Black Friday: Twelve Votes at Third Reading go Unrecorded
Posted by knowhowtheyvote on November 2, 2009
October 30 was a dismal day for transparency in Nova Scotia.
After going through the Law Amendments Committee with no amendments, Bills 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 15, 16, 25, 27, 34, 40 all passed Third Reading. Not one of these final votes was recorded in Hansard. Citizens have no objective record of how their local MLA voted on any of these Bills.
The total number of unrecorded votes now sits at 39. That compares with 4 recorded votes, all of which were recorded for either political reasons or tradition.
It is quite obvious that MLAs simply don’t see, or don’t care, that unrecorded votes represent a loss of transparency for citizens. Nova Scotians from one end of the Province to the other must begin to educate their MLA by writing, phoning and e-mailing them on this issue. Know How They Vote has launched a communication campaign to help facilitate that.
Charlie Parker, Speaker of the Legislature has indicated that he intends to call the Committee on Assembly Matters in a “resonable period of time.” Let us make sure that we remind him to do so.
