Councillor questions transparency

The housing task force struck for Halifax Regional Municipality has at least one regional councillor concerned about its wide-ranging authority and the secrecy with which it will conduct its business.

“It’s worrisome,” said Sam Austin, who represents Dartmouth Centre on Halifax council.

“The part that I find concerning is the fact that it will be done behind closed doors. Our HRM planning process is an open and public one. If we want to change a plan, there is a process for that. The arguing, the debate happens in public. None of this (task force) appears to be public.”

The five-member unelected joint task force was introduced last week by Premier Tim Houston, consisting of Geoff Maclellan, the task force chairman and a former Liberal housing minister, along with two members each from HRM and the province.

The task force’s formation is part of the Housing in the Halifax Regional Municipality Act, introduced in the Nova Scotia legislature by the Progressive Conservative government on Oct. 28. It passed third reading on Nov. 4 and was proclaimed the next day, but not before meeting with considerable pushback in the law amendments committee.

Austin was one of the presenters there, asking that the bill be amended so that the task force panel would have to publicly disclose any planning and development matters it is considering before making any assessments or decisions.

The amendment was soundly defeated.

“The government was obviously committed,” Austin said of the law amendments committee membership that is weighted heavily in favour of the governing party.

“Provincial politics can be depressing, because things don’t have to be partisan. I get that the government was behind the bill but they could have made it a public process and it wouldn’t have changed any of the committee’s powers or responsibilities or potential oversight or what they could do. It would just give the public an understanding of how the decisions were being made and why.”

Austin said his amendment was not a partisan ask.

“But you go in and all the opposition (members) vote for the amendment and all the government people vote against it. It’s not like city council where you can go in and make a good argument and you have 17 people who are around the table and are independent and people do listen and they do change their minds from time to time when there is something compelling that someone has brought forward. It’s a very different system down at Province House.”

Austin said his read of the task force’s power is that they can change anything they decide to.

“It could very much be used to undermine HRM’S plans. We don’t know yet. The power has been given there. The minister has said that that’s not the intent but we shall see.

“They can rewrite any of our plans, zoning or whatever.”

The legislation grants the task force the ability to amend or repeal a HRM land-use bylaw and to change or reverse development decisions already taken by regional council after going through the planning and public meeting processes.

“I would define the task force as being in the solutions business,” Houston said last week. "We’re not taking over the planning department at the city, we’re not taking over the inspection process but we believe strongly that there are issues and delays that at times are unnecessary and that’s where we want to focus.”

The task force will report to Housing Minister John Lohr, who will make the final decision, but the premier made it clear that what the task force decides will be implemented by government.

Austin said having a committee that meets in private, deciding things out of the public eye, is a “terrible way” to set things up.

“We have a public planning process for a reason,” Austin said. “We have a public planning process because we’ve learned from past experience that when you cut the public out, you don’t necessarily end up with good results. Having a public process is very much a safeguard against mistakes. “This is not a public process at all. How bad that is depends on how it’s used.”