On Wednesday, March 24, a group of spectators sat in the public gallery of Province House at 11:30pm and watched the government pass a budget that is doing real harm to real people across Nova Scotia.
They didn’t go there to protest. They didn’t go there to sing. They went to look the government in the eye while they voted in the budget that was set to decimate their communities.
Then someone started singing. No one knows who. It wasn’t planned. But within moments, the entire gallery joined in — twenty minutes of singing, spontaneous and full-throated, echoing through a building that belongs to all of us.
They sang:
“Ooh, it’s okay to change your mind / Show us your courage / Leave this behind Ooh, it’s okay to change your mind / And you can join us / Join us here any time.”
The song has its roots in the anti-ICE resistance in Minneapolis and the singing resistance that emerged after the murder of Renée Goode. Protesters in Nova Scotia have taken it up as a call to the provincial government to reconsider the proposed budget cuts. It was a compassionate call for MLAs to remember who they worked for and the damage the budget would do to their lives.
At the end of the singing, there was some shouting. Passionate people, expressing the kind of desperation that builds when you feel like no one in power is listening. It’s not everyone’s idea of an acceptable protest. Not everyone loves shouting. Often it comes from utter desperation, and it can be very uncomfortable to experience.
What no one expected was for Speaker Danielle Barkhouse to respond by locking the public out of Province House entirely.
The official reason? Safety.
Let me be clear: I have been advocating around issues of workplace safety for the better part of a decade. I am a genuine advocate for the idea that everyone deserves to feel safe at work — including elected officials. But there is a difference that matters enormously here, and I think we need to name it.
You have the right to be safe. You do not have the right to be comfortable.
The people in that gallery were screened at the door. They surrendered their IDs, walked through a metal detector, and had their belongings x-rayed. They were on the second floor, well above the floor of the chamber. When the disruption occurred, the established processes were invoked — the police were called, and individuals were removed from the gallery. And then, even after that, the doors were closed to everyone.
But let’s have a serious conversation about what took place that night. This was an expression of political anger in the people’s house, and it made the government uncomfortable.
I also have it on good authority that MLA Brendan Maguire and a number of other MLAs were chirping the protesters while they sang. Find that hard to believe? Let me remind you of the depth of Mr. Maguire’s temper inside the legislature.
Shutting the public out of Province House in response to this situation was an extreme overreach of power. It made it harder for the public to participate in the democratic process, and frankly, it’s incredibly hypocritical of the Speaker and the PC Party to declare their sudden concern for people’s safety.
Here’s what makes it worth writing about.
This government has its own track record of behaviour inside and around that building, and it looks nothing like the standard they’re now applying to the public.
Our very own Speaker of the House, Danielle Barkhouse, was caught on camera during a vote in 2022 giving then-Liberal MLA Brendan Maguire the middle finger. Don’t believe me? Watch for yourself:
In April 2022, two female MLAs formally alleged that Premier Houston’s conduct toward them in the chamber was derogatory and intimidating. Then-cabinet minister Susan Corkum-Greek walked past MLAs Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin, Kelly Regan, and Patricia Arab as they spoke together and called them a “witches’ coven.” She later apologized — but only because Smith-McCrossin and Regan filed a formal complaint.
And is the bad behaviour limited to MLAs? Absolutely not. In 2023, former government staffer Mitch Maltby, celebrating the by-election win in the Prestons, retweeted a reference to a “Thousand Year Houston Reich” — a literal Nazi rallying cry. When asked what he did about it, the Premier called it “exuberance” and said you accept the apology and move on.
I am not aware of Province House being locked to the public on any of those occasions.
This is the Power Paradox that researcher Dacher Keltner describes: the qualities that help people earn power — empathy, attentiveness, genuine listening — are often the first casualties of holding it. What’s left is a growing sensitivity to any challenge to authority, paired with a shrinking tolerance for accountability.
I see that paradox playing out right now in Nova Scotia. A government that called a circle of women a coven, that shrugged at Nazi slogans as exuberance, that has faced formal allegations of intimidating its own female colleagues — that government is now citing safety concerns because the public came to watch them work and didn’t stay quiet about what they saw.
The Nova Scotia Arts Coalition, the Ecology Action Centre, the Council of Canadians, and dozens of organizations across this province organized to show up because communities are being hollowed out by decisions made in that chamber. The people in the gallery that night represent those communities. They came because they have tried the other channels — the letters, the committee meetings, the emails, the phone calls — and they are not being heard.
There is a process for removing people who genuinely disrupt the legislature. That process was used. Police were called. People were removed. And then the doors were closed anyway to everyone, including those who had done nothing wrong.
Province House is not the government’s house. It is the people’s house. And the people — screened, identified, seated in the gallery where they are supposed to be — have every right to be there, even when their presence is uncomfortable.
Discomfort is not the same as danger. Criticism is not the same as a threat. And a Premier who has never adequately answered for the behaviour of his own caucus, his staff, and himself has very little standing to lecture the public about conduct in the people’s house.
Liz LeClair is an activist and advocate based in Nova Scotia.
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Great piece.
Liz LeClair — the MLA’s may have already been feeling the hot-seat because of drawings of them ‘at work’ were already circulating on social media. I made these drawings at the Legislature on March 13th, and documented Susan Corkum-Greek clothes-shopping on her phone, Brian Wong watching golf, Brendan Maguire with his earbuds in (the whole time, 2+ hours) I was there, David Ritcey texting and all of the rest of the Conservative caucus, including the Deputy Premier, Barbara Adams scrolling and texting on their phones pretty much constantly.
This while ferocious arguments against the budget were being presented by various speakers. The Conservatives showed a horrible degree of arrogance and indifference.
After I posted my drawings, a number of other artists went to the Leg to document. A day or so later, blammo, House is closed. Singing and observing are threatening to the folks that couldn’t be bothered to raise their heads from their phones to question the wisdom of Houston’s appallingly short-sighted (and self-interested) budget.
I’m attaching my instagram address below, in case you want to see the pics
I saw them and they are fantastic. I’ve seen this every single time I’ve been at the legislature. Good for you for capturing their disdain for the debate.
That was an extremely insightful and well written article. Hopefully the Speaker reads it, reflects on it, and chooses ‘not’ to lock out the dissenting public the next time they loudly voice objections to matters being discussed and voted on.
Ms. LeClair says the government has no standing to invoke “workplace safety” because it has itself violated that principle. But in making that argument, she concedes something important: the protesters also compromised workplace safety. In other words, the defence isn’t that no harm was done — it’s that both sides did it. That’s not a justification. It’s an admission.
She is arguing what’s good for the goose is good for the gander (or however it identifies). Unfortunately, in most cases, two wrongs do not make a right. And it’s a poor standard for public conduct.