All-party committee must decide on constituency office budgets, safety, MacMaster says

Any measures to make MLA constituency offices safer would have to come from the House Assembly Management Commission, says the province’s deputy premier.

“A lot of our MLAs believe that safety absolutely is important but increasing budgets for constituency offices at a time that we’re going through right now, I don’t think that would send a very good signal to the public and a lot of people out there who have their own problems and challenges that they are having to deal with, with the cost of living,” Allan MacMaster said Thursday after a cabinet meeting.

MacMaster was reacting to an assault charge laid against a man in December in relation to an incident at the constituency office of Brendan Maguire, the Liberal MLA for Halifax Atlantic.

Halifax police were called to the office on Herring Cove Road over the noon hour of Dec. 14 after a man entered, allegedly assaulted a worker and damaged the office after the staffer and a student worker were able to lock themselves in a room.

Blair Jordan MacDonald, 47, faces an assault charge.
 
At the time of the alleged assault, Maguire posted on Facebook that a man went into the office and grabbed a female staff member by the throat before slamming her into a wall. When the student worker came into the reception area, he let the staff member go and advanced on the student while making racist remarks, Maguire wrote.

The constituency office worker, now identified as Kelly Gomes, corroborated Maguire’s account.

“He ran up to me and grabbed me by the throat and put me against the wall,” Gomes told a media outlet this week.

“I could do nothing. I didn’t have my phone. I was halfway down the hallway and pinned up against the wall.”

Constituency offices

Gomes said she doesn’t know what would have happened if the student was not in the office that day.

Maguire later told media that he knows what should happen.

“It’s time for constituency budgets to be increased so two people can be hired,” he said.

MacMaster said Thursday he does not want to sound critical of MLAs who would like to have more money in their budgets to hire a second assistant.

“It’s not my decision,” MacMaster said. “The House Assembly Management Commission meets to discuss these things, there are representatives from all parties and if there are issues of safety, I think they need to be looked at with a safety lens. Expanding the budget and hiring another person might be one solution but there could be other solutions, too, and I think it would make sense to hear from people who are professionals in the world of security to provide some recommendations before we would make a decision on that.”

The commission consists of eight voting members and one non-voting member. It is tasked with overseeing all public money approved by the House of Assembly for the use and operation of the assembly, including all financial and administrative policy affecting the MLAs, their offices and staff.

The commission is chaired by Speaker Karla MacFarlane and includes a deputy Speaker, government House Leader Kim Masland, two additional members of the government caucus, Opposition House Leader Derek Mombourquette, an official Opposition caucus member (Liberal) and a caucus member of any other recognized party (NDP).

Three Cape Breton MLAs last month joined the call for changes in the way constituency offices are operated.

‘Wake-up call’

“It’s a wake-up call,” Mombourquette, the Liberal MLA for Sydney-Membertou, told SaltWire.

Northside-Westmount Liberal MLA Fred Tilley and Kendra Coombes, the NDP representative for Cape Breton Centre-Whitney Pier, also support constituency office changes. 

Coombes said the incident should not be “treated as a one-off, but maybe a cautionary tale of, ‘this is what happens.’”

As a member of the management commission, Mombourquette has asked for concerns about constituency offices to be put on the agenda for the next meeting.

Moumbourquette, Tilley and Coombes all say their lives have been threatened. 

MacMaster said Thursday if protections are in place and if staff are trained in what to do in such a situation, “things are safer.”

The deputy premier said the RCMP detachment in Inverness is just down the road from his constituency office.

“If something happened, we were on the phone right away to them (RCMP),” MacMaster said. “If we thought it was over, we still called them anyway. If there was ever a threat made, we called right away to report it, we didn’t want to let it lag.”

Concerned for safety

MacMaster said he has heard of incidents from his constituency assistants and has had experiences himself where he was concerned for his safety, including a time when he called 911 from his vehicle because he was being followed on the way to his house.

“These things do happen, I would never minimize them, they can be serious,” MacMaster said.

Tilley said MLAs want their offices to be accessible to the public but staff must be safe at the same time.

He said the roughly $65,000 allotted to cover rent, office supplies, telephone, Internet, heat, lights and other essentials is not very much to run an office.

The budget also pays for the part-time student.

MacMaster said if the commission feels that it is essential to increase the constituency office budgets, if they had evidence and support from professionals in security that it is the right thing to do, “I would expect the committee members if they felt strongly about that would be willing to make a decision to do something.”

MacMaster said it is up to the commission to decide.

“If people feel this is serious enough, yes, it should be revisited, given the current events and, yes, it is going to be discussed,” he said.

“It’s not my decision, it’s the decision of the House Assembly Management Commission and if there is a feeling after some conversation that they (constituency office budgets) should be expanded, then there will be a vote held.”