HANSARD

NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

MANAGEMENT COMMISSION

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

Committee Room

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

MANAGEMENT COMMISSION

Hon. Danielle Barkhouse (Chair)

Marco MacLeod (Vice-Chair)

Hon. Brendan Maguire

Hon. Scott Armstrong

Adegoke Fadare

Lisa Lachance

Susan Leblanc

Hon. Iain Rankin

James Charlton, Chief Clerk of the House of Assembly

(Non-Voting Member)

[Hon. Brendan Maguire was replaced by Melissa Sheehy-Richard.]

In Attendance:

Gordon Hebb

Chief Legislative Counsel

David Hastings

Assistant Clerk of the House of Assembly

HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2025

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY MANAGEMENT COMMISSION

12:04 P.M.

CHAIR

Hon. Danielle Barkhouse

VICE-CHAIR

Marco MacLeod

THE CHAIR: Order. I call this meeting of the House of Assembly Management Commission to order. Let’s begin by having the members of the Management Commission introduce themselves. I will start, and then we will move clockwise around the table. My name is Danielle Barkhouse. I am the Speaker of the House, the MLA for Chester-St. Margaret’s, and Chair of the House of Assembly Management Commission.

[The members introduced themselves.]

THE CHAIR: I would also like to acknowledge the presence of James Charlton, Chief Clerk of the House, and Gordon Hebb, Chief Legislative Counsel.

First, we will start with the approval of the minutes of the last meeting of the Management Commission, which occurred on March 19, 2025. The draft minutes were circulated in advance of today’s meeting. Are there any questions, comments, or changes to the minutes? Seeing none, I would ask someone to move the draft of the minutes of the meeting of the Management Commission on March 19, 2025. Moved by MLA Armstrong. Will someone second the motion?

The honourable member for Halifax Citadel-Sable Island.

LISA LACHANCE: Actually, I’m happy to move them, because I don’t think you were present at that meeting, so you can’t move the minutes. I’ll move the approval of the minutes for the meeting.

THE CHAIR: Thank you. Do we have a seconder? (Interruption) Perfect.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried. (Interruption)

Just to confirm, the mover was MLA Lachance and the seconder was MLA MacLeod.

The second item on the agenda is the amendment of the standard contract for constituency assistants. A track-changes version of the contract has been circulated showing the proposed changes updating the contract to reflect the job title and classification. Are there any questions or comments on the new contract?

Would someone move that the standard contract for the constituency assistants be amended by striking out “assistant” wherever it appears and substituting “coordinator” and by striking out “EC 06” in Paragraph 2(a) and substituting “EC 07”?

Moved by MLA Leblanc and seconded by MLA Sheehy-Richard.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

The third item on the agenda is the consideration of a series of proposed amendments to the House of Assembly Management Commission Regulations. There are two separate sets of amendments representing four distinct changes. We will deal with the proposed amendments one at a time. I will ask the Clerk to speak to the first proposed amendment, which updates the job title of constituency coordinators and removes a spent provision regarding an allowance of deputy speakers.

The Chief Clerk.

JAMES CHARLTON: This is a pure housekeeping measure. The House of Assembly Management Commission Regulations refer to constituency assistants as part of the process where they underwent the position evaluation. Their job description was updated, and their new title is constituency coordinator. These changes update that title to change all the references of constituency assistant to constituency coordinator.

The other change that’s contained in this series of amendments is getting rid of the provision that provides for a top-up allowance to deputy speakers. That was in place back at a time when, if there was more than one deputy speaker, the salary would be divided among the various deputy speakers. This was a top-up allowance that had been put in place to make sure that the total amount never fell below $12,500. With the remuneration panel and the legislative changes that took place back in the spring, there’s now a distinct salary being paid to every deputy speaker. No matter how many we have, that amount doesn’t get split up; they get that amount. We no longer need this provision for the top-up allowance, so we’ll just get rid of it.

THE CHAIR: Are there any questions, comments, or concerns? Would someone move that the proposed amendment to the House of Assembly Management Commission Regulations to update the job title of constituency coordinators and to remove a spent provision regarding a top-up allowance for deputy speakers be approved?

Moved by MLA Sheehy-Richard and seconded by MLA Fadare.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

I will ask the Clerk to speak to the second proposed amendment which relates to third-party rebilling and to electricity consumption in the previous fiscal year where the bill was received after the year-end cut off.

JAMES CHARLTON: Okay, this is going to be fun because it’s a little bit complex. It’s a matter relating to the claims. It’s actually two distinct matters. I’ll start off by talking about the electricity utility provisions there. This really comes about as a result of the security breach at Nova Scotia Power that resulted in some significant delayed billings. What we’ve started to see is MLAs, either at constituency offices or perhaps at their Halifax accommodations if they’re outside members, receiving bills past the year-end cut-off for the previous fiscal year that relate to power consumed in that fiscal year.

Our rule in the House of Assembly Management Commission Regulations is that a cost is incurred when the goods or services to which it relates are received. In this case: power. When you get a power bill, some of it is attributable if it’s for the period - let’s say from February to April - everything before April 1 is attributed to the previous fiscal year and everything after April 1 is attributed to the new fiscal year. This has led to a situation where MLAs have received bills for power that they have no way of expensing because it’s come after the year-end cut-off. There is no way we can move that back into the old fiscal year - the government’s accounting system doesn’t allow us to take those expenses back - but what we can do is we can effectively create a legal fiction that in these cases, the costs were incurred when the invoice was received.

I had long conversations with Karen Howard, our director of Finance and Administration. We did talk about this with the Auditor General to just get their input about whether they were comfortable with this. I did also consult with the Chair of the Audit Committee and forwarded a copy of the draft to him to make sure he was comfortable with this too. The end result is that anyone who receives - and it’s just in relation to that one fiscal year, the previous fiscal year. We’ve kept it broad. We say “electrical utility” rather than just “Nova Scotia Power” because we don’t know if the independent utilities were affected in some way, perhaps because they receive power from Nova Scotia Power and their billing was affected. What we’ve done is basically provided for that last fiscal year. If you receive an invoice after the year-end cut-off, you can expense that cost in this fiscal year.

The other part is the third-party rebilling. I’ll quickly mention that as well unless - was there a question?

THE CHAIR: Would you like to wait until after he’s done the third-party rebilling? Okay. Please continue.

JAMES CHARLTON: The third-party rebilling is a similar thing that we’ve just started to see. It’s come up in cases where rather than, let’s say, paying utilities directly, MLAs - their landlord or some kind of a third-party like a property management company - are receiving those bills from the utility companies and then they’re going back and billing it to the MLAs. What’s happening is sometimes the MLAs are receiving these bills after the year-end cut-off.

I had a bit of experience myself the last time I was a tenant and was living in Alberta. The property management company where I was, they would send me the bill so I would get a bill for February’s electricity in July or August and I couldn’t figure out why I was getting it so late.

Again, the issue is MLAs were being unable to expense these amounts because they were so late to come after the year-end cut-off. We’re creating - just in the case of third-party rebillings, in relation to the MLAs’ leaseholds authorized under the regulations, so your constituency office leases and outside member apartments. In those cases, if there’s a third-party rebilling for a utility or for property taxes or something like that in relation to that leasehold interest, it will be deemed that the cost was incurred when the invoice was received so that the MLA can recoup those costs from the appropriate budgets.

THE CHAIR: Are there any questions or comments? MLA Leblanc.

SUSAN LEBLANC: I just wanted to know from the Clerk: Is there a ballpark of the amount of the extra - not the extra cost, but the cost from the delayed electricity bills?

[12:15 p.m.]

THE CHAIR: The Chief Clerk.

JAMES CHARLTON: I don’t have an amount, but from my conversations with the director, I don’t think it’s at this point a very large amount. In a lot of the cases, it’s just a small portion of the previous fiscal year where we would have seen some of it, so my guess is this amount is probably somewhere in the hundreds or maybe the very low thousands collectively. It’s not a large amount. This shouldn’t make a big difference, certainly for the Nova Scotia Power amount.

The rebillings, though - that provision is meant to be kind of permanent. It will continue on, because we do foresee this continuing to be an issue for members, but it’s a relatively small amount.

THE CHAIR: MLA MacLeod.

MARCO MACLEOD: Will this rule change be retroactive?

THE CHAIR: The Chief Clerk.

JAMES CHARLTON: We don’t have the authority to make retroactive rule changes, but from my perspective, we’re creating a prospective change that will render expenses that were not eligible now eligible. We do believe that anyone who was affected should be able to now. Before, you would not have been able to submit a claim. If you had claimed it, it would have been turned down. It simply wasn’t an eligible claim. It’s an eligible claim - it will be an eligible claim now. We believe we can make all of the members whole.

MARCO MACLEOD: To put it in plain language, will I be reimbursed for my power bill earlier this spring? I was one of the affected offices. (Laughter)

JAMES CHARLTON: Yes, I think you’ll need to submit a new claim, because it wasn’t an eligible one before, but now it is eligible, so you should be able to do it - and any other members affected, so please let your caucuses know if anyone else was, because I know there were some other members affected.

THE CHAIR: This also goes for apartments? The Chief Clerk.

JAMES CHARLTON: Correct. This would relate to bills in relation to outside members’ apartments as well, if anyone was affected with that - both the third-party rebilling and the electricity utility provisions that are specific to the previous fiscal year.

THE CHAIR: Perfect. Any more questions or comments? Okay.

Would someone move that the proposed amendment to the House of Assembly Management Commission Regulations to consider costs for third-party rebilling to be incurred when the invoice is received, and to deem costs for electricity consumption in the previous year, where the invoice was received after the year-end cut-off, to be incurred when the invoice is received, be approved?

I recognize MLA MacLeod. Do I have a seconder? I recognize MLA Lachance.

All those in favour? Contrary minded? Thank you.

The motion is carried.

The fourth item on the agenda is a review of the financials from the first and second quarter of the 2024-25 fiscal year, as well as the preliminary year-end results.

I’ll ask the Chief Clerk to speak to this matter.

JAMES CHARLTON: I’m not sure if I mentioned, but our director of Finance and Administration is unable to be with us today, so you’re stuck with me. I apologize for that.

I just wanted to give you a heads-up. The reason we’re looking at the first- and second-quarter report - those were reviewed by the audit committee last October. By the time we had our next Management Commission meeting after the election, the audit committee had met again and reviewed the third-quarter financials. We put the third-quarter financials to the Management Commission, but we totally forgot about the first and second quarter, because they had gone by. However, we do need to formally present them.

They’ve been circulated. There was nothing out of the ordinary in there that we had any concerns with. The audit committee was fine with it. Everything was right on track. At the end of the first quarter, we had spent 24 percent of the annual budget. At the end of the second quarter, we were at 46 percent.

Unless there are any questions, I’ll move on to the preliminary year-end. Seeing none, our preliminary year-end numbers are also very good. The things I would want to highlight for you - it does show us being over budget at 101 percent. However, by far the largest area - and this completely accounts for us being over budget; we would be in a surplus without it - was members’ indemnity and expense allowances and constituency expenses. A lot of that related to the election, because after the election, defeated MLAs or MLAs who did not reoffer received transition allowances, things like that. Also, the way the MLAs are paid to the end of the month and then the new MLAs are paid starting at the beginning of the month results in some periods where there’s effectively a double payment. All of that adds up, and that’s what put us into a deficit position.

Those amounts we adjusted are forecasts, so we actually came in at 98 percent of the forecast. Of course, we received additional money from Treasury Board to cover off those unexpected expenses.

Otherwise, everything was as you would want to see. There are also some things here. These amounts - some of the opposition leaders and caucus offices are showing a deficit with one and surplus in the other. That stuff has all been adjusted. At the end of the day, the opposition caucuses’ total amount of spending was within their budgets.

It shows the government’s caucus office over budget, but again, that’s because of the election results. They have the entitlement to spend more money. It’s above what was budgeted at the beginning of the year, but the forecast was adjusted to take into account the larger size of the government caucus. Again, once we factor that in, and the additional appropriations to account for the new members, everything was as it should be; everything was to forecast. Our numbers are all good. There were no concerns when this came forward to the audit committee.

THE CHAIR: Thank you, Chief Clerk.

The fifth item on the agenda is an in camera discussion on a human resource matter. This marks the end of the public portion of the meeting. We will adjourn immediately following the in camera discussion.

I will now ask everyone except for the members of the House of Assembly staff to leave the room.

[The public meeting adjourned at 12:21 p.m.]