McNeil’s halo fading

Owls Head, teacher contract leave mark on former premier’s legacy

Former Premier Stephen McNeil’s finest hour was his “stay the blazes home” moment.

He hit his zenith during those heady first months of the pandemic when his autocratic instincts were called for and appreciated by a public that was scared out of its wits.

Throw in the April 2020 Portapique massacre and the subsequent crash of a Shearwater-based military helicopter off Greece that claimed six lives and the archetypal strongman leadership style worked wonders.

But the passage of time has not been kind to his legacy. The strongman approach is losing some of its sheen and the halo that sat atop his head when he departed is now fading.

McNeil made his decision to leave office in August 2020 at the height of his popularity. Only he will ever know if his exit, finalized the following February, was timed to avoid anything like a fall from grace.

Staying on would have resulted in heightened accountability for autocratic decisions which occurred under his tenure.

The aftermath was his successor Iain Rankin’s problem for a short period. Now it’s

Tim Houston’s problem. And, of course, taxpayers are left holding the bag.

The plan to sell the land at Owls Head on the Eastern Shore to a golf course developer prompted outrage from a section of the public who accused the McNeil government of making shady deals behind closed doors with lands that were supposed to become a provincial park.

Houston inherited that problem, but it went away without too much political damage when the developer withdrew the application. McNeil was no longer accountable, but it still was a mark on his legacy.

However, the scathing decision by the Nova Scotia Supreme

Court on McNeil’s law that imposed a labour contract on Nova Scotia teachers leaves a bigger stain. The legislation required teachers to end their work-to-rule protest and imposed a wage increase of three per cent over four years.

Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice John Keith found that Bill 75 violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.

The judge used some pretty colourful language to describe McNeil's bill: “vengeful” and “terribly wrong.”

The Nova Scotia Teachers Union is contemplating its next move and you can be sure there will be expectations of old debts being settled.

Meanwhile, another McNeil piece of strongman legislation could also be heading for the Supreme Court if it isn’t repealed.

Bill 148, passed under McNeil in 2015 and proclaimed in 2017, imposed a wage package on 70,000 public sector workers. It also ended a lump-sum payment that workers received upon retirement if employed for 10 years or more.

Unions representing those workers have also been arguing that this is unconstitutional because it also violates collective bargaining rights under the Charter. In May, the Nova Scotia Court of

Appeal declined to make a decision on this piece of legislation, based on the fact that it did not have enough information. If the Bill 75 decision is anything to go by, well, we have a pretty good idea of how courts will view it if it ends up there.

When he was in opposition, Houston said he would repeal this legislation. When he became premier, he decided to wait for a court decision. Now that the court has ruled on Bill 75, he is facing some delicate labour-relations matters as he confronts the constitutional writing on the wall.

McNeil was adamant that his imposition of wage patterns on the public sector were constitutional. I’m not sure which experts he consulted on this or whether it was purely the product of his iron will.

The McNeil sheen won’t be rubbed out altogether. Many agreed with him that a government should have the right to impose wage patterns on public sector unions to control public finances. Wages make up the government’s largest expenditure.

Still, the Constitution is the Constitution, and if the courts decide rights were violated, the government will have to look elsewhere to exert control over public expenditures.