This week, we’ll unpack how a minister’s office works, and dig into:

- how people who held that office who approached making decisions, and the kind of decisions they had to make. 

- how they did (or did not) involve caucus in their decision making, and 

- how the rest of Cabinet and the Premier’s office would be involved in decisions. 

Just how exactly does an MLA get anything done at Province House? In this and the next few episodes of the Off Script podcast, we’re going to explore the nitty gritty of who has what kind of power to make things happen within the governmental structures at, and around, province house in Nova Scotia. We begin by exploring how an MLA on either side of the house can get something done. 

On this episode, we’re sharing talks from two members of the Canadian Senate: Senators Grant Mitchell (Alberta) and Wanda Thomas-Bernard (Nova Scotia).

Both talks are an excerpt from a larger event called “Independent or Partisan? The Future of the Canadian Senate” held by the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance at Dalhousie, as a part of their Policy Matters speaker series.

Watch the full event on YouTube here and learn more about the Policy Matters speaker series.  

Share the podcast with this shortlink: http://springtide.ngo/se30

On this special episode of the Off Script podcast, we’re sharing two diverse perspectives on the Ivany report, drawn from a discussion held by the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy at Dalhousie.

The discussion was called “All for One Nova Scotia? Perspectives on the Ivany Report”.

The first speaker is Karen Foster. Karen is a professor in the department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, and the author of Productivity and Prosperity: An Historical Sociology of Productivist Thought.

The second speaker you’ll hear is Danny Graham, who regular listeners to this podcast will know from his time as an MLA and former Liberal Party leader, and now CEO at Engage Nova Scotia.

Watch the full discussion on YouTube. 

More on the Policy Matters Speaker Series. 

This week on On the Record, Off Script we explore the dynamics of the Nova Scotia Legislature

People always seem to draw comparisons between politicians and school children when they visit the House. We have a couple of stories that relate to that:

• the story of an MLA who refused to give school children tours of the House of Assembly while his colleagues were present;
• a story from a former school teacher who tried her classroom management strategies on her colleagues;

We'll also hear from:

• two people who held down the Speaker's chair; and
• a story form a Cabinet Minister who admired fellow ministers who dodged questions, but tried his best to answer the ones that came his way.

Andrew Younger is the only former MLA we’ve interviewed who sat as an independent. In our interview Andrew describes some of the unsung, unknown advantages of being an independent in Nova Scotia politics. He also tells us what he’s up to now, and talks about how he organized his constituency office to allow him to focus on policy-making.

This week, we share our interview with Michelle Raymond, who is a former NDP MLA for the riding of Halifax Atlantic. She served from 2003 to 2012. Michelle held a relatively low profile during her career as an MLA - she served on the backbenches of the NDP government - but she had plenty of strongly stated, and eloquently delivered thoughts on the state of politics, and the life of an MLA. 

Some of the things I chatted about in my interview with her included: 

- what it means to be an unmanageable candidate and why she wished she’d been one. 

- the wealth of information and access available to MLAs, should they choose to use it. 

- the false flag of ‘privacy concerns’ that she says is more often used to protect the privacy of failing government agencies than the individuals they’re supposed to be serving.