Lee Sawyer, whose son Ryan died after being put in a chokehold by a bouncer outside a bar in the early hours of Dec. 24. 2022, after appearing at the Nova Scotia legislature's standing committee on public bills in Halifax on March 17.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
The families of two young men who died outside Halifax bars after altercations with bouncers implored lawmakers at a legislative committee hearing this week not to scrap a potentially life-saving law that has never been enacted and is at risk of being wiped off the books with newly proposed legislation.
Lee Sawyer, whose son Ryan Sawyer died by homicide in 2022, pleaded with legislators to not let the bar bouncer law “fall victim to repeal,” to ensure no one else in the province dies under similar circumstances.
“While I pray it will benefit someone else, it had zero benefit for my son,” said Ms. Sawyer, who has been fighting for the Nova Scotia government to bring the 15-year-old law into force. “He sits in an urn on my fireplace mantel.”
The Justice Administration Amendment Act or Bill 21, introduced last month by the Progressive Conservative government, includes a clause that would automatically abolish laws that have passed but have not been brought into force by cabinet after a decade – a move that is being criticized as undermining democracy.
The new bill would erase Nova Scotia’s bar bouncer law, the Security and Investigative Services Act (SISA), legislation that would require anyone wanting to work as a bar bouncer to be licensed and trained. Under that law, there would be criminal record checks and a duty to report criminal charges.
Lee Sawyer holds her typed testimony at the Nova Scotia legislature's standing committee on public bills in Halifax on March 17.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
SISA passed in 2010 in response to the death of Stephen Giffin, who was found dead outside a Halifax bar in 1999. The law, voted for by all three political parties, received royal assent and was celebrated at the legislature with Mr. Giffin’s father Cyril, who fought tirelessly for legislation, to try to prevent another such death.
But cabinet never brought the law into force – something Mr. Giffin’s family only discovered through the media after the homicide of 31-year-old Mr. Sawyer on Christmas Eve 2022. He lay bloodied and unresponsive on the sidewalk outside Halifax Alehouse after an altercation with a bouncer, who at the time was facing an assault charge. The bouncer, Alexander Levy, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.
At the public bills committee hearing in Halifax, Mr. Giffin’s sister Terri Giffin spoke of the failure to bring the law her father fought for in her brother’s memory into force.
“SISA was the government’s pledge to the people of Nova Scotia to ensure no other family would suffer the same tragedy as we did,” said Ms. Giffin. “But this is exactly what happened. Had SISA been proclaimed, Ryan Sawyer would still be alive.”
After Mr. Sawyer’s homicide, the Nova Scotia government announced new safety measures under the existing Liquor Control Act, including criminal background checks and training for bouncers working in the province’s handful of late-night bars. In December, the province introduced responsible alcohol service training for all its 2,500 licensed establishments.
However both women pointed out that these measures don’t apply to all bars and are nowhere near what SISA would’ve done to protect the public, bringing it in line with other provinces, including British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, which have their own legislation for government to license and regulate bar bouncers.
Ms. Giffin asked that Bill 21 be amended to remove the clause, or alternatively to exempt SISA from automatic repeal as the government has already proposed for two oil and gas laws.
Terri Giffin, whose brother Stephen Giffin died on Christmas Day in 1999 after he was beaten by bouncers at a bar in Halifax, is emotional while appearing at the Nova Scotia legislature's standing committee on public bills in Halifax on March 17.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
Not doing so, she added, undermines parliamentary democracy – an opinion echoed by constitutional law experts.
Unproclaimed laws that have passed in the legislature and received royal assent, but have not been brought into force, are ubiquitous across Canadian provinces, intended to give time for lawmakers to consult with industry stakeholders and refine wording before they’re activated. But the issue they pose is that in some cases, like with the bar bouncer law in Nova Scotia, they may never be enacted despite politicians publicly touting that they’ve been passed.
At the hearing in Halifax, Ms. Giffin tabled a letter to legislators from her lawyer, Sujit Choudhry, who wrote to the Nova Scotia government last year alleging the province’s failure to proclaim the bar bouncer bill is illegal.
In an interview, Mr. Choudhry said premiers and cabinets must realize that the legislature directs them and not the other way around – in other words, the executive branch of government does not have any legal right to kill bills simply through inaction.
“Unproclaimed law represents a failure of parliamentary democracy,” he added. “When governments fail to proclaim law simply because they don’t like them or have no intention of proclaiming them, they are undermining the will of the legislature.”
Nova Scotia Justice Department spokeswoman Denise Corra said in a statement to The Globe there no plans to proclaim the SISA into force.
The department has until the end of the year to determine whether its unproclaimed statutes should be retained.
Justice Minister Becky Druhan won’t commit to salvaging the bar bouncer law, which she described as “very broad legislation that was not proclaimed by three previous governments,” in a statement provided to The Globe. She did however say she planned to schedule a meeting with the families.
“My heart goes out to the Sawyers and Giffins who have faced a tragedy under these circumstances,” she wrote.