HANSARD
NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
STANDING COMMITTEE
ON
HUMAN RESOURCES
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Committee Room
Appointments to Agencies, Boards and Commissions
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
HUMAN RESOURCES COMMITTEE
Chris Palmer (Chair)
Rick Burns (Vice Chair)
Melissa Sheehy-Richard
Danny MacGillivray
Adegoke Fadare
Krista Gallagher
Paul Wozney
Hon. Iain Rankin
Hon. Derek Mombourquette
[Danny MacGillivray was replaced by Kyle MacQuarrie.]
In Attendance:
Kilian Schlemmer
Legislative Counsel
Judy Kavanagh
Legislative Committee Clerk
HALIFAX, TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2025
STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
10:00 A.M.
CHAIR
Chris Palmer
VICE CHAIR
Rick Burns
THE CHAIR: Order. I call this meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Human Resources. I am Chris Palmer, MLA for Kings West and Chair of the committee. Today we will review appointments to agencies, boards and commissions. At this point, I’d like to ask everybody in the room to please put your phones on silent or vibrate. Now I’d like to ask all the committee members to introduce themselves for the record by stating their name and their constituency. I’ll begin with Vice Chair Burns.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
THE CHAIR: For the purposes of Hansard, I also recognize the presence of Legislative Counsel Kilian Schlemmer to my left, and Legislative Committee Clerk Judy Kavanagh to my right.
We will now proceed with our appointments to agencies, boards and commissions.
MLA Sheehy-Richard.
MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD: For the Department of Environment and Climate Change, I move to recommend Dwight Whynot be appointed Member and Chair to the Resource Recovery Fund Board (Divert Nova Scotia Board).
THE CHAIR: There is a motion on the table. Any discussion?
All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.
The motion is carried.
MLA Sheehy-Richard.
MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD: For the Department of Environment and Climate Change, I move to recommend Martina Munden be appointed Member and Vice Chair to the Resource Recovery Fund Board (Divert Nova Scotia Board).
THE CHAIR: There is a motion on the table. Any discussion?
All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.
The motion is carried.
MLA Sheehy-Richard.
MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD: I should have lumped these first three together - apologies. For the Department of Environment and Climate Change, I move to recommend Calla Farn be appointed Member to the Resource Recovery Fund Board (Divert Nova Scotia Board).
THE CHAIR: There is a motion on the table. Any discussion?
All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.
The motion is carried.
MLA Sheehy-Richard.
MELISSA SHEEHY-RICHARD: For the Department of Justice, I move to recommend Paulette Anderson, Laura Broz, Lee-Ann Conrod, Erica Koresawa, and Shehu Mustafa be appointed Members to the Law Foundation of Nova Scotia Board.
THE CHAIR: There is a motion on the table. Any discussion?
All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.
The motion is carried.
I believe that concludes our appointments to agencies, boards and commissions.
MLA Wozney.
PAUL WOZNEY: Chair, I want to bring a point of order. At our last meeting, I brought up a concern about process. There was an amendment proposed by representation from the government to which, from the Opposition side of the table, a further amendment was proposed. On the vote on the Opposition amendment, the Chair called a vote. The vote went four in favour, four against, and you rightly called that vote lost, which left the government’s amendment on the table.
You called a vote on the government’s amendment. Only four votes were registered for, and only four were registered against. By procedure, because there were only four votes in favour and four votes against, that vote should have also been called lost, consistent with the decision that you made on the first vote. When I drew this to your attention, you indicated that you registered a vote. I encouraged you that, based on the video record, you hadn’t registered your vote in an audio vote. At that time, you didn’t do anything with that challenge.
At the time, I hadn’t received MLA training from the Legislature, so I was unaware of the process to challenge a decision of the Chair in an appropriate way. I have since conferred with Legislative Counsel and the Chief Clerk on this question. They have directed me, via point of order, to raise this issue again in hopes that we can address it here.
Chair, with your indulgence, I propose two possible solutions to the issue. Recognizing the composition of the committee, the Chair could re-call the vote on that amendment, which would allow all of the members of the committee to register their vote in an auditory way. I have no doubt that the result of the proceeding wouldn’t be any different than if we left it as is, but as a democratic principle, when we take votes, everybody who can participate and needs to participate for a decision to fall in a certain way should do so.
If you choose not to follow that process, what’s left to me is, via a notice of motion, to challenge the decision of the Chair in the greater House, which would tie up the House with what I think is a pretty unreasonable consideration, given that we have the means within the committee to address this concern here and now.
I would urge the Chair to reconsider the vote on the government’s amendment. To be clear, that amendment was to move the time to 30-20-10 from the existing 20 minutes across the board. If we could reconsider that vote and make sure that everybody’s vote is heard, that would satisfy my concern.
THE CHAIR: I want to just clarify: You’re appealing the decision of the Chair from the last meeting?
PAUL WOZNEY: Yes.
THE CHAIR: Okay. We asked the clerk to review the video from the last meeting, and the clerk - who is a non-partisan officer of the Legislature - has confirmed that I did vote on that vote, MLA Wozney.
I will put it to the committee to ask the committee that the Chair’s decision from the last meeting be sustained.
All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.
The motion is carried.
We also received on February 13, 2025, an email from Constance King that was cc’d to our committee through to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. I’m just bringing it forward to the table that it has been received. We will table it for the clerk to have.
Seeing no other business, our next meeting will be on April 1, 2025, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. The topic will be Workplace Health and Safety Initiatives, and the witnesses will be the Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration.
If the House of Assembly is still sitting on April 1st, then this committee will meet from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. just for appointments to agencies, boards and commissions.
Thank you, everyone. With that, our meeting is adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 10:08 a.m.]
