extends well beyond firefighting. The dedicated members of the Inverness Volunteer Fire Department spend countless hours training and working in their community.

The fire hall also serves as one of the community's most valued gathering places. It hosts weddings, wedding showers, baby showers, parties, dances, meetings, and town hall gatherings. It's where milestones are celebrated, and it brings neighbours together in both joyful and meaningful moments. Its main fundraiser, Chase the Ace, supports the fire department, and Casino Night, held each year, raises funds for Mill Road Social Enterprises, an organization that provides opportunities for adults with diverse abilities. The hall is also designated as a warming centre.

[Page 2822]

This year, the hall has expanded to meet the growing needs of the community, reflecting increased demand. I'd like to thank all the volunteers at the Inverness Fire Hall.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Cumberland North.

MACDONALD, CHRISTINE: DEATH OF - TRIBUTE

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN « » : I'd like to rise today to honour my friend, Christine MacDonald, who passed away recently. We celebrated her life on Saturday.

In her final days, Christine told me she didn't want to miss a minute of the time she had left. Hearing her words impacted me in a way that is really hard to explain. Even as her time grew short, she chose presence, she chose courage, and she chose to truly live. Christine worked beside me - I had the honour of that for several years - and alongside my sister Kim. She was strong, she was loyal, and she was fierce if you crossed her. Above all, she loved her family more than anything else in this world. That is her legacy.

She was a devoted mom, a loving wife, a proud sister, and a friend. She was an entrepreneur and a community advocate who loved deeply. She worked hard and she never gave up. Her strength and her clarity in those final days reminded me that time is precious. I share her words today and hope that we all can pause, even briefly, to cherish the people we love and the work that we are all called to do.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Kings South.

CARL'S YOUR INDEPENDENT GROCER: EXPANSION - CONGRATS.

JULIE VANEXAN « » : I'm pleased to recognize Carl's Your Independent Grocer on their grand reopening following a recent expansion. This exciting update brings wider aisles, the addition of self-checkouts, and an enhanced shopping experience for customers across our community.

I also want to commend the team at Carl's for their generosity in marking this milestone with a donation to the Wolfville Area Food Bank, demonstrating a strong commitment to giving back and supporting neighbours in need. Local businesses like Carl's play a vital role in our communities, not only by providing essential services and local employment, but by strengthening the spirit of community that makes our region such a great place to live.

Please join me in congratulating Carl's Your Independent Grocer on their expansion and wishing them continued success.

[Page 2823]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Antigonish.

CHISHOLM, LIZ: DEATH OF - TRIBUTE

HON. MICHELLE THOMPSON « » : I rise today to acknowledge the passing of Liz Chisholm, a valued and much-loved member of our community and a passionate educator. Liz was deeply committed to public life and believed strongly in service, civic engagement, and the importance of contributing to the democratic process.

She was passionate about politics and a proud and active member of the Progressive Conservative Party. Liz was a candidate for the PC Party on two occasions and put her heart and soul into countless other elections. She also served four terms on the Antigonish Town Council. Her involvement in public service reflected both her values and her genuine care for the people around her.

Liz was also a devoted member of the Clan Chisholm Society and the Antigonish Highland Society, where she worked tirelessly to celebrate, preserve, and promote Highland culture and traditions. Through her leadership and volunteerism she helped strengthen community bonds and ensure that this important heritage would be passed on to future generations. Liz will be remembered for her generosity, her community spirit, and her unwavering commitment to the causes she believed in.

On behalf of this House, I extend sincere condolences to her family, friends, and all who were fortunate to know her.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Fairview-Clayton Park.

HUSBAND - BIRTHDAY WISHES

LINA HAMID « » : I just want to say a quick belated happy birthday to my husband, whose birthday was on Friday. All of us here with spouses and partners at home waiting for us and keeping our houses afloat while we're sitting here, you can appreciate how much I appreciate my husband. I just want to say a quick happy birthday to him.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Kings South with five seconds.

SON: 16^TH BIRTHDAY - BEST WISHES

JULIE VANEXAN « » : In five seconds, I just want to wish my oldest son happy 16^th birthday.

[4:00 p.m.]

[Page 2824]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. The time allotted for Statements by Members has expired.

GOVERNMENT BUSINESS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Deputy Government House Leader.

MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD » : Speaker, would you please call the order of business Government Motions.

GOVERNMENT MOTIONS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Deputy Government House Leader.

MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD « » : Speaker, I move that you do now leave the Chair and the House resolve itself into the Committee of the Whole House on Supply.

THE SPEAKER « » : The motion is carried.

The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier.

KENDRA COOMBES « » : Speaker, the youth and youth workers in Cape Breton do not ask for a lot. Youth workers work hard to guide the next generation, and they deserve a government equally committed to long-term core funding for youth centres.

My main request today, on behalf of several youth centres, is that the government commit to stable long-term funding and establish youth worker training programs in Cape Breton.

Speaker, I wrote those words prior to coming into this Legislature - prior to a budget coming down, when I thought all things could be possible. I even had some great conversations - and thanks to the Minister of Labour, Skills and Immigration for those conversations I had with his staff - but I'm now hearing from youth organizations that are seeing a $2,350 reduction in their grant funding for youth programs. They need these funding tools in order to do the work that they do at these youth centres.

Cape Breton has one of the highest child poverty rates in Nova Scotia. In Cape Breton, 31.5 percent of children and their families live in poverty. This means roughly 5,420 families are living in poverty. In Victoria County, 29.3 percent are living in poverty, which is an increase of 10.6 percent of children and families living in poverty. This means 390 children. In Richmond County, poverty rates amongst children have increased by 4.2 percent - in other words, 420 children and their families are now living in poverty.

Food bank use has increased by 10 percent. The housing crisis has worsened the lives of families. These challenges hit children hard. They need safe after-school spaces and trained youth workers to support them. Youth in our community deal with poverty, isolation, feeling disconnected from school and community, family violence, and substance abuse. These problems get worse when there are no safe places for them after school.

[Page 2825]

Research shows that young people are more at risk during the after-school hours. Youth centres help by offering safe spaces and supporting better academic and well-being outcomes, and they also give healthy food to children who do not have enough to eat. After-school programs offer safe, supportive spaces for children to learn, grow, and building lasting friendships.

In the constituency of Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier, we have two. We have Undercurrent and we have the BGC. The BGC Cape Breton, formerly known as the Whitney Pier Boys and Girls Club, works closely with their schools. The director always shares these anecdotes with me and has told me many times that when club members misbehave, the school contacts the club. Together they help students get and stay on track.

Children are reminded in the community that they represent the club and its values, which remain a central strength of youth centres. We have seen better school attendance among children who go to youth centres. Many of these children attend school regularly and do not skip classes. By offering safe spaces and building strong relationships with adults, youth centres help prevent "risky behaviour" and encourage young people to get involved in their community.

Youth centres offer a range of activities, like sports, arts and STEAM. Even with all these benefits, the government does not provide them with core funding. This means centres have to keep looking for grants and fundraising just to stay open, which takes time away from the main work, which is working with young people.

Over the years I was an elected official, from 2016 when I was a CBRM councillor until becoming elected as an MLA, I've spent a lot of time speaking with many different organizations that have youth programming or run a youth centre. Some of it I have spent with ministers. For some of those meetings, I've had ministers in the room.

When youth centres' directors meet with government, their first and most urgent request is always for core funding. Core funding is the main ask for these organizations. Program grants cannot sustain staff. In order to run a program, you need the staff to run the program.

The absence of core support threatens essential youth services. As BGC Cape Breton's slogan says, "kids don't care what you know until you know they care." It's something I have always kept with me ever since I heard this at the centre. Kids aren't listening until they know you really care about them. Once they know that you care, they are more than willing to hear you out.

[Page 2826]

Government also must do that work of showing the youth that they care. They can do this not by slogans and not by words. The government must immediately demonstrate its commitment to youth by investing in core operational funding and establishing a youth worker training program in Cape Breton.

The time to act is now to ensure the future of these essential services. To my fellow Cape Breton colleagues, Cape Breton doesn't have enough trained youth workers, nor do we have a trained youth worker program in place, which makes it hard for many local youth organizations to run well.

Speaker, youth centres need professionals who can design recreational, therapeutic, and social programs for young people, especially those affected by trauma, and who can help you who act out emotionally or physically. The training programs at NSCC in Truro and in Dartmouth are out of reach for many young people in Cape Breton, who have built their lives here, and who cannot afford it. Imagine someone who wants to be retrained. They have children, they have families here in Cape Breton - they can't up and leave and go to Truro or up and leave and go to Dartmouth. Young people can't afford to leave home, especially with the rents and the cost of living today. It is nearly impossible. When people have to leave the Island for training, there is a chance they will not come back, leaving Cape Breton without skilled youth workers it needs.

I am grateful to the NSCC Sydney Waterfront Campus and the Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration for being open to talking about the need for a local youth worker program. I had some wonderful conversations. In those conversations, we all heard the same stories. For example, one individual who wanted to get into youth work but didn't have the academic credentials, and in order to meet the credentials, had to go and find work in a youth organization for the experience to make up for the lack of credentials. In my conversations with LSI and with NSCC, we've all heard these kinds of stories many times over, and it shows there's a real need.

We have several youth centres. Some of them are about to be opened. One is in Glace Bay - that's expanding - and one is going to be another youth program opening. There are programs on the north side of Cape Breton - not to be confused with the north end of Sydney - but on the north side of Cape Breton, and we have a few of them in the Sydney area. The thing they all lack is core funding and youth workers. In order to run a fully functional youth organization, you need the core funding.

You can throw all the grants that the government wants to throw at them, but we've seen now, through this budget, that those grants are getting cut left, right, and centre. They can throw grants at them. It's not going to help because they still have to have staff. Now with the cuts to the programs, these organizations are going to be stretched even further. I'm urging the government to walk back all the cuts in the budget, but for this speech right now, I am urging the government to walk back the cuts to youth.

[Page 2827]

Youth don't care what you know until they know you care, and you demonstrate caring by action, by doing. We can use all the words we want. We can use all the slogans we want. That doesn't help them. It doesn't help provide for their core needs and their core wants, and that is core funding and trained youth workers. In my final moments, I urge the government to act now and provide reliable core funding so organizations can focus on prevention and help break the cycle of poverty.

[4:15 p.m.]

We urgently need trained workers who have fair salaries and local youth workers trained in Cape Breton. Only strong ongoing investment will protect the future of Cape Breton and the youth who live there. I see youth centres as a cycle-breaker, and I hope that the government will see these centres as a cycle-breaker as well.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Lunenburg West.

HON. BECKY DRUHAN « » : Speaker, government's Budget 2026-27, Defending Nova Scotia, landed as an offensive smack. It did so even before it arrived. It was preceded by cuts and layoffs, clearly signalling to Nova Scotians that the punishing austerity being offered was the only way forward.

Fifteen minutes is nowhere near enough to express the variety of ways in which this budget is unacceptable, but I will take this time to speak of just a few. I'm going to first say two things about my opening remark.

The first is that the austerity that Nova Scotians are being asked to experience cannot be explained away when the budget itself is far from austere. The budget is extravagant in its spending. It's lavish, even. It is a $17.7 billion budget. That is up by over a billion dollars from last year's budget, and it's up even from the actual spending from last year, which included almost a billion - or maybe over a billion - dollars of additional appropriations. There is nothing austere about the spending in this budget.

The second thing I want to say is that it's not foregone. This budget hasn't passed, and it doesn't have to pass. Government MLAs have the ability to halt this in its tracks. They can vote no, and I hope they will.

I'm going to talk about three things: I'm going to talk about what this means for community; I'm going to talk about how it's being seen by Nova Scotians, and I'm going to offer some options for a different path forward.

I think the easiest way - no, not the easiest way - the best way to talk about what this means for community is to share with this House what community is saying. I said there wasn't nearly enough time in these 15 minutes to talk about all the ways in which this budget is awful. There's not enough time in these 15 minutes to begin to represent all of the people who have written in with their frustrations and anger over what this budget is delivering, but I am going to take a select few. I apologize to anyone who I haven't represented in this short time. I know that I and other members of the Opposition are working hard to make sure all those voices and opinions come forward on the floor of this House.

[Page 2828]

I'm going to start with a letter from one constituent. I'm just going to paraphrase. The other issue is that we're getting so many emails so quickly that I don't have time to get consent to table them, so I'll be paraphrasing.

This person writes in, and she recognizes, I think, exactly how broad and sweeping this is. Many people will often write with a specific concern, but she sees the big picture. So, she's written in about all of it, and her concerns include the cuts to the wildlife division from DNR; the defunding of Nova Scotian publishers; the closing of tourism information centres; the closing of local museums; the cutting of grants from many arts organizations, and the cutting of grants from universities. She also adds that she's quite upset about the motion being tabled to allow ministers to skip Question Period. I think that's an introduction to the more specific letters that I'm going to summarize and share as we go forward.

The first specific issue that I have to talk about is a letter from a constituent whose daughter is African Nova Scotian. She's preparing to begin her first year at university and was planning to access provincial grants and scholarship supports. This constituent notes that the decision to cut funding streams that are heavily accessed by our African Nova Scotians and community organizations targets people who have been historically underinvested in and who have experienced underrepresentation and lack of support in education, economic development, and cultural infrastructure.

She speaks about this from a big-picture context, but this is impacting her family. It's impacting her daughter and individuals across the province. She is asking for transitional measures. I must say this: I think she's being incredibly generous because she's asking for supports to ease into these cuts. I'm going to offer to the House what she's suggesting, but I'm going to say that none of the cuts should be happening. I will offer what she's suggesting.

She's suggesting transitional measures to support students with active or pending applications, so families are not penalized mid-cycle. She's looking for a public review of how these cuts affect African Nova Scotian communities. She's looking for restoration or protection of funding streams intended to address historic inequities. I think those are all very reasonable requests. I would go a step further and just say, reverse these cuts.

The second letter that I want to reference is in relation to natural resources. This letter is from someone who has worked in natural resources and environment in many, many capacities over many years. She has worked both at wharves and in boardrooms. She has the experience both on the front line and on the ground and also in relation to the policymaking and decision‑making. We have heard already the objection that people have to the cuts associated with natural resources. I echo them here.

[Page 2829]

What I wanted to share from her letter was her observation that in all of her decades, she has never seen a government with less respect for Nova Scotians who care about our forests, our lands, our sustainable agriculture, our healthy angling and fisheries, sustainable wildlife populations, and many other things. I think that's saying something from someone who has such deep experience. Her plea to the Premier and her plea to the government is that you can do better. Her plea is that the government can do better.

The third letter is reflective of many, many constituents' concerns about the impact of the cuts to arts, culture, museums. This is someone who is involved in our advisory committee locally and who supports the work of our local museums, the DesBrisay and the Wile Carding Mill, one of which is going to be completely shut, the other which is going to be heavily impacted by cuts.

She observes that this is going to result in the removal of jobs and shuttering of community gathering places. It's going to jeopardize the future of one of our only cultural hubs in town. She observes that the are spaces that contribute to the economic return in our province. They're not neutral. The cuts that are happening are going to have a negative impact on our economy in addition to our culture.

The next letter that I want to talk about is a letter that I received from someone who is a local artist who is trying to live on benefits that they receive - which do not provide a living wage - and who uses their art to produce supplemental income just to keep their head above water. This allows them to contribute to the economy of Nova Scotia. They appreciate the ability to do that. The cuts that the arts are experiencing are going to impact this person's ability and everyone else's ability to participate. That's just one of many letters that I have received from artists.

Probably not surprisingly, we have received many, many letters from authors and publishers. I want to say I commend all Nova Scotians who are speaking up and reaching out and making their concerns known. I want to say a special commendation to a number of authors because I have heard personally from them looking for ways to be effective in that advocacy. I want to say to them, it's effective, and it works, and keep it up.

We have two locally owned bookstores in Lunenburg West: Good Dog Books and LaHave River Books. These are bookstores that provide a market for our incredible local authors. In addition to that, they provide gathering spaces.

The letter I have here observes that every other province in Canada invests in its stories through assistance to publishers. Nova Scotia is going to be alone in removing that investment and retracting that support.

[Page 2830]

I have many more here from authors. Probably unsurprisingly, they are so poetic in what they describe. This author, an author of 14 books about Nova Scotia, talks about what they believe defines Nova Scotia culture, and we all have ideas about that - food, music, geography or people. This author, their answer is that it's words - it's words that define us. The stories that we tell ourselves and the stories that we tell each other, the shared experience.

Without those words, without those stories, our experience becomes fragmented. They observe that if we diminish the ability to tell or stories, we diminish Nova Scotia. I think that is so beautifully framed.

The last letter I have reflects all these things and also emphasizes the cuts being made to natural resources and the impact on our environment. Some of those show up in the budget and many others show up in bills we are debating and will continue to be debating.

This is a more "big picture" letter, so I thought it was a good way to end my very brief overview of the letters I've received. It observes that this budget will save - the cuts we're talking about right now, the cuts I'm talking about - will save $304 million. That is $304 million out of $17 billion - 1.8 percent out of the total budget.

This is a drop in the bucket, and these subsidies are heavily weighted towards corporate interests. The cuts though, are aimed at those who can least afford losing the support - theatres, art galleries, book publishers, tourism infrastructure, programs that protect the environment. These are organizations that are being crippled or eliminated by this budget. It's cutting at the foundation of our culture and the foundation of what makes Nova Scotia Nova Scotia and their support for the desire, the need to expand economically but that has to be done with thought and care, not the kind of slash and burn that this budget delivered.

I'm going to quote a few phrases, descriptions, that I've seen this budget referred to as: catastrophic, irresponsible, deep, unprecedented and impactful, damaging and short-sighted, devastating, shameful, disgusting, appallingly stupid, short-sighted and mean spirited. Those are just a few.

I spend time talking about what this means to community, spend time talking about what this means to Nova Scotians and how they are feeling about it, and how they are describing it. I can say that in all my years, which is just five now in office like this, I have never seen this kind of response from a community - and it is entirely justified.

I am going to end on a path forward because we need solutions. We should be solutionists in this space. It goes without saying that I will not be supporting this and I will do everything in my power to prevent it.

[Page 2831]

What I want to say after that is that it doesn't have to happen. The reality is that this can stop if enough MLAs vote "no". Is there pressure to vote "yes"? One would presume so. I don't know, but one might imagine displeasure. One might imagine pressure from those who want the budget passed. The reality in this House is that party affiliation is not a hostage situation. There is no requirement, contractual or otherwise, to vote a particular way. There is no obligation to toe the line. MLAs in this House are free to vote in representation of community, and it goes further than that. MLAs are not just free to vote in representation of community; MLAs should feel compelled to vote in representation of community. I am proof that it can be done, and I encourage my government colleagues to follow suit.

[4:30 p.m.]

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Dartmouth Noth.

SUSAN LEBLANC « » : I would like to spend a few minutes talking about this budget and how it relates to my community of Dartmouth North.

First, I would like to speak about what is not in the budget for the people of Dartmouth North, things that I was looking for when the budget came down.

The first thing I will talk about is an investment in the HARP program. I've talked about this a few times in the Legislature before. The Heating Assistance Rebate Program was cut badly; 46,000 people are no longer able to apply for HARP - or they can apply, but they're not going to get it. For those people who still qualify for HARP, the money they were counting on has been cut by $200.

This is not nothing. For the people I see in my office daily and the people whose doors I knock on, even if they're not coming to the MLA for help - many of the people in my community are dependent on this. I will be tabling petitions this week. I have already tabled petitions about it - that people want that program reinstated. That's the first thing. I'm sorry that there is no increase to the HARP program.

There's also nothing in this budget for people who are struggling to pay their power bills. The people who are struggling to pay their power bills generally are not going to benefit from the tax cuts this Premier likes to tout and brag about. He is out of touch with Nova Scotians if he thinks the people who are struggling to pay their power bills are going to benefit from that money.

Power bills have gone up $400 since this government took power, and they are destined to go up even further if Nova Scotia Power gets the power rate they're asking for. I am deeply disappointed that this government has turned its back on people who are struggling to pay their power bills.

[Page 2832]

Last, what I was hoping for in this budget was a real commitment to permanent rent control tied to a unit instead of a person and indexed to CPI. There is nothing in the Financial Measures Act that would enact this change, and it is deeply disappointing. I will remind people that this is not just an urban problem. This is a problem that we're seeing more and more throughout the province in smaller communities. That is a skyrocketing cost of rent.

I have been sounding this alarm for many years, and we still don't have a solution to it. We have heard from experts who work in housing that, until we change the policies that relate to or cause homelessness, we will continue to be building shelter beds and taking over church halls to put people inside when it's freezing cold out. We will still have tenting encampments, and we will still have people dying who are living in the rough outside because this government refuses to do the right thing and implement real rent control, end the fixed-term lease loophole, and build actual affordable housing,

On that, I move now to what I am seeing in the budget - sorry, that I am seeing - that last part was about what I wanted to see in the budget that is not there. Now, I'm going to talk a bit about what is in the budget. It includes mostly cuts that I am going to talk about, but credit where credit is due, there is money in the budget for affordable housing in Shannon Park. I have been calling for this forever, and finally, in year almost nine, there's going to be an investment in housing in Shannon Park.

That being said, there has been zero communication with the local MLA on the ground who might have some thoughts on how to make this funding successful for our community. I have lots of thoughts. I would love it if the Minister of Housing would give me a call, set up a meeting, let me tell him a little bit about our community. I invite the Housing Minister to come and have a little tour around Dartmouth North. If he is willing, I'd be happy to have him. We could talk about how we can make that investment in the public housing in Shannon Park the best bang for its buck.

Many people in Dartmouth North live paycheque to paycheque. Many cannot afford an extra power bill or a higher power bill. Many cannot afford the cuts to HARP. Do you know what else they can't afford - the elimination of the bus pass for students. This is an egregious cut. It will affect so many families in my community whose children, particularly junior high students, leave their small community and head out of the community for junior high and high school, for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that French immersion in Dartmouth North happens at junior highs that are very far away from Dartmouth North - Caledonia Junior High, Ellenvale Junior High. These are long commutes.

I have heard from families. I have seen families talking on social media about this. They rely on those bus passes. If they don't have those bus passes, that's another $800 to $1,000 in their annual expenses. Now if you are living on income assistance, or if you are living in public housing and working three jobs - or if you are living in rental housing actually, which is worse as that's more expensive for people than public housing - another $800 to $1,000 can be the amount that makes the difference between housing, staying housed and being homeless.

[Page 2833]

If people think I'm exaggerating, I encourage you to come to my community, to take a look at the tent encampment on the other side of the bridge, behind the No Frills. The folks living in that tent encampment are not folks who - oh, the detractors will say, oh well, you know, they've got mental health issues, or they are addicted to drugs, blah, blah, they can't be housed. It's not true, there are people living in those tent encampments and in shelters all over my community who literally became homeless because their rent skyrocketed and their paycheques are not keeping up.

This cut of the bus pass is just another nail in the coffin of staying stable - and I am not exaggerating. Every week we get calls in our office that people can't afford their bills, they need help figuring out their bills. We are applying to shelter diversion funding for these folks all the time.

Another cut happening in this budget is the Poverty Reduction Tax Credit. That is getting cut at a time when poverty is still very high. Child poverty is the highest in Atlantic Canada and poverty rates are still very high in Nova Scotia - and we're cutting the Poverty Reduction Tax Credit. That's going to affect a lot of people in my community.

Also Parenting Journey. I cannot believe it, the amount of people who benefit from Parenting Journey courses in Dartmouth North at the North Grove and other family resource centres around the area, and that program is being cut. No, it's not being cut completely, but it's being cut and that means it will not work in the same way.

Don't forget, Speaker, when we are talking about these cuts happening, these are all programs that were running on shoestrings anyway. They needed increases and now they're getting cuts.

We just had African Heritage Month in Nova Scotia - well, all over the world - and Dartmouth North is one of the 52 historic Black communities in Nova Scotia. There are a lot of African Nova Scotian people who live in Dartmouth North. Those folks will be disproportionately affected by the general cuts: African Nova Scotian people, people with disabilities, people from the queer community, Indigenous People. We know that any cut will disproportionately affect those folks. Not only that, but we have in this budget cuts to African Nova Scotian Affairs, cuts to the community engagement program. We have cuts to the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition funding. We have cuts to the Africentric Summer Scholar Program. There are cuts to the diversity initiatives in health. We have cuts to the Indigenous, Black, and Mi'kmaw program, the Transition Year Program.

[Page 2834]

The youth in my community are benefiting directly from these programs, and have benefited, and should continue to benefit. I am gobsmacked - that's a light word. I am furious that my neighbours of African heritage and African descent will no longer benefit from these programs.

This is structural racism. This is racism in action in this budget, and it should be reversed. Oh yes, also the Restorative Justice Program is being cut.

Then let's move on to when folks are already feeling affordability issues in their communities and in their homes. Often, people will go and access food security programs, like the Mobile Food Market and the market at the North Grove.

On Tuesday nights, people can go to the Mobile Food Market, get an incredible array of beautiful fresh vegetables and fruit, sometimes bread, sometimes eggs, sometimes a few other things - cereals - at a very low cost. The Mobile Food Market is working miracles with the shoestring budget they have. Now they will be getting a massive cut. That means their services are going to be fewer, and that means people who are having a hard time making ends meet will no longer be able to access low-cost groceries. It's an abomination.

Another thing that would help people with affordability in Dartmouth North is the Secondary and Backyard Suite Incentive Program. There are lots of big lots in Dartmouth North, and there were lots of people who were starting to build secondary suites. They could be rented to family members or low-income folks. Then the owner of the secondary suite would get a chunk of their costs covered to offer housing.

This government consistently says the answer to the housing crisis is supply. The secondary suite program was doing just that. I think it's been cut by 50 percent, maybe 100 percent.

Lastly in my two minutes left, I will talk about a chunk of people who live in Dartmouth North who don't make a ton of money, but who make our community a community that I want to live in. That is the artists. I have written down - I'm not going to name them all. Just in the five minutes before I stood up, I made a list of the artists I know of in the performing arts sector. That's dance and music and theatre. I have quickly, off the top of my head, listed 25 artists - 25 artists who make work, who pay taxes, many of whom have settled down, have had children, many of whom have bought houses against all odds, people who have toured all over the world with their art, with their music, with their theatre. They now will have a significant impact on their livelihood.

When artists are employed, they're employed by arts organizations, or they're supported by umbrella organizations, like Music Nova Scotia or Theatre Nova Scotia. All of these are having giant cuts to their budgets - 20 percent and in some cases more. In some cases, like the Artists in Schools program, which employs people all the time, that's cut. That's gone.

[Page 2835]

[4:45 p.m.]

Writers in the Schools - I can count quickly the published writers, just a couple, in my constituency: Danica Roache, Guyleigh Johnson, Tom Ryan, Briana Corr Scott, Nicola Davison, David Chapman, Susan LeBlanc - not me, another Susan LeBlanc. She just won a big award last year at the Dartmouth Book Awards. We have chefs in Dartmouth North. We have tons of film industry people. We've got tons of visual artists, Kate Walchuk, Jason Skinner, Elizabeth Babych, and Jesse Mitchell - all kinds of artists - and all of them are either going to lose significant amounts of their work or their income or lose their jobs altogether. Then they will be part of the people who are even further troubled by the lack of investment in Nova Scotia Power bills, the cuts to HARP, rent control, et cetera.

So basically, my theory is that this budget is bad for Dartmouth North.

THE SPEAKER « » : The motion is carried. We will have a short recess while the committee sets up.

[4:46 p.m. The House rose and resolved into the CWH on Supply with Deputy Speaker, Marco MacLeod, in the Chair.]

[9:09 p.m. CWH on Supply rose and the House reconvened. The Speaker, Hon. Danielle Barkhouse, resumed the Chair.]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order, please. The Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on Supply reports:

THE CLERK » : That the Committee of the Whole House on Supply has met and made progress and begs leave to sit again.

THE SPEAKER « » : Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE » : Speaker, pursuant to Rule 5C, I move that the hours for March 3^rd be not 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. but instead be 11:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.

THE SPEAKER « » : Pursuant to Rule 5C, there has been a request for the hours for Tuesday, March 3^rd, be from 11:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.

[Page 2836]

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : It's been a while since we've had unanimous consent. That's good.

Speaker, would you please call the order of business Public Bills and Orders.

PUBLIC BILLS AND ORDERS

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, would you please call the order of business Public Bills for Second Reading.

PUBLIC BILLS FOR SECOND READING

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Government House Leader.

HON. BRENDAN MAGUIRE « » : Speaker, would you please call Bill No. 200.

Bill No. 200 - Cannabis Control Act (amended).

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable member for Lunenburg West.

HON. BECKY DRUHAN « » : I am pleased to be speaking at second reading on the Cannabis Control Act here tonight at 9:11 p.m. I'm kind of a night owl, so it's a pretty good time to dive into this one.

I am pleased to be speaking about this because I think that this is something that has been on the minds of Nova Scotians for a number of months. This gives us an opportunity to talk about what's going on now, the bill that the government has put forward to address it, and what a constructive future might look like.

The bill that we're talking about is An Act to Amend Chapter 3 of the Acts of 2018, the Cannabis Control Act. I have a few things to talk about. I'll let you know, Speaker, what my progression of discussion will look like tonight, and then I'll come back and root us in what this Act is - orient ourselves to the bill, and then I'm going to take a step back and talk about what the path could be.

[Page 2837]

This regime - the cannabis regime - the laws that apply to the cannabis regime are complex, and they span a number of jurisdictions. I've lost track a bit, but I do believe the government called the bill, introduced it for second reading, and then immediately adjourned. There may have been some remarks at that point, but there hasn't been full debate yet. We haven't talked about what this regime looks like.

It's important, in an arena as complex as the laws around cannabis, that we fully understand in this House what those laws say, what we have authority to do here in the province, how that fits in with the federal government, and whether there are other laws that impact that. I'll cover that tonight.

It's also important not only that we understand the legal and regulatory regime that cannabis falls within - because that, of course, is the structure - but this is something that has been in place in Nova Scotia and across the country for seven or so years now. Not only do we have the complex legal and regulatory regime, but we have operationalized the legalization of cannabis. We have seven years or so of experience of distribution, of consumption, and of interaction with the other laws that exist.

For purposes of this debate, before we can talk about what the likely impacts of these amendments to the Cannabis Control Act are going to be, we need to understand what the lay of the land is now. I will spend some time talking about that, as well. Then, it's always powerful and important to understand what people are saying about this issue. There's been a lot of reporting on the issue of cannabis regulation and cannabis enforcement, so I'll spend some time talking about that. Then as I always like to do, I will end by talking about what a path forward could look like. Again, that's the whole point of why we're here, to chart a course for Nova Scotians on a variety off issues. This one we're talking about tonight is cannabis.

[9:15 p.m.]

Let's start with the bill. I think what I will do is grab the news release that was issued by the government when the bill was introduced. This news release is dated February 25^th, so it's just last week. This was shared with the public at 11:27 a.m. We, as Opposition members, received it shortly before that time. I appreciate the briefing we were provided; I think it might have been 15 minutes or so on that day. Staff, as always, were incredibly helpful in the time the government had allotted them to spend with us, in terms of sharing what the intent of the bill was.

The news release says that legislation introduced today and the amendments to the Cannabis Control Act "will amend the Cannabis Control Act to improve public health and safety." So we should be looking for improvements around health and also safety, in the terms that are proposed, the clauses that are proposed in the bill.

The quote is: "We are strengthening the Cannabis Control Act through expanded enforcement authority, increased fines and addressing evidentiary issues," said the Attorney General. "These amendments will protect our young people and ensure adults who choose to use cannabis can do so safely, with tested and regulated products."

[Page 2838]

So those do sound like important endeavours. We'll have to learn more as we go, about exactly how they achieve those aims. I look forward to hearing government talk about that but they do seem to be reasonable and beneficial aims.

"Changes to the Act include: creating a new offence - when a landlord permits a place or premises to be used for the distribution or sale of cannabis in violation of the act."

One would think then if there's illegal activity happening around cannabis, some structure and enforcement options relating to those premises would be helpful. That sounds like it could be reasonable.

The next change that's referenced is "allowing the appointment of peace officers to enforce the act, in addition to police." I'm a little curious about that. I have some questions about what that means and the implications of that but we'll put that aside for a little bit later when we come back and look more closely at the clauses. At this stage, at second reading, we're just understanding purpose so we'll keep it high level right now.

Then we have "increasing fine amounts and setting mandatory minimum fines; clarifying that courts can infer a product is cannabis based on common-sense observations, such as appearance and odour". That's kind of an interesting one. I'll be interested to hear more from government around why that may be deemed to be necessary or important.

Then "permitting the court to accept a certificate from the Nova Scotia Liquor Corp. (NSLC) as proof that someone charged with unauthorized selling did not buy the product from the NSLC."

This does seem to largely be focused on enforcement and fines. That's fine. That certainly is part of the cannabis regime but it is by no means the whole cannabis regime. That gives us a bit of an overview of what we're debating tonight. So that's the bill.

The next thing I said I wanted to talk about, Speaker, was what the path could be. I want to start here rather than with the legislative regime, for a couple of reasons. The first is that the legislative regime is kind of dry; it's a little boring. I mean I find it very interesting, personally, because I really like legislation and regulations but it's going to be fairly technical. It doesn't paint a big picture.

What does paint a big picture is sort of stepping back and thinking about what the path forward could be. I feel like that's a better place of begin.

Conveniently - although unfortunately, I would say, given the circumstances that led to this - I actually had the opportunity to present a vision of what we could have as a regime here in Nova Scotia around cannabis to the government three short months ago, back in December. This was following the government's crackdown on illegal cannabis dispensaries that was announced back in December.

[Page 2839]

I said that I would cover what community is saying about this issue, and I will do that later, but suffice it to say at this moment, when government announced their intent to crack down on illegal cannabis dispensaries, and the way the government announced their intent to crack down on illegal cannabis dispensaries, it prompted a lot of public concern and a lot of public outrage, frankly. That was for good reason, quite candidly.

I know that it's important that we have cannabis regulation that ensures safe community access. I highly doubt anyone in this House would argue that we want unsafe access to cannabis or that we don't want to protect health and safety. I am confident that the ultimate goal of everybody in this House is the same around that issue: safe access to cannabis.

The question becomes, how does that happen? It's not a simple matter of just enforcement. I did write to the Premier and the Minister of Justice when the intent to crack down on illegal dispensaries was announced to offer more things that could be done that would effectively address this issue. I'm going to go through the things that I recommended. I think they're incredibly relevant to the bill we're talking about today, and I think they will paint a picture for this House about what we could create and what we could provide for Nova Scotians if we had the vision and the will to do that.

The reality is that Nova Scotians deserve cannabis regulation that ensures safe community access, but it doesn't end there. It's not just safe community access. Nova Scotians also deserve cannabis regulation that supports local economic participation and respects our obligations to Mi'kmaw communities.

It was clear when government made their announcement back in December that, although there may be some benefits to what they were trying to do around safe community access - although I think that could be debated - there was a complete absence of understanding or appreciation or anything that would help the support of local economic participation. I think we heard from Mi'kmaw communities that they felt very clearly that our obligations to them were not respected. I offered some solutions to this.

It's important to understand that Nova Scotia has one of the most restrictive cannabis frameworks in the country. What do I mean by that? I mean that Nova Scotia has no meaningful pathways for private or community-based retail. Rather, in Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation is the sole authorized seller in nearly all circumstances. What that means is that the only way to access cannabis is through the NSLC - or I should say the only way to access recreational cannabis is through the NSLC, legally. Unlike most other provinces across this country, there is no opportunity, or almost no opportunity, for Nova Scotians who want to participate and operate legally and safely in this regime. It's NSLC or nothing. There are no private operators. There is no path for community-based retailers.

[Page 2840]

What we have seen - because this was a system that was introduced back in 2018, roughly, in response to the federal legalization of cannabis - is that this system, which is incredibly restrictive, which only allows access through NSLC, limits access across the province, especially in rural areas. The community availability of NSLC is not fulsome. There are lots of places in the province where you are not close to a cannabis retailer.

What happens in that environment is consumers are pushed toward unregulated dispensaries. They have been allowed to proliferate. NSLC is not available, not nearby, not close. That is just an option that has been available with little to no enforcement or very minimal enforcement since the regime was created. This is an environment that is entirely created by the government regulation system that we have in place that shuts people out who are trying to participate in good faith.

There's no question that there are legitimate public safety concerns relating to unregulated products. The unfortunate reality is the enforcement activity that we saw in the fall - or the enforcement activity that was announced in the fall - as we start to compare the clauses and the objective of the Cannabis Control Act amendments that are before us now, I think we'll see this reflected and mirrored in that. Those measures do not actually address the underlying issues.

The RCMP noted back in December that they were already enforcing existing laws, and that the directive would not materially change their operational approach, which is as it should be because the police are independent operationally. A directive from the minister provides policy guidance, but it doesn't provide operational guidance. That's not what it's meant to do. That's entirely outside its authority.

This is something that the RCMP and police already have within their jurisdiction and have already taken steps to address. I noted as well in this offer to government with suggestions to create a path forward that the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaw Chiefs had also rejected the directive, citing a unilateral action and a lack of respectful engagement.

Numerous other Nova Scotians spoke out at the time as well. The responses at that time reinforced the need for a solutions-based approach rather that escalating enforcement. I was hopeful, with all of that community activism and conversation and dialogue and the public attention and the media attention and the suggestions from various people - including myself - who had ideas for how to move forward in a constructive way, that we might see that incorporated in whatever would be tabled in this session.

What were those suggestions? The suggestions that I offered really amounted to a modernization and a balancing of the regulatory model that we have. I looked do other provinces that have successfully combined licensing pathways, training requirements, product standards, inspections, and strong public education.

[Page 2841]

All of those things combined operate to create a more accessible, more evenly distributed, but still protective of health and safety, regime and structure. Those approaches, when you combine all of those factors, Speaker, have the result of expanding legal access and strengthening community relationships without compromising health and public safety objectives.

What are those steps? What could this look like? The first step is the creation of clear accountable licensing options for small, private, and community-based operators. As we talked about, NSLC has a monopoly on this in Nova Scotia. We also know that there are many people in Nova Scotia who have an interest in participating this sector. I would think that our government, with their desire to expand our use of natural resources and expand industry and open up economic opportunities, would recognize the opportunity that exists here for the expansion of licensing options. That would allow people to participate in rural areas, who are currently not able to do that. It would allow small business to flourish, which I believe to be an aim of this government. It would allow for community-based operations. What it would also do would be increasing the tax base, which, given the budget we're facing right now, I would think would be an incredible motivator for this government.

[9:30 p.m.]

That's number one. What would a new, improved approach look like? There are licensing pathways. The second element is the expansion of safe, legal access in rural communities. This ties in with number one. Number one is creating the licensing options and the pathway, but what that pathway leads to is an expansion of access. One of the reasons that we see a proliferation right now of illegal dispensaries is because the NSLC is not covering the market. There is a demand across the province, not just in centres that are large enough to maintain an NSLC, but in small, rural areas throughout the province. There is a demand and a desire to access safe, real cannabis.

In the absence of regulated, licensed providers, there are illegal, unlicensed providers operating. Government has allowed that to happen for many years. It's no surprise that they have proliferated, it's no surprise that people access them. If you were to ask most Nova Scotians in the minivans lined up in front of illegal dispensaries, whether they know they're illegal, most people will say no. You don't expect an illegal operation to have a sign out front, to have police sometimes directing traffic in front. This is a licensing question - many of these operators have been operating for a long time within community, and it has been allowed to happen.

I got a little off-track. The second element is expanding safe, legal access in rural communities. What's the third element of a better path? That's strengthening our relationships with Mi'kmaw communities through respectful collaboration. I think - I hope - that is something that we all believe is incredibly important and that we're all committed to. We heard very clearly when the government directive was issued back in December that it missed the mark entirely on this issue.

[Page 2842]

There are a wide range of ways to strengthen the relationship. There's not one way to do that. There are so many ways to connect and to listen and to hear and to act based on engagement and based on mutually respectful interactions. I didn't offer anything specific around what that looks like, but there are so many folks who can speak to what moving forward in a good way would be. I think the Mi'kmaw communities can guide government in that.

The fourth element of a constructive path forward is an increase in public understanding of legal versus illegal retail. I spoke just a few minutes ago about how that is an issue in Nova Scotia. We have so many unlicensed operators that exist right now, that have been allowed to exist right now, and community doesn't realize - that's on us; that's on government. We need to take steps to make education available and to inform people.

The fifth recommendation that I offered was to focus enforcement, which seemed to be the primary focus of government in their directive, but to focus enforcement on genuine risks, such as organized crime, rather than applying blanket crackdowns. The reality is - and I accept this - there can be issues associated with organized crime and unregulated products, but that is not to say that all of the unlicensed dispensaries that are currently operating have that as an element. I think that having intelligent and focused enforcement on risks that actually are demonstrable and exist is a much better use of resources than a blanket crackdown.

I then went on in my recommendations to talk about the hows - those were the five elements that I recommended - but how do you get there? It's a big regime. It's a comprehensive regime.

The answer to that is that it does need to be done incrementally, but when you make incremental change in a regime or a system, one needs to have the full picture before you take a step along the way. That was another recommendation that I made.

To be clear, none of what I recommended at the time or what I'm describing now is at all to argue that enforcement should be abandoned. I'm not saying that in the slightest. The focus is to use enforcement strategically while creating legal pathways for Nova Scotians who want to operate responsibly and provide education to the public as the regime and the structure of cannabis distribution and sale in the province changes.

I had offered those recommendations to government. I've also, on a number of occasions, expressed my hope and desire that any changes to the legislative structure would be offered and shared with the public in advance - shared with Opposition members and other MLAs in advance - to give all of us an opportunity to consider, understand, and then be informed to able to come into this House and together debate the merits of moving forward.

[Page 2843]

I was disappointed to see legislation come forward without that notice, but I can't say I was surprised because that is the MO - that is what happens.

Now we have the legislation. We've talked about the overview of what the legislation and the amendments are intended to do. We've talked about what I have offered as recommendations for what a true modernization of the regime could be.

The next thing, now that I've painted that picture, is that I want to step back and talk about what the legislative regime is right now because, again, this is a complex legislative and regulatory framework, and we've jumped into this debate without any context around that at all. There has been no discussion on this floor of what the provincial responsibility is compared to the federal responsibility, no acknowledgement or discussion of whether there's a municipal role in this, and no overview of what laws and regulations apply at each level.

I'm going to take not too long, a few minutes, to go through some of that because I don't know how we can debate amendments to a law without having some common ground understanding of what the existing laws already say and how we, as a province, fit within the structure.

What does the legislative regime look like? To step back for a minute, there is a complex web of laws that apply at a federal, a provincial, and even a municipal level around this because cannabis is a complicated product when it comes to law and regulations. It is a product that was once illegal, and that was done at a - that's a federal level. The Criminal Code and other federal legislation made the recreational consumption of cannabis illegal. That changed back in 2017, I believe. The federal government legalized the recreational use of cannabis - federal law. That's the federal law.

That left the provinces to then come up with legal regimes to operationalize that. Legal regimes within the provinces are about: How does the cannabis get distributed? Who gets to sell it? How does that happen? There are still federal laws that apply, and then there are provincial laws that apply as well.

I will say also - and I find this kind of interesting - there are even municipal laws that apply around consumption of cannabis. Some municipalities have taken steps to create smoke-free places bylaws, and depending on how those are structured, they sometimes can impact the consumption of cannabis as well. So it's a complicated legislative regime.

I want to talk now - or I'm going to read from, actually, because I think it's helpful just to cover what this says - provincial and territorial cannabis frameworks. This is from Cannabis Laws of Canada by Donald J. Bourgeois and Craig Slater. I will table it at the end after getting a copy of it.

[Page 2844]

Cannabis retailing is really what we're talking about right now. It's cannabis retailing. It's not the criminal piece of it, although there are criminal aspects to this. But it's really about what is legal from a retailing perspective, and then anything that operates that is not legal within those retail laws becomes enforceable.

I want to go back now and compare what exists in other provinces versus Nova Scotia to help us understand what could be. I'm just going to read a couple of excerpts from the paragraph or the section entitled "The Structure of Cannabis Retailing."

It says, "One of the first notable elements of the structure of cannabis retailing across all 13 jurisdictions in Canada is the degree and nature of the involvement of government and government agencies and the involvement of the private sector in cannabis retailing." That's really what we are talking about here. We talked about the fact that Nova Scotia largely - almost entirely - distributes through NSLC. So what does exist in the other provinces?

"In Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island" - those are three provinces where cannabis is exclusively carried by an agency of the provincial government. "In Quebec, there is a society that is both a wholesaler and retailer of cannabis for non-medical consumption." In Nova Scotia - here's where we're featured - "it's sold largely in dedicated areas of liquor stores owned and operated by an agency of the Nova Scotia government, the NSLC. And in Prince Edward Island, a corporation owned by the provincial government, the P.E.I. Cannabis Management Corporation, operating under the name P.E.I. Cannabis, is the lawful exclusive retailer of cannabis in the province." So that's one model. That is the most restrictive model, and we participate in it.

Other provinces have something slightly different. In British Columbia, New Brunswick, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, cannabis is sold to the public in stores owned and operated by a provincial agency and in privately run stores. "In British Columbia, New Brunswick, and the Northwest Territories, the province or a provincial agency is the exclusive wholesaler buying cannabis from federally licensed producers for sale in stores that the government or government agency owns and operates and selling cannabis to licensed private cannabis retailers for resale to the public." There's an example of jurisdictions that have not only agency stores like we do, owned and operated by a provincial agency, but also have access to privately run stores.

We can infer, or we can understand, if we think about what was just described there, how the safety is preserved in that. The sourcing - the wholesaling - is still very tightly controlled. That allows and enables the distribution to not just the agency stores but also privately operated cannabis retailers to be done safely and done in a way that is well-structured and well-organized and well-controlled.

[Page 2845]

[9:45 p.m.]

This goes on to talk about the arrangement in Nunavut, which is slightly different. In Nunavut, there is a territorial agency called the Nunavut Liquor and Cannabis Commission and they have contracted with two retailers to operate physical stores with online services in which they purchase cannabis from federally regulated licensed cannabis producers, which are registered by the territorial government for the purpose of supply to licensed retailers. Again, a couple of different retailer options in Nunavut.

The article goes on to then cluster all of the remaining provinces - and they're in a different bucket. They have a different regime than the ones we've already talked about. The ones that remain are Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Yukon. In those jurisdictions, almost all of the retailing of cannabis to the public is done by private licensed entities.

Let's pause there. Those jurisdictions in Canada have a regime that is operated by - cannabis is distributed through private licensed entities. We don't allow that at all. We just completely eliminated that as a possibility, and it's something that many other provinces across the country do and it's the exclusive option of those provinces. It should give us pause to consider why we have been so restrictive, and whether we should open our minds to the possibility that there may be other options that would help us address the concerns that we're trying to deal with cannabis right now.

Government is certainly focused on enforcement and health and safety, but related to all of that is access and distribution. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador and the Yukon offer us models that are entirely different than ours, and pathways that are entirely different than ours, that could allow us different options.

In Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador, provincial agencies each operate an online store as well for the sale of cannabis to the public. So it is a bit of a hybrid in terms of whether cannabis is available in person or online. That's another example of flexibility in a system. However, in the other provinces and Yukon, retailing is done only by private entities licensed under provincial or territorial law. So again, an option - the use of private retailers - that we have just completely disallowed in Nova Scotia is one that is common across the country - exclusive, in fact, in a number of places, and at least offered as a hybrid option in the others.

It does make me wonder why Nova Scotia is so unwilling to consider those pathways here, especially in light of the government's acknowledgement and assertion that we have significant problems within our cannabis regulatory structure, and requiring significant enforcement. I feel like identifying the root cause, and working to address the root cause, is always more beneficial than coming in hard with punishment.

[Page 2846]

It seems to me that an approach that encompasses all of this, not just enforcement but also working to change the system to address the cause of the problems that we're experiencing, would be a far better solution than just simply trying to enforce harder - because it is a regime that the way it's created is leading to the problems we're experiencing.

I'll talk for a minute next, about the regulation of the structure of cannabis retailing. This is the regulation of lawful sales. Again, we have the federal government that has laws around the production of cannabis, and also has criminal laws around crimes - so two separate things, but that can have an impact on cannabis. But then the province is responsible, not just for the actual operation of the distribution, but the regulation of that. That's what we're talking about now.

Fundamentally, that's really what the terms of the Act to Amend Chapter 3 of the Acts of 2018, the Cannabis Control Act, is. It's part of the regulatory regime that the province has - or is intended to be part of the regulatory regime that the province has.

What do Bourgeois and Slater say about the regulation of lawful sales? "In jurisdictions with a significant presence of private actors involved in the cannabis supply chain, the legislation in these jurisdictions contains provision for the licensing and regulation of the private actors." Who are the private actors? That includes retailers, marketers, wholesalers, and federally licensed producers.

However, even where the cannabis retailing is done by a government agency, at least two of the three provinces with publicly owned cannabis retailing - that's Quebec and Prince Edward Island - impose significant legislative requirements on the government agencies that purchase cannabis from producers and sell it directly to the public.

Then it goes on and talks about Nova Scotia. "Nova Scotia's approach is different from all other provinces and territories. Most of the requirements for the sale of cannabis in Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation stores are set by agency policy, with the exception of sales to underage or intoxicated persons." That actually is fascinating to me.

If we are concerned that in Nova Scotia we have a problem around our cannabis regulation and if we are looking to fix public safety issues, proliferation of illegal dispensaries, or any of the other challenges that we have, I just find it interesting that so much of what we have here in Nova Scotia is set by agency policy. It seems to me that we should be looking to our legislation and regulations, perhaps, to address some of the concerns that government has with the current regulatory structure of cannabis.

Then it goes on to say: "In jurisdictions which license private persons or entities to engage in activities relating to cannabis, the legislative frameworks will set out requirements for the eligibility of licences and permits for those activities and standards of conduct for those activities under licence or permits." That's quite straightforward. That's a little bit more about the regulation of lawful sales.

[Page 2847]

I just have one more piece here to talk about when we talk about licensing. Again, I think it's really important to understand what exists in other provinces as we look at how we're updating the laws here in Nova Scotia. This section talks about requirements for licence eligibility. I think that's relevant, because when I talked about a path forward, it was really about who is eligible for a licence, and what's related to that is what the eligibility would be for that. This goes on to say: "Some requirements for licence eligibility are common to most applicable jurisdictions, and these include the following."

First is "meeting the legal age in the jurisdiction for cannabis activity." That is something you would want to see all licensed operators complying with.

The second is "satisfying with the regulator or licensing body that the applicant will carry on licensed activities in an appropriate and lawful manner based on past or current conduct." What I'm talking about right now are the things that you expect and require a licensed operator to be able to do and enforce. Right now, for some reason, we only have NSLC. What does the path look like to opening it up to other operators? These are the kinds of questions that we have to ask. Can other operators enforce these licensing requirements? They're the kinds of things licensed operators have to enforce.

We can ask ourselves: Could small and private operators meet these conditions? Could small and private operators meet the conditions relating to meeting the legal age in our jurisdiction? I think that's something we could probably regulate and rely on responsible private operators to do. The second, as I just said, is "satisfying the regulator or licensing body that the applicant will carry on licensed activities in an appropriate and lawful manner based on past or current conduct." I wonder to myself, "Do we have any similar environments where we have private operators who distribute restricted substances or sell and allow for consumption of restricted substances?" I think to myself, "We certainly do. We have bars and licensed facilities across the province." Those are independent operators. We don't require just one government agency to sell alcohol. The NSLC does, but we allow for consumption through bars, as well.

We have a model already in Nova Scotia where we recognize that private operators have the ability to comply with strict requirements and meet those requirements. That is something we could easily import into the cannabis regime.

The next item is not providing false or misleading information to the regulator or licensing body. That's straightforward, and again, we regularly rely on a variety of businesses and operators to comply with that kind of requirement.

Finally, is satisfying that the regulator or licensing body that the proposed premises for licensed activities meets the requirements for the conduct of the licensed activities, and the applicant has legal authority to use those proposed premises for selling cannabis. This is about the fitness of the building for the distribution and sale of cannabis.

[Page 2848]

Again, we have other models. We have a liquor distribution and sale model that allows the participation of private operators in the sale to individuals for consumption in those premises. There's no reason we wouldn't expect that private operators in the cannabis regime wouldn't be able to also operate within those requirements, the same way we look to operators and establishments that sell alcohol to do that.

That's a bit about how other jurisdictions compare to Nova Scotia in terms of the regulation - the regulatory structure of cannabis. If we're curious at all about the availability and access to cannabis, it's interesting to turn our mind to the per capita number of stores - stores per person. In Nova Scotia, from 2024 - reasonably recent - Nova Scotia had 51 stores in total, all of which were publicly operated, which is one store per 20,900 people. That's an average.

If that was an average, and they were distributed evenly across the province, that might not be problematic. In my area, the catchment of 20,000 people - actually no. In my area, the catchment of 20,000 people - you have to go quite a long way to capture 20,000 people. I have 1,000 square kilometres in Lunenburg West. That covers a lot of ground.

I'm very confident that that average doesn't reflect community experience. I would suggest that average - the number of stores available per person in the Metro area - is probably quite reasonable. My understanding, as well, is that there are many unregulated, unlicensed distributors of cannabis here in the city, even though there is a high volume of NSLC stores. As you go to rural areas in the province - you go to some places, and the access to NSLC and licensed operators is few and far between. It gives you a little idea of how many stores we have.

That was a snapshot of the legislative regime and the operational regime that we work within. It was a small snapshot. We could spend - frankly, to really understand - this is not a huge bill. This is 18 clauses; it's not a huge bill. We have completely glossed over the fact that the legislation at the federal level is significant, and the regulation at the federal level is significant. The other legislation and the originating legislation that this amends is significant. We jumped right in, and we're talking about clauses, but government didn't spend any time at all putting this into context.

[10:00 p.m.]

I think that does a disservice to our debate. I don't know how we can debate with any intelligence, in any informed way, amendments to a law if we're not putting the law on the table and having a talk about the big picture.

I'm trying to offer some of the big picture here now but for government to just jump in with the amendments and not offer the opportunity to talk about it in the big picture context of how this fits in, honestly I think that puts us at a disadvantage and it does a disservice to Nova Scotians in terms of full debate on important issues.

[Page 2849]

I tried to bring a little of that to this, but I am just going to say that that is a small drop in the bucket when you think about the extensiveness and the complexity of the legislative regime that covers cannabis in our country and province.

There's only 10 minutes left. I haven't even started talking about the variety of community input and feedback that we've received and that has been published. Maybe I'll just dip my toe into this. I suspect that members of the Opposition who are going to speak through the evening here will probably - if I don't get to this, I suspect that they've got lots to talk about and I can certainly share some of these with them.

I've covered some of the - again, I'm a bit of a geek, I like the legislative stuff but maybe not everybody else is as interested. I have to say that the feedback from community is far spicier and animated than the legislative provisions that I've just described.

Where shall I start? So many places to go here. Maybe I'll start with the concerns that started to arise, or at least were starting to be raised back when the changes - not the legislative changes but the government's direction changes were first introduced and there were just so many of them. I think one of the ones that struck me after the direction was issued and government attempted to explain the reasons behind it, was the disconnect between the reasons government gave and the realities and information that authorities shared.

I believe I recall that government leaned in pretty hard on the connection between cannabis and human trafficking and the link between those. It was rather startling certainly to community, I believe, to hear the police come out and say that, in fact, that is not the case at all. I think it left people feeling quite perplexed about why government was taking the action they were taking.

I'm looking here in an article by Taryn Grant with CBC News. She says that "Nova Scotia's two largest police forces say they don't see direct connections between human trafficking and the unregulated cannabis market in the province." Then it was interesting that she went on to say that the Premier and Justice Minister "deny having 'directly' tied the two issues, however both have referred to human trafficking when discussing why they are directing police to intensify their action against unregulated cannabis."

The article goes on and quotes from an officer who said that they had never heard of it. They hadn't seen a connection between human trafficking and marijuana. "The head of the YWCA said workers on the front lines of supporting survivors of human trafficking also have not seen the connection."

People were really confused. The Halifax Regional Police came out in a statement and said it wasn't investigating any files where human trafficking and unregulated cannabis sales were connected. Then there was another person. It just went on and on.

[Page 2850]

I think it confused Nova Scotians and it made them wonder and it made them upset, and rightfully so. I think one of the pointed responses and upsetting responses - not upsetting responses - rightfully upset responses came from the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaw Chiefs. I won't read it, but their perception was that provincial reductions were harmful and appeared targeted.

That's just one example of concerns that have been raised - I'm at five minutes, and I have at least 30 other pieces of paper here. I'm going to put this aside. But I think a lot of time needs to be spent on these concerns, on the concerns of the public. I've painted a bit of a legislative picture, but I'm hoping that other members of the Opposition take a lot of time, because they are incredibly important.

I think we really need to fully understand what community is saying about how they feel about the approach the government is taking, the hard-nosed approach government is taking to cannabis and the impact it's having on communities and their concerns about the reasons why government has stated that they're taking these steps.

I'm not going to spend any more time on that here. I'm going to circle back to what I had recommended and compare it to what the bill actually does. What I recommended was well-rounded. Yes, it would include enforcement, but it's not just about enforcement. It's also about opening up access and opening up pathways for people who want to participate, for organizations that want to participate and for communities who want to participate and have control and expand business and expand a taxbase and create revenue and generate income.

That's one. It's about expanding availability across the province. It's about strengthening relationships and increasing understanding. I've just gone all around here, and if I come back to the bill that we are debating tonight, the bill has none of that. All the bill has is enforcement. I have real concerns about introducing enhanced enforcement without all of the other things taking place.

We have people who've been operating. Yes, they are unlicensed, but to assume that they are all illegal or untoward is, I think, entirely unfair. This is a licensed sector, and the reason that nobody can participate in it is because we've said that nobody can participate in it. We haven't opened up any pathways.

If we continue to refuse to open up pathways, we're going to criminalize people who have a legitimate desire and a willingness to participate in this sector in good faith. We're slamming the door in their face. These are people who are already operating. They're potentially dispensaries that have minivans lined up down the road with people who believe that they are participating and purchasing from legitimate operators.

[Page 2851]

The bill that's being proposed - the amendments to the Cannabis Control Act - offers no solutions to that. It's just a crackdown, which means we're going to restrict access even further, driving potentially illegal sales further underground, which is problematic, to say the least. It eliminates or continues to prevent people who want to participate from participating; it continues to make it difficult to access legal cannabis in rural communities across our province; and it does nothing whatsoever to build relationship with community.

We will have lots of opportunity to talk about this bill clause by clause. I look forward to doing that, because I have a lot of specific things to say. I spent so much time just talking generalizations about the regulatory regime, and we really didn't get into the meat of this at all. I do wish I could keep going.

I'll just say this, because again, I'd really like to try to end on a path forward. The complaints that I have about this bill are easily fixed. They're actually really easily fixed. We could potentially add all of these provisions in. We could add in to this bill to amend the Cannabis Control Act some licensing options for small, private, and community-based operators. We could throw some amendments in there and make that happen. That would create the avenue for safe, legal access in rural communities that have difficulty accessing it now.

We could incorporate some provisions - I don't know if you necessarily need to incorporate in law requirements for public information and education, but we could certainly build that in as part of the plan. We could look at these enforcement provisions, which is what we're faced with in this Cannabis Control Act amendment bill. We could look at them in light of the recommendation to focus on genuine risks rather than a blanket crackdown, because these appear to mostly just be a blanket crackdown. I have some concerns - much of what's in here, particularly in the context that we have.

I am really looking forward to continued fulsome debate on this important issue. Speaker, I thank you so much for the opportunity to share my thoughts at second reading.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order.

The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid.

PAUL WOZNEY « » : Speaker, I note with interest the impassioned speech of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General in response to questions about this government's degree of respect for the autonomy and the independence of our judiciary and the folks who carry out the work of enforcing the law in Nova Scotia.

No small amount of time has been devoted by the minister to making claim that this government respects the independence of the judiciary. The Attorney General has been clear that since he has assumed his office, he can report with full confidence that this government not only respects but has acted in a manner that is consistently respectful in the judiciary's exercise of its duties to maintain law and order in our province.

[Page 2852]

He's made comments of a similar effect regarding the independence of the police that operate around the province. That political interference at the highest level is not a thing in Nova Scotia, and that this government leaves those folks whose duty it is to investigate, uphold, bring charges, et cetera, to do that important work that they do without interference by his office. So with clear eyes and a full heart, I'll say I'll take the minister at face value on that. I take those remarks as offered.

I want to talk for a minute, given this government's commitment to the independence of the judiciary and given this government's stated commitment to the independence of law enforcement, about some of the content of this legislation that makes me scratch my head, given those positions.

In Clause 2 of the proposed amendments. It says:

Chapter 3 is further amended by adding immediately after Section 15 the following Section:

15A - The Minister of Justice may designate persons or classes of persons to act as enforcement officers for the purpose of this Act and the regulations.

To be clear, this language does not, in fact, create a new, dedicated level of law enforcement to take on the enforcement of the Cannabis Control Act. So folks listening at home may read that phrase and say, "Wait a second. Are we going to have Nova Scotia's version of the DEA, or the ATF, or for fans of Yellowstone, the Livestock Enforcement Unit that's so popular on Paramount+?" Is that what we're angling at here? That's not what it appears to read to me, although I understand why some may make some guesses about that's where we're headed.

[10:15 p.m.]

I'd like to share with the House perhaps something a bit more in line with what the proposed amendments would create. It's no secret to members of this House that I spent my working career teaching in a high school. I happened to work at one of the largest public high schools in Nova Scotia. In a growing community with lots of traffic, one of the mundane but pressing issues of my high school life was the issue of parking on school property. We have lots of students. At the school that I teach at, over 95 percent of the student body is bused to school, their parents drive them to school, or because of the socioeconomic status of our neighbourhood, lots of students bring vehicles that their families own to school. Of course, this creates real pressure on a limited number of parking spaces on school grounds.

[Page 2853]

Obviously, staff who work at the school need parking. That means that there are precious few spots available for students. You can say, "What's Wozney on, and why is he talking about the school parking lot?" As you can imagine, students anxious to not have to walk five blocks to school often would sneak their vehicles into an area designated for staff parking, which meant that staff were starved for space, and that would create real hassles in getting to work on time.

It raised the issue of parking enforcement at Charles P. Allen High School. What was the solution? Is it a wise use of law enforcement time to summon a law enforcement officer to the premises to issue a ticket and have the vehicle booted and towed? Law enforcement, unsurprisingly, felt that was a low level of concern to them in the exercise of their duties. They were not in favour of sending a fully uniformed police officer to our school to provide a ticket and to make sure that parking regulations were enforced on school premises.

How, then, did parking justice come to be administered at Charles P. Allen High School? How did parking tickets come to be administered without creating a ridiculous amount of burden on our law enforcement system? It came through something called a special constable.

What is a special constable? Let me tell you. The special constable is someone designated by the school and vested with the authority under city bylaw to issue traffic violation tickets. Instead of a police officer showing up with their book of tickets and writing a citation on site, the school was provided with a book of parking tickets, and an individual at the school was tasked with administering parking tickets where they were warranted.

You might say, "Well, special constable sounds like an important role. Knowledge of local traffic regulations surely is part and parcel." The special constable at my school was not specially trained for this duty. As a matter of fact, they received no training whatsoever relevant to the dispensation of traffic justice on the premises of Charles P. Allen High School. The special constable was, in fact, a colleague of mine in the English department who taught Grade 12 English - had no expertise in traffic bylaws in the Halifax Regional Municipality. Yet this individual with no training about the Motor Vehicle Act, this individual with no training whatsoever on traffic violations and provincial code, was entrusted with the duty of ensuring that anybody who violated parking regulations received a ticket.

I offer this only slightly tongue in cheek. It raises questions. This act of this amendment would create the ability for the minister to designate someone or a group of people, presumably, who shared some kind of vocation or training, to become enforcement officers for the purpose of this act and the regulations.

For a government that claims that the independence of the judiciary and law enforcement is a sacrosanct proponent of the delivery of justice in Nova Scotia. This is a troubling power to hand the minister. The minister, in his sole discretion - or their sole discretion; it could be any future minister - could determine anybody who could fulfill this duty to enforce the Cannabis Control Act.

[Page 2854]

I think that's something worth sitting with for a moment. This government has proposed in other legislation changes that give a minister broad powers. In previous debate on legislation relevant to the Workers' Compensation Act, I questioned whether or not the Minister of Labour, Skills and Immigration needed to create an exception in the law that was quite broad to fix an issue that was quite narrow in scope. I recognized at the time that the need for an exception to the law that was appropriate to the width of the issue was reasonable, but to create an exception that was so wide for an issue so narrow was problematic and potentially gave rise to concerns about overreach by the minister in the administration of the Workers' Compensation Act.

That's a principle I want to draw on here. Is the minister's power a reasonable response to the problem this bill seeks to solve? Is it reasonable for the Minister of Justice to have sole discretion and sweeping powers over the establishment of an entirely new group of people to enforce a particular law in Nova Scotia? I want to sit for a minute with some of the changes in this law and some of the things that this new class or this new group of law enforcement, answerable only to the minister, would be expected to enforce.

Later in these proposed changes to the Act, under Section 3(2)(1A), it says: "No young person shall distribute cannabis." Earlier in the bill, in the explanatory phrasing, it says: "Clause 3 makes the distribution of cannabis by a young person a separate provision from other offences, allowing different penalties to be specified for that offence, and corrects a grammatical error." I'm not so much concerned with the grammatical error, but I want to sit for a second with the reality that would be created if we adopt this amendment as written.

This law would set apart from existing statute that any young offender found to be in contravention of this Act in terms of distribution of cannabis, this particular Act would treat it as separate from other offences. It gives rise to the question of whether or not this Act creates a subclass of youth offender grievances with the law, whereby the law would supersede the protections of the Young Offenders Act. It's a question we at least have to sit with.

There's no specific reference that indicates that the Young Offenders Act is cross-referenced here. I raise this as an issue. If we create this brand-new class of law enforcement, they're going to be expected to administer an Act where, if they come across a young person in possession of cannabis and they believe that the young person possesses it for the purpose of distribution, we may end up criminalizing a whole generation of young people outside the bounds of the Young Offenders Act, because that's not the delineated here.

[Page 2855]

Further, the penalty for such charges and offences will be different. It allows there to be an entirely different set of penalties for this class of offence than otherwise exists. Later in the bill, there is a substantial list of fines that come to bear. I'm not a legal expert, but one of my concerns is whether or not this list of consequences that youth who violate this Act may be subject to far surpasses any consequence or any penalty that is deemed just under the Youth Justice Act in Nova Scotia.

We've got a group of people who have to monitor whether or not youth are distributing cannabis, and they can be charged with offences that are potentially apart from the young offenders' regime of justice in Nova Scotia and subject to penalties that are outside the young offenders' regime in Nova Scotia. That's not a small thing.

We already know that following the legalization of cannabis in Canada, thousands and thousands of Canadians who were convicted of cannabis-related offences in their youth were able to finally seek pardon for those offences. The burden on the justice system and the social and personal cost that those individuals bore for many, many years for minor offences was immense.

There was a social burden that was borne as well, because these people were criminalized. It deprived them of the ability to obtain entrance into post-secondary education and admission to careers like law enforcement and the military. It worked against them in criminal record checks for gainful employment in any number of respects. The criminalization of people for cannabis-related offences in Canada has been immense. Part of the legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada has been an effort to decriminalize non-dangerous cannabis offences for which the penalties were so severe and so prohibitive that it created a major societal burden in Canada.

The bill, in the way that it's worded, leads me to question whether or not this opens the door to a disproportionately harsh penalization of young people who are found to be in possession of and suspected of a motive to distribute cannabis. This comes after decades of work in Nova Scotia to, through the process of restorative justice, avoid the criminalization of youth for such offences.

We know that work has been transformative. We know that work has had a major role in unburdening the criminal justice system in Nova Scotia - the courts, the police, the probation system - and an administrative system from a type of offence that ultimately, we learned, criminalized people for the possession of and low-grade distribution of cannabis, for which the price they paid far outweighed the impact of their offences.

So we're going to create this class of people who are going to be responsible to investigate, arrest, and charge young people. Clause 4 of the bill - or Article 4 of the bill - reads:

Chapter 3 is further amended by adding immediately after Section 23 the following Section:

[Page 2856]

23A (1) In this Section, "landlord" means, in respect of a premises, a person who is a lessor, owner or person permitting the occupation of the premises, and includes an owner of a premises that has not been vacated by the tenant despite the expiry of the tenant's lease or right of occupation.

(2) No landlord shall authorize or permit a premises to be used in a contravention of this Act or the regulations.

(3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under subsection (2) if the person exercised all due diligence to prevent the commission of the offence.

I want to sit with this section for a minute. I also want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that this government has robustly, in every turn, rebuffed the call for the creation of a Residential Tenancies enforcement unit. This government believes there is no need for an enforcement unit to call to account tenants or landlords under the Statutes that govern tenancy in Nova Scotia.

[10:30 p.m.]

We don't need an enforcement unit for people who rent from and people who rent to in every other respect, but this law creates a need for a brand new class of law enforcement to investigate whether or not tenants and/or landlords are guilty of cannabis offences. It's a puzzling juxtaposition of attitudes about enforcement when it comes to issues of tenancy in the province.

So we've got a brand new class of law enforcement that has to monitor young people using cannabis and whether or not they intend to distribute it, to be treated separately or uniquely under the law and subject to a unique class of penalties outside the normal parameters that apply to youth. On top of it, this brand new class of law enforcement also now has to investigate issues of tenancy. That is an odd set of bedfellows in a mandate.

You will enforce this Act by investigating youth and investigating renters and investigating landlords. That is a strange combination of powers.

Later on, these amendments propose to create a unique set of powers for this new class of law enforcement to enter - now this is under 6(1)(c):

(a) enter and inspect any place, premises or vehicle to which this Act applies, except a private dwelling, or any other place or premises connected or contiguous to that place or premises that are related to the operation of that place or premises, and make any examination or inquiry or conduct any test that the police officer or other enforcement officer considers necessary or advisable; and (d), adding immediately after clause (d) the following clauses: (da) purchase any substance or material that the police officer or other enforcement officer believes to be cannabis; (db) examine any substance or material found in the place, premises or vehicle and take, for the purpose of analysis, any sample of a substance or material; (dc) open and examine any package or other receptacle found in the place, premises or vehicle; (dd) subject to the regulations, remove or require the removal of any advertisement or promotion for the sale of cannabis by a person or entity that is not authorized to produce, sell or distribute cannabis under this Act or the Cannabis Act (Canada);

[Page 2857]

We've got a new class of law enforcement that's got to effectively police youth consumption and suspected distribution of cannabis. This group of law enforcement has to investigate tenants and landlords, so if cannabis is found on a premise where someone rents space from somebody else, the renters and the lessors are subject to the enforcement of this new class of law enforcement.

Then when we look at how this new class of law enforcement can gain entry and rifle through the premises, it's a really troubling set of powers for this new class of law enforcement. It even says they can open and examine any package or other receptacle found in a place, premises or vehicle.

Law enforcement officers I know don't do that kind of stuff because it pollutes the evidentiary chain necessary to prosecute offences. This is a troubling power to hand a brand-new class of law enforcement.

When we look at this Act, it proposes a brand-new set of people to do a very specific job. They're going to be police that police use, landlords, tenants, and anybody who lives in a space where they suspect that cannabis may exist for the purpose of distribution.

There are other issues with this Act that raise questions for me. Section 12 of the proposed amendments says:

Section 30 of Chapter 3 is amended by adding immediately after subsection (1) the following subsections:

(1A) In a prosecution under this Act, it may be inferred, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that a substance in question is cannabis by the substance's appearance or odour and from the fact that a witness describes the substance as cannabis.

[Page 2858]

It sounds an awful lot like a lesser standard of probable cause to me.

(1B) In a prosecution under this Act, a certificate signed or purported to be signed by the Corporation . . .

I understand that to be the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation, which has the power to distribute cannabis legally in this province under government authorization.

. . . stating that cannabis was not supplied or authorized by or obtained from the Corporation is admissible in evidence without proof of the signature or of the official character of the person appearing to have signed the same and is prima facie proof of the matters contained in the certificate.

In the prosecution of an offence under this Act, all that's necessary is a certificate on NSLC letterhead that says, "This weed is not NSLC weed." It doesn't have to be signed by anybody. There doesn't have to be any verification that the person who signed it is an authority with signing authority to sign the certificate to begin with. That's a troubling reduction in the burden of proof that a prosecutor would have to present as evidence to prosecute a charge under this Act.

Procedurally, there are a number of elements in this bill that raise some real eyebrows. I agree with the previous speaker that the intent here is to enact legislation to promote public safety and ensure safe access to a safe supply of cannabis for recreational purposes. I don't challenge that as a laudable or worthy goal.

The means by which this legislation appears to intend to achieve it is head-scratching. The minister is going to be able to name a brand-new branch of law enforcement off the corner of his desk. We have no idea what the qualifications for these people would be. What kind of training would they be required to have in hand in order to be able to do this duty with respect to the law in an expert, ethical, professional fashion, to a standard similar to what we expect of police and RCMP officers in every corner of this province?

It creates a unique class of offences that youth could be prosecuted under and a unique set of consequences for youth that would live apart from the consequences youth face under the youth criminal justice system in Nova Scotia. It potentially criminalizes people who live in a space and, if cannabis happens to be found in the space where they live, the fact that they even live in that space is subject to prosecution, or that the landlords who lease these spaces to tenants can be prosecuted.

Are these law enforcement officers going to be trained rigidly and rigorously in the Residential Tenancies Act of Nova Scotia so that they understand what the duties and rights of tenants and landlords are? What guarantees do people in Nova Scotia have that these folks are going to be trained in the process of entering a building on this unique and lesser standard of probable cause for search and investigation? Does this Act create the possibility of contamination of evidence upon which the prosecution and/or the defence may rely in the administration of justice if someone is prosecuted under this Act? These are not small questions.

[Page 2859]

The creation of a different burden of evidentiary proof to prosecute charges? It allows prosecution of an individual on the basis that somebody thought something was cannabis - not that they knew that it was, not that there was proof that it was - but if somebody believes something was cannabis that's the sole standard that this law creates for charges. I'm not aware of any other class of offence where an assumption by a witness is the sole basis for prosecution or charges. It's a very, very low bar, and one that raises real questions, you know?

I have to wonder whether or not prosecutions under such a low bar wouldn't result in challenges to higher courts in Nova Scotia and perhaps beyond, and create a bottleneck administratively in our judiciary for individuals seeking justice against what could unintentionally become an unjust law.

So there are a number of things that I have concerns about in this proposed amendment that I think we would do well as a House to hear some expert testimony on. I would love to hear the Attorney General stand and furnish the House with the legal opinions that indicate that these measures are just, that they're constitutional, that they reflect rigorous standards of evidentiary proof such that we don't create a weak or a Swiss cheese kind of law - where whether or not charges would stand once laid. That's a dynamic I think we would want to avoid, and so I hope as we move through the process of debate that the minister stands in this House and provides some answers to these questions.

Speaker, the other concern I have about this bill is the context in which it's been introduced. It's hard to separate this bill from the controversial conduct of our Premier and the Minister of Justice and Attorney General in the recent past concerning enforcement of existing statute to regulate cannabis in Nova Scotia. In the eyes of many in Nova Scotia, the Premier and the Attorney General have been seen to direct law enforcement to put boots on the ground on land belonging to sovereign First Nations who have the right to self-governance under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Peace and Friendship Treaties.

[10:45 p.m.]

We know that law enforcement has pushed back against those suggestions, indicating that they understand the limitations of their scope. I've also pushed back to suggest that the Premier and the Attorney General may be overreaching their scope in publicly directing them to take such action.

The previous speaker already referenced and tabled an article where both the Premier and the Attorney General suggested that legislative change was necessary to address systemic concerns with the presence of fentanyl in unregulated cannabis in Nova Scotia and a troubling relationship between the distribution of unregulated cannabis in Nova Scotia and organized human trafficking. The article cited by the previous speaker has a clear position from senior law enforcement leadership in Nova Scotia that, to their knowledge, no such links exist. We have, as a foundation for this legislation, a faulty premise. There is a fake crisis that these changes intend to remedy.

[Page 2860]

On top of that, this government, early in this second term of its power, has a notorious pattern in terms of a failure, from the perspective of Nova Scotia's Mi'kmaw chiefs, to respect its duties and constitutional obligation to consult in a nation-to-nation fashion with the Mi'kmaw people in this province on matters covered by the Treaties of Peace and Friendship. Several recent instances demonstrate that this government believes it doesn't have a duty to consult until it feels like it.

The government enacted Bill No. 127, known as the Protecting Nova Scotians Act. One of the principal features of this Act was that it criminalized protests on Crown lands, and it didn't take much to figure out that the protests that were being criminalized were protests of Indigenous land protectors, protests where they erected treaty truckhouses that they have a treaty right to erect and are constitutionally protected freedoms. Yet this government, without consultation with the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaw Chiefs, enacted this legislation that criminalizes the actions of Indigenous knowledge keepers and Earth protectors when government actions threaten nature and threaten the treaty rights of Mi'kmaw peoples.

It was quite a row here in this House in the last sitting when representatives from the Mi'kmaw community arrived and sat in the gallery during debate on that bill to signal loud and clear, in person, that the government had not done its duty.

This government, in its first sitting after the last general election, enacted legislation that wiped out bans on fracking and uranium exploration in this province, which were established by broad social consultations across the province, including ongoing consultation and dialogue with the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaw Chiefs and other communities, and passed with all-party support in this Legislature. The government proposed this legislation and enacted this legislation despite protestations from the Mi'kmaw community that reopening these bans or lifting these bans required consultation in a nation-to-nation fashion, with representatives of the Mi'kmaw people, which did not occur.

Tabled in this House were letters from Mi'kmaw leadership in every corner of this province that said, you did not consult us before you did this and you must. This government passed a law that the Mi'kmaw people told us was not okay.

Speaker, I take no joy in it but this is a government whose Premier, Minister of Justice, and Minister of L'nu Affairs have been declared undesirables and banned from entering the lands of certain Mi'kmaw bands in this province, subject to a $50,000 fine, should they wander on to lands that they are not welcome on. Under sovereign self-governance by Mi'kmaw bands.

[Page 2861]

Speaker, this morning we heard testimony in Public Bills Committee concerning the bill that would legislate Windsor, Nova Scotia as the definitive birthplace of hockey. We heard testimony from a Mi'kmaw knowledge keeper from Sipekne'katik who presented testimony based not only on scholarly research but also based on the oral traditions and the oral heritage of the Mi'kmaw people. For those uninitiated, those oral histories are a vast and untapped trove of Indigenous knowledge about pre-European history across Mi'kma'ki in Nova Scotia.

We heard from that presenter that by legislating Windsor as the definitive birthplace of hockey, it reflects a problematic dismissal of Indigenous knowledge and truth about the origins of the game of hockey in our province.

We talk about a lot of serous stuff, but I don't know how serious hockey is. I love hockey as much as the next person, spent a lifetime playing it, done lots of coaching, raised my kids in minor hockey, but when we have folks from among the Mi'kmaw community who make a point to be in this House, in this space, and tell us the story that your law is telling is not fulsome. It's not entirely accurate and it dismisses the lived history of the founding peoples of this land. It calls into question this government's commitment to nation-to-nation relationship with Nova Scotia's First People.

We've heard from a number of folks in Mi'kmaw leadership, formally and formerly across this province in our caucus. We understand that in hearing from them that like the Government of Nova Scotia, Mi'kmaw leadership is concerned about a safe way to access a safe supply of recreational cannabis on and off First Nations reserves in this province. Not only do they share these concerns with government, not only like government are they perplexed by the landscape that currently exists, not only are they perplexed with the question of how to remedy the current situation, but they have made clear to many in our caucus that they are ready and willing partners in the project of contributing to an improved regime of cannabis regulation in our province.

This is not a project to which Mi'kmaw leadership is opposed. They're telling us that this is a conversation that they are willing and ready to have. In the way that the government needs help and recognizes the need for action, they also recognize that they could use a hand and a partner, and they are willing to take action on this issue.

The approach to this bill sends a problematic signal to our Mi'kmaq siblings in Nova Scotia that this government is prepared to impose a solution without consultation and collaboration with them. To Mi'kmaw people who have seen government actions that they have experienced as hostile, imperious, and colonial, this is further evidence that this government is not concerned with a relationship with the Mi'kmaw people based on mutual respect and equality. This community seems to feel - and legitimately so, from where I sit - that this is a government that views them as a problem it intends to fix. I submit that that is profoundly the wrong message that this House needs to be sending to the Mi'kmaw community at this time.

[Page 2862]

I also want to acknowledge that in this government's attempt to address an issue worthy of attention, it is missing the opportunity from Mi'kmaw ways of knowing. When we look at Indigenous practices around harm reduction, addiction, and the breach of community trust and respect, we know that restorative justice draws key core principles from Indigenous practices of justice. Rather than practices of justice that are anchored in enforcement, consequence, and punishment, Indigenous practices are founded in the concept of right relations - that where there is a harm, the harm is relational. The effort is not to right a wrong but to make right the relationships that have been harmed by the act.

The previous speaker spoke about principles for responsive regulation of recreational cannabis in Canada, which she offered at a national conference. There's an opportunity here that if we would approach this conversation in a relational way, as equals with the Mi'kmaw people, the legislation that comes forward in this House - there's a golden opportunity for us to reframe the problem but also take a completely different tack on addressing the issue.

We know that if you see everything as a nail, everything deserves a hammer. For a long time in Canada, the answer to crime and criminality was to ramp up the price of criminal acts - to create mandatory minimum sentences and to lengthen the span or the term of certain classes of criminal offences. We know now - data shows us - that those efforts were counterproductive. To make crime so prohibitive has little curbing effect on the number of offences and ultimately fails to solve the issue or stem the tide that needs redress.

By adopting restorative justice, Nova Scotia has been a leader in our country, in practices that have stepped away from punitive consequence and punishment-based outcomes to crime. Those approaches have deprived our province of substantial numbers of people who are unable to rebound from being criminalized as a result of those charges and convictions.

[11:00 p.m.]

Even when people have served their time and paid their debt to society by serving time in prison they continue to pay for those crimes for decades after. In Canada's workforce shortages, economic woes - there is a direct tie between the way that we treat a crime in this country and the outcomes of that approach.

So Speaker, I submit here in the House that the aims of this bill are worthy of attention and focus. This is the right place for this discussion to happen, But I submit that the process by which this bill has arrived here is sorely lacking. There's no evidence whatsoever that there has been consultation and nation-to-nation dialogue with First Nations communities across our province, especially at a time that senior leadership in this government have made clear that this is an issue that's tied to First Nations communities, as opposed to a broad-base social issue that affects us no matter where we live in this province.

[Page 2863]

This approach also demonstrates the government's unwillingness to learn from our Mi'kmaw siblings in Nova Scotia, to understand how Mi'kmaw ways of seeing and knowing might inspire an alternative approach to this issue, and ground amendments to the law that are before us in notions of relationship and in notions of healing rather than consequence or punishment. I believe that by tuning out those voices, that by erecting a stone wall that says, "We don't need to listen to you, here is the solution, we know best," we actually impoverish our province. We will erect a law that will impose harms and consequences on a new generation of people criminalized for consuming cannabis.

Our prisons will be fuller, we will have fewer people able to be gainfully employed in the workforce, and this legislation will do little if anything to remedy the harms to relationship in community that offences prosecuted under this Act signal exist. I think if we're going to do this, this is a golden opportunity to take the time to do it right in relationship with our First Nations on a nation-to-nation basis.

Having raised those flags about outcomes of this legislation if we pass these amendments as presented, having flagged the risks to the province and the continued harms that will be inflicted on this government's deeply troubled relationship with the Mi'kmaw people across this province, I urge the government to evaluate whether or not this is the approach it wants to take, and whether or not hitting pause on this and initiating a different approach to creating a solution is the better way not just for this government but for all of us in this province.

Speaker, I thank you for the time to speak and I look forward to hearing other perspectives in second reading.

THE SPEAKER « » : The honourable Member for Dartmouth North - sorry, Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

LISA LACHANCE « » : Yes, we've all been practising saying Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

I want to rise and ask a few questions on this bill and offer some concerns and feedback based on my own experience.

In 2016, the federal government launched the Task Force on Marijuana Legalization and Regulation. It was chaired by former Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan and it was tasked with establishing a new framework for legalizing, strictly regulating, and restricting access to cannabis. I became involved in the work of the task force. There were a whole bunch of different ways that Canadians could provide input. There were online surveys, there were different focused outreach sessions and engagements, and there were communities. The task force went across the country. I became involved with the youth portion of the engagement process around the task force.

[Page 2864]

We were focused on a lot of the things that are at the heart of this bill. The panel had objectives of aiming to reduce the harms of cannabis use, protecting public health, and keeping profits out of the hands of criminals, to shutting down the illegal market. With particular thinking about young people, the task force used a public health approach, building on the knowledge that the risks of cannabis are higher with early age of initiation and/or higher frequency of use. Some of the aims were to delay the age of the initiation of cannabis use, reduce the frequency of use, reduce higher-risk use - and I'll try to remember to come back to that in a little while - reduce problematic use and dependence, expand access to treatment and prevention programs, and ensure early, sustained public education and awareness.

It was recognized that, as with so many public health issues, risk is inherent in these discussions. In this particular aspect though, the research and what we have available to us is actually quite constrained, because for 90 years, cannabis was prohibited in Canada. It's very hard to have done research to have any longitudinal outcomes, but we know lots about the short-term effects of cannabis: psychoactive effects, effects on memory, attention, and psychomotor function. We remain less certain about longer-term effects like the permanent harm to mental functioning, risk of depression and anxiety disorders. I know that's part of the common discourse sometimes around cannabis use, but it has actually not been proven through research. We do know a lot about cannabis dependency.

As I said, for children and youth, studies generally have consistently found that the earlier cannabis use begins and the more frequently and longer it is used, the greater risk of potential developmental harms, some of which may be long term or permanent. Again, we don't have all the research that we need because we haven't been doing that research, but what the research is pointing towards is long-lasting effects.

There are also risks with consumption. There are certain risks in terms of increased risk of harm, frequency of use, use of higher potency products, obviously driving while impaired. There are concerns about the risk and the impact of combining alcohol and cannabis, and of course, depending on how cannabis is consumed, if it's co-used with tobacco, potentially increasing smoking-related lung disease.

With the body of knowledge that was available to Canadians at the time, I think it was accepted when the discussions started around the task force and the questions - there were a series of questions that the task force looked at. There was probably no safe age. It wasn't going to be a matter that we didn't have the research, but we could probably all assume that at 25 it's most likely less risky, because of what we know about brain science is that your brain, particularly your frontal lobe, particularly what could be expected in terms of executive functioning and that sort of thing, takes until 25.

[Page 2865]

Then, thinking about what's reasonable and what's enforceable, a lot of stakeholders who were involved in this task force were looking at the question of balancing the minimization of harms with the practicability of being able to enforce it.

We know brain science tells us that our brains aren't fully mature until at least 25. We have alcohol standards across the world that are lower than 25. There was also a lot of discussion about the challenges of having - if you didn't align with the age of majority in most places, it would be quite hard to regulate and to enforce.

At one point, we got youth together in Toronto for a couple days, talking about all these issues. The young people who were mostly around that table were not necessarily young people. They were young people whose peers and they themselves were using different substances. They were young people who had been in conflict with the law. They were young people living in shelters. These were folks who could comment on the lived reality of young people in Canada at that time while cannabis was still illegal.

What they had to say has always stayed with me. First and foremost, youth wanted to be safe. They wanted their friends to be safe. They wanted their communities to be safe. I learned a whole bunch about different types of ways in which cannabis is manufactured these days in those conversations. Youth could easily identify that, aside from different edibles, shatter, and all these various things, they had no idea what was in them. They had no idea what they were taking. They had no idea of the amount, and their friends didn't have any idea of the amount.

This was also a group of people who were willing to engage in the discussion of decriminalization and working within the system, but they wanted to be safe. They wanted public health information.

One of the things that has stayed with me from that time was lots of young people and realizing we haven't done alcohol policy well. You walk into an NSLC before cannabis and today, and there's very little Public Health information available. There are few signs that talk about the increased cancer risk. There's very little information that's provided.

The young people pointed this out - we haven't done alcohol policy well - and implored the task force not to recreate the weaknesses of our alcohol regime with cannabis.

Because they wanted to be safe, and they wanted their friends and their communities to be safe, they wanted information - the kind of information you receive around smoking when you go to buy a package of cigarettes. They wanted to know that information.

[Page 2866]

I think about this when I walk into an NSLC. It's a bit lifestyle, right? It's a glass of wine, a drink, a blah blah blah. When I look around the NSLC, I don't see any information on cancer or other health risks.

They also wanted to recognize the unfair impact that the criminalization of cannabis combined with racism had had on so many, particularly combined with the practice of street checks - but realized that, for racialized youth, they were most likely to be stopped. If they were carrying anything, they were most likely to be caught. They wanted a system that recognized that and made amends for that racialized system that was existing - still exists - particularly around cannabis enforcement. They wanted young people who had been charged as a young person for cannabis possession to be discharged from that offence - to have those forgiven.

A lot of that was in recognition of the circumstances in which they, their friends, and their communities found themselves and the lack of access to mental health and addiction services. We have a commitment to youth criminal justice in this country, so they were simply articulating that, as well.

[11:15 p.m.]

I carry that experience with me when I think about cannabis and cannabis enforcement, particularly protecting young people.

I haven't had a chance to go back and review the documents that the minister tabled a number of nights ago. It is too bad that we keep debating this bill at night. It's outside the news cycle. There are no guests in the gallery. I don't - we should be as open and forthright as we can when talking about substance use and addiction in this province. I don't feel like late-night debates help that.

In any event, I do note that the minister cited and tabled a number of what I think were scientific documents about the harms of cannabis use. I am grateful that the minister found evidence because I was concerned by what we saw happening in December this past year. There are enough myths out there about substances and substance use. There is enough disinformation for our youth in particular - the things they can see on Instagram and TikTok and amongst their friends - on anything. Ask a young person about some of the public health stuff. There's a whole anti-birth control thing happening on TikTok that should be concerning. We don't want our young people going and finding their information there.

Particularly when the Minister of Justice and the Premier alluded to this idea that there had been cannabis laced with fentanyl - that caught my attention. It is, frankly, an urban myth. I took the time - I can't quite put my finger on the document, but I'm happy to table it - I read line by line last year's report from this Province on adverse drug reactions. Basically, it's this instance, what drugs were found in the system, and that sort of stuff. There wasn't any adverse reaction involving the combination of fentanyl and cannabis. When I went into the evidence, that's never been found anywhere in the world.

[Page 2867]

Now, there are also reasons why - the young people will explain this - you can't burn cannabis and fentanyl at the same rate. There are a whole bunch of things, and I don't remember the details, but it's just kind of impossible.

We have an opioid crisis in this country. We have an opioid crisis in this province. It's constantly changing - new substances and that sort of thing. As leaders, we need to be dealing in information. We need to be dealing in the evidence. We need to be combatting the type of misinformation that is out there everywhere, especially for our young people.

We can get information from the Nova Scotia Health Authority. One of the things that the Nova Scotia Health Authority does is called drug alerts. You'll see them on Facebook. You can sign up to receive them as an email. I'm not sure of all the various ways you can receive them - I assume there's probably a text version to make things easy. Basically, that would either report someone showing up in the ER having taken something that they thought was one thing, but it contained fentanyl or some other opioid, or some adverse combination. They share that. They share that publicly because it's harm reduction. It's getting the word out there.

I'll talk about all the other things we do around addictions and substance use, but that's the Nova Scotia Health Authority putting out the information. Communities and folks can report into that drug alert system too. They encourage people to do that. Again, they're not reporting harmful interactions with cannabis, for the most part. Most people would be reporting interactions with substances that remain illegal and illicit. At the same time we don't want to shut down that sharing of information, because Xanax bars that people are buying might be laced with fentanyl, and you want to let people know that in the community. You want to describe what it looks like.

I would really recommend that everyone has a look at the Nova Scotia Drug Alerts. I would hope that when they come in for your community that you share them.

We have lots of ways of getting the information we need about what's happening with substance use in this province. We have reports from coroners. Not to be a downer, but unexplained deaths are examined, and that catches, for the most part, lots of different substance use-related overdoses and deaths.

I really want to be clear to Nova Scotians that cannabis laced with fentanyl has not been found in this province and there are places to go to get information, including the Nova Scotia Health Authority, that you can trust about substances in this province. I really implore all of us, as leaders, to not contribute to the misinformation and the mythmaking. That doesn't help our young people at all. We have the information and we have the evidence out there that we need.

[Page 2868]

When I look at this bill, I would also like to hear more about the government's plan to respond to addiction and substance use in this province, including the opioid crisis.

Leading into this sitting, I was contacted by a number of stakeholders who work with folks who use substances - alcohol and otherwise - community organizations, and they reported a lot of difficulty, in fact a lack of access, in being able to get folks into rehab when people signal they are ready.

One organization - and again I can't; I didn't ask them for their records or how they count it - they were reporting that they had dozens of people, but they are still waiting for a traditional rehab situation. There's no in-person rehab happening in Cape Breton right now. That leaves people without any options on the Island.

This government has launched new substance recovery centres, and they are kind of like a dayhab. So, if you have a safe place to stay, a safe place to live, you can seek these services, and they are very evidence-based, so we definitely did not invent them. They have existed in other jurisdictions. They have been brought to Nova Scotia.

I would love to hear more about their implementation. Certainly, that would be a question in Estimates, but I think again, when we have these pieces of legislation that arrive without what I consider to be due consideration, I don't know how this interacts with other services and other things that the government is doing.

Again, the substance recovery centres: I also think they are only for folks over 18 or 19. I'd like the minister to clarify that for me. So, for young people I'm not sure what is truly available other than in-patient mental health services.

Again, there's often a lack of beds in different parts of the province, especially for young people. I'm hoping that we're collecting lots of evidence about Nova Scotia's use of the substance recovery centres. I'd love to hear what we're evaluating, what we're finding, and how this can become a part of the work we do in Nova Scotia.

We've been talking a lot - obviously - in this sitting about the budget and the cuts that are being outlined, being unrolled. They're cuts that many ministers have struggled to explain - what they are or why. So, really, we're hearing from community. We're getting phone calls. I'm sure I know you all are getting phone calls as well. So say, "Well, that cut: This is what it means." It actually means this program and a lot of the culture and youth programs, positive health programs, like the Nova Scotia Mi'kmaw Summer Games, for instance.

There are things being cut from the Department of Opportunities and Social Development's youth programming. I don't know what they are, but it seems like that might be important. There's the Youth Day Program Pilot. I don't know what that is, but all the things that were cut that affect positive youth development have a real impact on our ability to support the well-being of young people and to offer a different path, to offer different inspiration.

[Page 2869]

One of the programs we heard about - again, I'm going to check with my colleague to see if we have any more information about this - LOVE Nova Scotia faces a huge cut. They believe that their Preston program is shutting down, for instance. We were, a number of us, just at a fundraiser, the first gala for LOVE Nova Scotia. I mean this is exactly the type of investment where, when it's pulled out of communities and pulled away from young people, the costs are going to show up somewhere else. We need all the programs we can have that support young people and support positive youth development.

We have Integrated Youth Services, finally, in this province which are - lots of people have heard me talk about them. It's what I did my PhD research on, and I think they're really promising models for youth well-being because they are evidence based. We have three open, and hopefully, three more open soon - again, great questions for Estimates. I can't wait to get there with the Minister for Addictions and Mental Health. It's really the idea that youth can walk in without - there is no diagnosis, there is no wait time. They can walk in and bring their concerns around mental health, yes, but also school and employment and substance use, housing, all sorts of things. Basically, that's the integrated part of the Integrated Youth Services. They are just starting in Nova Scotia. In other parts of the country, they've been going for more than a decade. So, there's lots of evidence out there and experiences.

What's really interesting about Integrated Youth Services is that they look different according to the community they're in. Really part of the evidence behind them is that they are part - they reflect the concerns and challenges in different communities. All that to say, there are integrated youth sites with more experience addressing substance use, including cannabis, amongst young people than others, and I hope that we're learning from them and connecting with that evidence. I'm also curious to hear about who is coming to Integrated Youth Services in Nova Scotia. So, who is going in Amherst? Who is going in the north end of Halifax? How many young people are showing up, and what are they looking for? Are we seeing them coming to Integrated Youth Services looking for support around substance use? And what are the pathways to other types of mental health support?

At a certain point, what is needed to deal with substance use? How does the young person - the idea behind Integrated Youth Services is there is no wrong door. You come in, and there is going to be support. There is going to be some assessment, and you're not going to feel like you've done the wrong thing, or you've gone to the wrong place.

For cannabis use, for instance, for substance use, what's happening in our Integrated Youth Services in Nova Scotia that's providing that type of support that young people need?

[Page 2870]

[11:30 p.m.]

Those are some of the frameworks I have when I think about cannabis enforcement. I was spending a lot of time supporting young people involved in the task force process and thinking about lots of things around enforcement and risk and labelling and dosage, all kinds of things. Then also thinking, "What do young people need, and what are we offering people in Nova Scotia to help their positive well-being, their positive development? How are we also there to help young people? Where are the open doors?"

When I look at this bill, I do have some questions about what the implications are for young people in particular. We also know a lot about early involvement in the criminal justice system. You get a charge, and then maybe you don't follow your conditions, or you miss a court date, and then the penalties start rolling. Remember, we're talking about young people. Their brains aren't developed. We don't expect them to be particularly good at executive functioning; that's why we have different standards around justice. Just making sure that nothing we're doing in Nova Scotia is taking us backwards to where young people get into - what am I trying to say? - a revolving door of the justice system.

My colleague for Sackville-Cobequid talked about the role of landlords, that's cited in this bill. Like my colleague, I find it really ironic that we're not going to hold landlords accountable for much in this province, but we are going to maybe hold them accountable for weed found on their premises. At Estimates with the Minister of Service Nova Scotia, I shared the story of someone who hasn't had heat in their apartment since the end of December, using the Residential Tenancies process. Let me make that clear. Speaking of the good things you can find on TikTok, she's been documenting it on TikTok, if you want to go and find that.

Power in buildings, renovictions - all the things that are part of the day-to-day life at my constituency office around landlords - and actually, no one has ever called to say, "I'm concerned by the smell of cannabis in the building." No one's ever called me with that concern. Maybe other folks have. I see heads nodding. That would seem to me - I'm just reflecting on that. That's quite surprising, actually, that I haven't heard that. Of course, when you're in communal living, you smell it. I certainly notice it when I'm in buildings.

It just seems like, in a province where landlords are pretty much not held to account for anything, this is the only thing they're being held to account for. It's cruelly ironic, I would say. If we can hold them accountable for cannabis, I think we can hold them accountable for heat and power and cleanliness and safety. We do not need to do this only for cannabis.

I'm also curious about the provision for the minister to be able to hire people other than police to enforce cannabis violations. I'm curious about the why. In second reading, I often ask why a law - not to digress, but the bill-making process in our province is a little backwards; this is a government that doesn't want to consult or talk to folks - I would like to know the reason why that's necessary. Are we building on our tobacco enforcement provisions? That's through the Department of Environment and Climate Change, the Inspection, Compliance and Enforcement Division. It does say ICE, but we'll just have to get used to that.

[Page 2871]

I'm also wondering, the Premier and the Minister of Justice alluded to organized crime and trafficking. Are the members of the Department of Environment and Climate Change inspection, compliance, and enforcement unit, are they prepared to take on this particular enforcement? Is it safe? Are they trained for it?

If we're not going to use them, then who? Who is going to be designated? Are we going to have citizen sheriffs? You know, you can get a badge.

My partner was involved in Health Canada's regulation of tobacco products in the Atlantic region. For a time, in fact, she had a badge. There were lots of places where it was well accepted that there was no way that she should be the one enforcing tobacco violations, that it wasn't safe, that this was a person on their own, unarmed. She did have a really cool vest and literally a badge. It was pretty fun, actually. It's Heather. Anybody who has met Heather is like, "Really? Heather had a badge? I can't imagine." She's extremely anti-tobacco, so she absolutely loved this role.

I guess I'm just wondering why, and what the model is? We're in a budget sitting, folks. It's hard to agree to a new function without a cost. It's hard to agree to a new function without knowing what the plan is for implementation.

My notes say, "so many questions." I really do have a lot of questions about this. If we had a bill-making process where bills were introduced and then they went to specific committees - we would maybe have a justice committee, for instance. Then we would bring people in, and we would hear from experts, we would hear from stakeholders. It would be like Public Bills Committee, but really meaningful. Oh, and it would happen over time. Instead of having "badump, badump, badump," and then we're in Public Bills Committee. Good luck. You have 12 hours to sign up. Get ready.

If you think about the federal process, there are specific committees. They study bills. Some of the things that happen when you study a bill is that there are unintended consequences. There are things we don't know. With due respect, I don't know a lot about this process to develop this bill, but it seems to be a surprise to lots of people. Thus, I would assess that there hasn't been a great amount of consultation done around this. If we had a committee process where bills were studied, examined, in a really non-partisan way - people actually engaged with the content.

I have presented at parliamentary committees on human rights and on justice. To facilitate that process, not only is it not 12 hours later - bam - you're going to go. They put a call out for people, and they say, "The committee is considering this bill. Is there anyone in Canada who would like to talk about this bill?" You can actually say, "I would." Then, often, it will be like, "If you want to present in person, do you need help getting to Ottawa?" There's support for citizen participation. Recognizing that we can't hold all the answers, that's a really strong personal conviction around what we need to do good public policy is good public engagement.

[Page 2872]

In December, when there was some discussion, and there were some things said by the Premier and the Minister of Justice that really weren't true or were disagreed with by police, publicly, we would have a way, if we had various voices to actually ascertain that. Instead of having it be that I say this, and then a law enforcement officer says this, then there's not actually dialogue. I think that's a really ineffective way of actually understanding what's going on. I bet you the Minister of Justice and the police officer - and there are probably other people who could come into the conversation, suss it out, and understand what the problem looks like, but that's not the way we do it here. Other folks have commented on this, and I am curious - again, I'm not an expert, but the whole enforcement around odour and that sort of thing seems vague. Maybe there's a whole thing. Maybe there's a way to do this well. Maybe other jurisdictions are doing this well. Maybe there's a plan.

Again, in the process that we have now - it's 11:40 p.m. on a Monday night, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than with you guys, honestly. Here we are, trying to understand the implications of the law. We make laws in this House. That's part of our job. We work with constituents, and we do lots of other things, but we make laws. When we're asked to make laws in this way, in a hurry - like I said, this bill has never been debated at any other time than under the cover of darkness.

Again, this has public health implications. It's not just a law enforcement bill. This should be things that we don't try, that are not hidden from Nova Scotians. I suggest that there is - I don't know if anybody has Legislative Television on, but I suggest that probably not a lot of people have hung in to this point. Luckily, of course, they can watch the recording and read it tomorrow, which is amazing.

My experience is engaging with young people on this issue. From that experience, I know that young people have a lot to tell us about what it's like, where substances come from, motivation, the risks they take, and that sort of thing. If we're making laws that are designed to protect them, youth need to be involved. We're probably not going to hit the nail on the head without young people telling us what we've done right.

This has to be something where we talk about evidence. As leaders in our communities, we have to talk about the evidence. We have to think about pathways to substance use - youth programs.

I do find it quite distracting when I think people are telling jokes about me in the House when I'm talking. If there are jokes to be told, I would invite members to step outside.

[Page 2873]

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. I did this the other day. I'm going to do it again now. Please forgive me for asking a member if they'd walk me home safely. That's what that was about.

I do not like it when people start perceiving what they think is about them. Not everything is about the person who is speaking at all times.

The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

LISA LACHANCE « » : Pardon me, Speaker. I wasn't referring to you. It was a few side conversations going on. I'm glad that you have a safe walk home. I do find it hard, particularly at 11:40 p.m., when there are a lot of other things happening in the House.

The other concern about this bill rests on its origin story, where it was perceived by Mi'kmaw communities - frankly, nothing's been done to dissuade them of this - the total disregard for their right and their capacity to manage their community. This issue and the way that it has been dealt with has further devastated this government's relationship with the Mi'kmaw people and communities. It's hard to find different ways to make it worse, but it keeps on happening.

I'm going to read a letter from the Chiefs, from December 5, 2025. I want to make sure that all members are aware of it and that it's read into Hansard. The Chiefs' response to a letter from the Nova Scotia Attorney General, Mi'kma'ki:

[11:45 p.m.]

The 13 Nova Scotia Mi'kmaw Chiefs were surprised to receive a letter from the Nova Scotia Attorney General and Minister of Justice this week. In his letter, Minister Armstrong stated that "all cannabis retail activity, including on-reserve activity, must operate under the existing provincial framework" and noted that he issued directive to the RCMP for "enhanced enforcement of illegal cannabis dispensaries, including on-reserve dispensaries."

I'm just going to break, offer some parentheses. We could have a whole discussion about directing police from the Legislature, but we'll just continue on.

Prior to federal legalization of cannabis in Canada in 2018, the Maw-lukutijik Saqmaq (Assembly) reached out to the Nova Scotia government . . .

[Page 2874]

Maybe the Liberals can share why that wasn't responded to.

. . . to share understandings on what the regulation of cannabis could be in the Mi'kmaw communities, alongside what Nova Scotia was doing in the rest of the province. The Province rejected those requests.

Again, we'll have to ask our Liberal friends to explain what was happening in 2018, unless perhaps the member for Halifax Atlantic has some memory of what was going on at that time.

The result is exactly what we predicted – a system that does not and cannot work in our communities. Attempting an approach in 2025 that ignores previous opportunities to work together, and the formal existing channels to work Nation-to-Nation, is disrespectful.

This is a quote:

"Although our perspectives may differ, it's important to state that the Province does not govern our communities," said Chief Terrance Paul, on behalf of the Assembly. "We have a right to self-governance and self-determination. This is a clear example of what happens when the Province will not come to the table with us from the outset; an archaic government process we've experienced far too often in our communities."

Minister Armstrong's directive to the RCMP, inaccurate information provided both in writing and to the media, plus citing a court decision that is currently under appeal, only frustrated the Assembly further.

The quote continues from Chief Paul:

"The RCMP must respond to the priorities of the Chiefs and Councils in each community," continued Chief Paul. "Minister Armstrong must understand that the Province does not have jurisdiction to govern our communities, nor do they have a complete understanding of what happens in our communities. Therefore, they cannot decide what is best for our members."

The Assembly was disappointed with the lack of understanding of the Treaty and Aboriginal Rights and Title implications with Minister Armstrong's statements.

[Page 2875]

We're back into a quote:

"We hold Aboriginal Title, Aboriginal Rights and Treaty Rights over our territory of Mi'kma'ki. This jurisdiction protects our autonomy and our identity. Nova Scotia must realize that a non-collaborative approach has never, nor will ever, be appropriate or acceptable," said Chief Paul.

I can table that once I get this printed out.

As my colleague also said, there's been lots of work done in Mi'kmaw communities about the sale of cannabis. Time and time again, this government does not seem to understand anything with regard to the nation-to-nation treaty relationship that exists in Mi'kma'ki, that is the foundation of Mi'kma'ki. Time and time again, this government appears to want to ignore that, but it really is walking away from some real opportunities.

First of all, many communities have been working on community plans. They want to have a nation-to-nation relationship, but a true nation-to-nation relationship under the Treaty in Aboriginal Rights and Title respects the rights and ability of Indigenous communities to self govern.

We're supposed to be in our reconciliation era and not our recolonization era. Every time that this government goes forward like, "We're not even going to - we're going to ignore that." It's like the regulated health professions. There's the assembly. There's a whole structure to engage with. It's not like it's hard. It's not like, "Oh, I want to do something in the Mi'kmaq communities. How will I ever know who to talk to?" It's pretty obvious. There are chiefs. There's an assembly. There's a whole Tripartite Forum, which I still don't understand the implications of this budget for, but it seems to be totally cut.

I want to remind folks that when I came to work for the provincial government of this Province in 2008, the Tripartite Forum was a source of pride for everybody. It was a source of integrity. Under the PC government of the time, Minister Baker was the Minister of Finance, but had also been heavily involved in the Tripartite Forum, and was deeply respected. I remember that the chiefs showed up at his funeral.

That's the legacy that this government should be building on, not whatever this is that's ignoring treaties in Mi'kma'ki.

This government can start acting in a good way now. There is a chance now to say, "You're right. Our work around cannabis has not been appropriate. It has not been respectful of our legal obligations. We're going to do something different." We could delay this bill. I don't think it's worth further damage to our nation-to-nation treaty relationship. We could look at what's happening in other provinces.

[Page 2876]

I share the public health concerns of cannabis use. I share the concerns about youth cannabis use. I share all that. In fact, I know that young people share that, too, but we're not doing it right in the way that we're conducting ourselves in Mi'kma'ki, and we need to do a lot better.

THE SPEAKER « » : Before I recognize, I ask that the member table that tomorrow.

The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier

KENDRA COOMBES « » : I've been thinking a lot about this bill, and I've been thinking a lot about the implications for youth. It comes down to a lot of what I spoke about today during my speech under the Supply Motion.

Kids - youth don't care what you know until they know you care, meaning we have to take action for our youth. We have to show them that we care by investing in them and by investing in youth programs dedicated to them. That includes before-and after-school programs like LOVE, the BGC, and other youth programs all throughout Nova Scotia.

What those programs do is try to keep youth out of the criminal justice system. In fact, we spend, as a Province, more money on the youth justice system - as well as the adult justice system, because of recidivism - than we do on our actual youth and the programs for them.

Here's the question: When you're devising a program like this, "makes the distribution of cannabis by a young person a separate provision from other offences, allowing different penalties to be specified . . ." This part of it, Speaker - I don't know what this part means. Are we making them harsher? Are we making penalties harsher on our youth? I really, truly don't understand this part, and I'm hoping that the minister will get up after we have all said our piece on this and explain.

If that is not the intent, then this better start making it clearer in this bill. These vague comments - a vague comment is for a briefing note. They're not meant to be in bills. We need to be pacific - specific, I'm sorry. The Pacific is an ocean. We have to be accurate because these are youth's lives. Here's the question: a youth caught with cannabis with potential intent to sell - there's another clause in here that basically says - my understanding of it was all someone had to do was look at it and sniff it. The odour and look alone could see them charged. I would really love for this to be clear as well. I'm thinking, are we going to start looking at kids with oregano?

I'm not trying to joke about this, Speaker, but really, in this bill, there is a clause that talks about just the scent or odour alone and the look. How is that right to put in a bill, that that can create enforcement? That it doesn't have to be tested. We're talking about people's lives. If somebody were to get a record, being charged with possession or possession with the intent to sell, that can affect the rest of their lives. It affects if they can get a job. It can affect their schooling. I mean this truly.

[Page 2877]

I have a constituent who went to go through a program. They could not go into the program because when they were a kid, they stole a CD. It was on their criminal record, and because that was on their criminal record, that they stole a CD when they were young, they could not go to school to better themselves, into a program.

Are we talking the same kind of concept here for these youth? Quite frankly, I think that's very punitive to our youth.

THE SPEAKER « » : Order. We have reached the time of adjournment.

We stand adjourned until Tuesday, March 3^rd, from 11:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m.

[The House rose at 11:59 p.m.]

NOTICES OF MOTION UNDER RULE 32(3)

RESOLUTION NO. 374

By: Suzy Hansen (Halifax Needham)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas this budget has gutted funding to African Nova Scotian culture and community organizations; and

Whereas this budget has gutted funding to Indigenous cultural services and community organizations; and

Whereas the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaw Chiefs said that this government's cuts appear to be targeting Mi'kmaw-specific programs that were created to address historic and persistent systemic inequalities, and the African Nova Scotian community feels blindsided by the cuts to programs, services and scholarships affecting the Black community, as demonstrated by the reaction to the Premier at the recent African Heritage Month Gala;

Therefore be it resolved that this government immediately reverse their cuts to African Nova Scotian, Indigenous, and Mi'kmaw culture, services, education, and community organizations.

[Page 2878]

RESOLUTION NO. 375

By: Lina Hamid (Fairview-Clayton Park)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas this government has made significant cuts to programs that support low-income and vulnerable Nova Scotians, including the Poverty Reduction Tax Credit, and programs that support people on income assistance to pay for dentist visits, bus passes, and hearing aids; and

Whereas this government has cut funding to programs that impact people living with disabilities, including cuts to day programs, cuts to the community ACCESS-Ability fund, cuts to programs that help those living with disabilities on income assistance find employment, and eliminating capital funding to municipalities for accessibility projects; and

Whereas this government has slashed funding for the personal use allowance for seniors in long-term care, has cut funding to the Dementia Strategy, and is cutting the caregivers benefit, which supports people taking care of their vulnerable family members living with severe disabilities or illnesses at home;

Therefore be it resolved that this government immediately reverse their cuts that target vulnerable communities, including low-income Nova Scotians, Nova Scotian seniors, and Nova Scotians living with disabilities.

RESOLUTION NO. 376

By: Lisa Lachance (Halifax Citadel-Sable Island)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas this government is cutting 1,000 public sector jobs this year and plans on cutting a similar number of jobs each year for the next three years, significantly impacting frontline services, including health care and education, while cuts to community organizations will also lead to significant job losses in the not-for-profit and charitable sectors; and

Whereas this government has cut $130 million from grants to community organizations and social services, including cuts to municipalities, to women's health, to the scientific management of our natural resources, to tourism, to arts and culture, to public transit, to youth programs, to students, to mental health, and rural communities; and

[Page 2879]

Whereas this government's cuts to programs and services that Nova Scotians rely on will only drive up the cost of living, whether it be paying for bus passes, losing scholarship income, through cuts to municipalities driving up property taxes, longer wait-lists for youth programs and services, and less support to pay for power bills from the Heating Assistance Rebate Program (HARP);

Therefore be it resolved that this government listens to Nova Scotians, does the right thing, and stops these budget cuts that are hurting Nova Scotian jobs, public services, income support programs, students and young people, rural communities, arts and culture, tourism, municipal and public transit funding, and grants to community organizations.

RESOLUTION NO. 377

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas Brian Bain has dedicated 20 years of outstanding service as a Support Specialist with the Municipality of the County of Kings; and

Whereas throughout his tenure, Brian has demonstrated consistent expertise, dedication, and commitment, providing essential support that helps municipal operations run efficiently; and

Whereas his hard work and professionalism have had a lasting positive impact on the municipality and the community it serves;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly join me in congratulating Brian Bain for 20 years of dedicated public service and recognizing the valuable contributions he continues to make to the community.

RESOLUTION NO. 378

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas I rise to congratulate Cathy Nichols, who has demonstrated outstanding dedication, integrity, and professionalism in the delivery of public services within the Municipality of the County of Kings; and

[Page 2880]

Whereas their commitment to serving residents with respect, accountability, and excellence reflects the highest standards of public service; and

Whereas their leadership, collaboration, and tireless efforts have made a meaningful and lasting impact on the organization and the community it serves;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly proudly recognize and commend the recipient for Excellence in Public Service, Cathy Nichols, and extend sincere appreciation for their exceptional contributions, and wish them continued success in their important work.

RESOLUTION NO. 379

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas Jerry's RV is celebrating 40 years of successful operation and dedicated service in New Minas; and

Whereas for four decades, Jerry's RV has contributed to the local economy by creating jobs, supporting community initiatives, and providing quality products and trusted service to residents and visitors alike; and

Whereas the longevity and continued success of Jerry's RV reflect the vision, hard work, and commitment of its owners and staff, as well as the strong support of the community;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly extend heartfelt congratulations to Jerry's RV on the occasion of its 40^th anniversary, thank them for their longstanding commitment to New Minas and the surrounding area, and wish them continued growth and prosperity in the years ahead.

RESOLUTION NO. 380

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas I rise to congratulate Katrina Roefs, Financial Analyst, who has reached the milestone of 10 years of dedicated and exemplary service with the Municipality of the County of Kings; and

[Page 2881]

Whereas throughout this decade of service, they have demonstrated exceptional analytical expertise, integrity, and professionalism in supporting sound financial planning, reporting, and accountability; and

Whereas their careful stewardship of public funds, commitment to transparency, and thoughtful financial guidance have strengthened municipal operations and supported informed decision-making as well as their collaborative approach and steady leadership have made a meaningful and lasting contribution to the financial health and sustainability of the municipality;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly extend heartfelt congratulations and sincere appreciation to Katrina Roefs on the occasion of 10 years of outstanding service with the Municipality of the County of Kings and that we thank them for their continued dedication and wish them every success in the years ahead.

RESOLUTION NO. 381

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas I rise to congratulate Keith Tucker, Skilled Labourer, who has proudly completed five years of dedicated service with the Municipality of the County of Kings; and

Whereas throughout these five years, they have demonstrated a strong work ethic, reliability, and a commitment to maintaining municipal infrastructure and public spaces to the highest standards; and

Whereas their hands-on expertise, teamwork, and willingness to respond whenever needed have contributed significantly to the delivery of essential services for residents, and their professionalism and pride in their work reflect the values of excellence and service upheld by the municipality;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly extend sincere congratulations and appreciation to Keith Tucker on the occasion of five years of commendable service and that we thank them for their continued dedication and wish them every success in the years ahead.

[Page 2882]

RESOLUTION NO. 382

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas I rise to congratulate Laura Mosher, Manager of Planning Services, who has proudly completed 10 years of dedicated service with the Municipality of the County of Kings; and

Whereas over the past decade, they have provided strong leadership, professional expertise, and strategic vision in guiding responsible growth, land-use planning, and sustainable community development; and

Whereas their commitment to collaboration, thoughtful decision-making, and public engagement has contributed significantly to the long-term well-being and prosperity of the municipality;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly extend sincere congratulations and appreciation to Laura Mosher on the occasion of 10 years of outstanding service, and express gratitude for their continued dedication and wish them every success in the years ahead.

RESOLUTION NO. 383

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas I rise to congratulate Laurie-Ann Clarke, Procurement Assistant with the Municipality of the County of Kings, who has proudly completed five years of dedicated service; and

Whereas throughout these five years, they have demonstrated professionalism, integrity, and a strong commitment to ensuring responsible purchasing practices and fiscal accountability; and

Whereas their attention to detail, organizational expertise, and collaborative approach have supported municipal departments in delivering efficient and effective services to residents;

[Page 2883]

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly extend sincere congratulations and appreciation to Laurie-Ann Clarke on the occasion of five years of exemplary service with the Municipality of the County of Kings and we thank them for their continued dedication and wish them every success in the years ahead.

RESOLUTION NO. 384

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas Paula Delorey has dedicated 30 years of outstanding service as a Tax Clerk with the Municipality of the County of Kings; and

Whereas throughout her service, Paula has demonstrated exceptional knowledge, dedication, and commitment, providing reliable and professional service to residents and supporting the Municipality's financial operations; and

Whereas her long-standing service and professionalism have had a lasting positive impact on the community and the effective functioning of the municipality;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly join me in congratulating Paula Delorey for 30 years of dedicated public service and recognizing the meaningful contributions she continues to make to the community.

RESOLUTION NO. 385

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas I rise to congratulate Tom Nichols, Treatment Plant Operator, who has proudly completed 10 years of dedicated service with the Municipality of the County of Kings; and

Whereas over the past decade, they have demonstrated exceptional skill, diligence, and commitment in the operation and maintenance of municipal treatment facilities, ensuring the delivery of safe and reliable services to residents; and

Whereas their expertise, attention to detail, and adherence to regulatory standards have contributed significantly to protecting public health and the environment. Their steady leadership, teamwork, and professionalism reflect the highest standards of public service;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly extend sincere congratulations and appreciation to Tom Nichols on the occasion of 10 years of outstanding service with the Municipality of the County of Kings and that we express our gratitude for their dedication and wish them continued success in the years to come.

RESOLUTION NO. 386

By: Julie Vanexan (Kings South)

I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas Trish Javorek has dedicated 35 years of outstanding service as Director of Planning and Inspection Services with the Municipality of the County of Kings; and

Whereas throughout her tenure, Trish has demonstrated exceptional leadership, expertise, and commitment, contributing significantly to responsible development and the well-being of the community; and

Whereas her dedication and professionalism have had a lasting and positive impact on the residents and operations of the municipality;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House of Assembly join me in congratulating Trish Javorek for 35 years of dedicated public service, recognizing the meaningful legacy she continues to build for the community.

[Page 2884]