Nova Scotia.

• Author: Boucher, Annette M.

The Fall 2018 sitting of the House of Assembly commenced with the Speech from the Throne read by Lieutenant Governor Arthur J. LeBlanc on September 6, 2018.

The sitting continued until October 11, 2018 when Royal Assent was given to 22 government bills, one private Members' bill and one private bill and one Local bill.

Rules and Forms of Procedure of the House of Assembly

The House of Assembly amended Rule 60 relating to the House of Assembly standing committees. Two former committees, the Economic Development and the Resources Committees, were combined. The newly created committee was named the Natural Resources and Economic Development. A new committee, the Health Committee, was also created with the mandate of considering matters relative to access to and delivery of health care services.

Deputy Speaker

On September 13, 2018, Brendan Maguire, Liberal MLA for Halifax Atlantic was elected as Deputy Speaker by the House of Assembly. On July 5, 2018 one of the former Deputy Speakers, Chuck Porter, resigned his position and was appointed to the Executive Council.

Speaker's Ruling

On October 2, 2018 the Speaker delivered a ruling on a point of privilege raised on September 26, 2018. The issue related to the government majority on the Public Accounts Committee passing a motion purported to result in fundamentally changing the mandate of that committee. The committee's mandate can only be changed by amending the Rules and Forms of Procedure of the House of Assembly thus requiring a two-thirds majority vote in the House. The Speaker found that there had been no point of privilege and stated the following regarding the purported change in mandate of the committee: "I want to add a further comment because the objection was framed as a change to the House Rules having been made by a committee rather than by a two-thirds vote of the House itself; that is, the mandate of the Public Accounts Committee set out in Rule 60 had been changed. This was not the case. The motion that was passed by the committee reads: All agenda items for PAC be set through the Auditor General reports beginning with the May 29, 2018 performance report and future agenda sequences for scheduling to follow the order of chapters for each subsequent report tabled by the Auditor General with appropriate department witnesses. This was simply a motion to establish the agenda items for the committee, within the mandate of the committee. It does remain open to the committee to adopt...