N.S. premier backtracks on bill allowing the firing of auditor general without cause

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s premier says he is withdrawing amendments to a bill that would have allowed his government to fire the province’s auditor general without cause and veto the public release of her reports.

In a news release on Monday, Tim Houston said he realized the amendments had become “something they weren’t intended to be,” and no longer supported them.

The proposed changes, introduced last week, include measures allowing a two-thirds majority of the legislature to fire the auditor general without cause, and ministers to prevent audits from being released if they consider that blocking them is in the “public interest.” With 43 of the 55 seats in the legislature, Houston’s Progressive Conservatives have a majority of more than two-thirds.

Auditor general Kim Adair held a news conference last week saying the proposals would hurt the “independence, integrity and objectivity” of her office, and asked the government to reverse course. She also said she was never consulted before the bill was introduced in the legislature.

In his statement Monday, Houston said, “there was never any intention on my part to change the existing auditor general,” and that the amendments were designed after officials did a “scan” of “practice used across the country.”

However, last week — after Adair criticized the amendments — Houston vigorously defended the changes at a news conference, saying the proposals aligned with existing legislation in Alberta and Manitoba.

“I’m an accountant myself. I was surprised to hear the auditor general say that it could impact her independence. It’s the same as … in Manitoba. The same is in place in Alberta. So, we’ll continue,” he said Thursday. Meanwhile, Houston’s finance minister, John Lohr, issued a news release claiming Adair’s stance was “false” and insisted the legal changes “aligned” with the two Prairie provinces.

Both a former Alberta auditor general and a Manitoba political scientist said that wasn’t true.

Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Manitoba, said in an email Saturday that Houston’s and Lohr’s statements were “erroneous or at the least misleading.”

Thomas, who for 50 years studied laws on standards and integrity in government, said the Manitoba Auditor General Act allows auditors to serve their full 10-year term if they exhibit “good behaviour.” That term, the professor said, protected the independence of the auditor in the same way as a provision preventing an auditor from being fired for anything other than just cause.

In a recent telephone interview, Thomas said Manitoba law does not require — as do the controversial Nova Scotia amendments — that the auditor general send advance copies of reports to cabinet, or that government be allowed to withhold reports based on the “public interest.”

“There’s nothing like that,” Thomas said.

In Alberta, Merwan Saher, who served as auditor general from 2010 to 2018, said in an interview Saturday that his province has “nothing like” Nova Scotia’s proposal to allow cabinet ministers to veto the release of reports based on the public interest. “It seems to me to be strange language to justify withholding or editing the content of the report,” he said.

He said statements by the Nova Scotia government claiming the bill’s similarities with legislation in Alberta was “just not true,” and “full of inaccuracy.”

The Nova Scotia government and premier’s office didn’t provide comment by deadline on the statements by Saher or Thomas.

Meanwhile, Michael Pickup, who was auditor general for Nova Scotia and British Columbia, said in an interview Friday that the Houston government’s proposed amendments would have created doubts about the independence of the financial watchdog.

“I would certainly think twice about applying for a position as auditor general in a setup like that. I wouldn’t want to go into that type of situation,” Pickup said.

In British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, there are requirements that there be just cause before a legislature can dismiss the auditor general.

Claudia Chender, leader of the Opposition NDP, said in a release that she was pleased Houston was willing to admit he was wrong to attack the independence of the auditor general. “Clearly, threatening her independence was never about being in line with other jurisdictions as the Conservatives claimed,” she wrote in an email.

In a news release Monday, Adair thanked Houston for changing course. “The groundswell of support for the work of the office has been overwhelming and appreciated since the bill was first tabled a week ago,” she wrote.

“And now we look forward to getting back to work.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2025.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press