BILL NO. 69
(as introduced)
1st Session, 65th General Assembly
Nova Scotia
3 Charles III, 2025
Private Member's Public Bill
Community Assembly Act
Lisa Lachance
Halifax Citadel–Sable Island
First Reading: March 5, 2025
Second Reading:
Third Reading:
An Act to Establish
a Nova Scotia Community Assembly
Be it enacted by the Governor and Assembly as follows:
1 This Act may be cited as the Community Assembly Act.
2 The purpose of this Act is to establish an engaged, in-depth deliberative democracy process for public engagement in public policy decision-making.
"citizen participant" means a person selected as a citizen participant under Section 5;
"community assembly" means the assembly of citizen participants collectively;
"deliberative democracy" means a process in which a small but representative group of citizens undertake deliberation to arrive at a judgement on an issue that can be acceptable to most people in the community;
"Minister" means the Minister of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage;
"social licence" means an informal contract between the public and government or private organizations in which there is public acceptance and trust in the legitimacy, credibility, effectiveness and fairness of a proposed plan, project or action.
4 The Minister is responsible for the supervision and administration of this Act.
5 (1) Citizen participants shall be selected on a Province-wide basis to serve a two-year term as members of the community assembly.
(2) Selection of citizen participants shall be conducted through a stratified lottery that carefully includes representation from African Nova Scotian and Indigenous communities.
6 (1) The community assembly shall consider matters referred to it by the House of Assembly.
(2) The community assembly shall use a deliberative democracy engagement process to determine whether there is a social licence to pursue a specified policy approach or set of actions.
(3) The community assembly may make recommendations on alternative approaches in respect of a matter referred to it.
(4) The community assembly shall consider each matter referred to it for at least one month.
(5) The community assembly shall provide a report in respect of a matter to the Minister within one year of the matter being referred to the community assembly.
(6) Upon receiving a report under subsection (5), the Minister shall publish the report and a summary of the report on the Government's website.
(7) Meetings of the community assembly may be held in-person or through electronic means.
(8) The community assembly may determine its own rules of procedure.
7 Subject to Section 9, each citizen participant is entitled to be paid compensation for participating in the community assembly as determined by the Minister.
8 The Minister shall report annually to the House of Assembly on the matters the community assembly has considered and any determinations and recommendations of the community assembly.
9 The money required for the purpose of this Act must be paid out of money appropriated for that purpose by the Legislature.
This page and its contents published by the Office of the Legislative Counsel, Nova Scotia House of Assembly, and © 2025 Crown in right of Nova Scotia. Created March 5, 2025. Send comments to legc.office@novascotia.ca.
