Andrew Younger should own Fall River quarry decision, says Graham Steele

If ministerial responsibility isn't dead in Nova Scotia, it's on life support.

Exhibit A: Environment Minister Andrew Younger tried to have the best of all political worlds this week.

He was "ticked off" about his own department's decision to approve a controversial quarry in Fall River, while simultaneously insisting he couldn't do anything about it.

If that's where we are, then we're in more trouble than I thought.

I don't know if the Fall River quarry is a good idea. I have no opinion on whether it should get its environmental approval.

What I do know is that ministerial responsibility has to mean something if our democracy is going to function.

Two big reasons

Ministerial responsibility means simply this: the minister answers for what goes on in his or her department.No passing the buck. No finger pointing.

Ministerial responsibility matters for two big reasons:

• First, because it is not the citizens's job to figure out who, in the bowels of bureaucracy, actually made a decision or why.Citizens and their elected representatives can skip the detective work, and go directly to the minister and demand answers.
  
• Secondly, it's part of the fundamental deal between politicians and civil servants.Civil servants agree to serve the government impartially, and in exchange, government ministers take responsibility for what the civil servants do.

When ministerial responsibility breaks down, citizens don't know where to turn, and civil servants' incentive to be impartial evaporates.

Learned on Facebook

An application for a quarry was submitted on May 29, 2015. Previous quarry proposals for the same property have generated considerable opposition in the area.

In the 2013 provincial election, Liberal candidate and now MLA Bill Horne promised to support residents in their opposition to the then-current quarry proposal.

"The quarry is not an appropriate industry in our neighbourhood," said Horne's campaign leaflet.

The environmental approval was issued by the Environment Department on September 15, 2015. Residents say they became aware of the approval six days later.

The minister says he learned about it on Facebook.

The department issued a news release on September 22, confirming the approval and noting that there was an appeal deadline of 30 days from the date of the approval.

You know there has to be something wrong with a process in which a news release about a decision is issued only after citizens already know.

You know there has to be something wrong with a process in which the appeal period starts ticking but there's no mechanism to inform potential appellants.

'Ticked off'

The process is bad, but the politics are worse.

The local Liberal MLA has been made to look powerless and uninformed.

Being a government backbencher is the worst job in politics, and my guess is that Bill Horne is apoplectic about being left out of the loop on such a sensitive issue.

As for the minister, he ducked and weaved as best he could.

He was "pretty ticked off", he said on a radio call-in show, but mostly about not being informed in advance that the quarry decision was coming down.

He said the approval was essentially automatic once the proponent met all the conditions this may come as news to the local residents and to Bill Horne.

The question the minister avoided is whether he thinks the decision to approve the quarry was the right one.After all, the decision was made under his delegated authority.

Hands tied?

The minister says his hands are tied because an appeal under section 137 of the Environment Act goes to the minister.

He insists he can't get involved in a decision while also hearing an appeal.

This argument can't be right. Surely the minister is not a bystander in his own department. Surely the appeal provision was not intended to undercut ministerial responsibility.

If the minister agrees with the decision to approve the quarry, he should own it, and answer for it.

If he doesn't agree with the decision, he should do whatever it takes to change it, and quickly before work on the quarry gets underway.

We must not allow the doctrine of ministerial responsibility to die. We cannot, or we are sunk.