Back in the house, argument over bills intensifies

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This article was published 03/03/2021 (1834 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Progressive Conservative government admitted Wednesday that 19 bills it introduced — but did not distribute — last fall were not all fully prepared at the time.

Government house leader Kelvin Goertzen said it was his understanding at least some would still have needed to be translated into French. He didn’t say whether they had all been entirely written.

“I think the hope was that we, certainly, would have them ready for distribution in January and February,” Goertzen said as the legislature resumed sitting after a three-month break.

The government asked for the unanimous consent of the legislature in November to allow the bills to be distributed while MLAs were on hiatus. The Liberals refused.

The government did distribute two of the 19 bills Wednesday: one (Bill 61) would amend the Apprenticeship and Certification Act; the other (Bill 55) would amend various laws in the name of reducing red tape.

Six prominent Manitobans from across the political spectrum sent a letter Tuesday to the three main party leaders, urging them to stop their political wrangling and respect the public’s right to be informed about government legislation. They urged the contents of all 19 bills be revealed no later than Thursday.

Goertzen told reporters Wednesday he expected the government would distribute all the bills — including one that would reform the public education system and another that would overhaul portions of the Police Services Act — over the next five or six sitting days.

That would mean Manitobans would be in the dark about the contents of some bills until well into next week.

On Wednesday, the NDP accused the government of trying to “game the system” by introducing the bills soon enough they would be guaranteed passage, according to house rules — even though Manitobans could not read their contents.

NDP house leader Nahanni Fontaine said the rules also require second reading of the bills by March 17. That will give MLAs little time to digest their contents.

“That’s undemocratic,” Fontaine said. “How can we do our job properly when we don’t have the information, nor do we have the time for second reading debate?”

The rules of the legislature allow for passage of all bills introduced by a certain date by the end of the spring sitting June 1. The rules also allow the Opposition to select five government bills to be put off for approval until fall.

The government has said it introduced the bills last fall to ensure the NDP did not continue to hold up its legislative agenda, as it did last spring, when it used procedural tactics to stall bills and delay introduction of the 2020 budget.

The Manitoba Liberals drew attention Wednesday to a Facebook post Tuesday by PC backbencher James Teitsma, who said most of the 19 bills “hadn’t even been finalized” by the time they were introduced.

“The ‘point’ of introduction (of the bills) was to parry the NDP’s tactic of preventing introduction,” wrote the Radisson MLA, who sits on the powerful Treasury Board.

“That is not how things are supposed to work,” Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont told reporters.

“When the government denies me the information I need to do my job — like read legislation — that is a violation of my privilege,” Lamont said. “The government is trying to stop us from doing our jobs.”

He also dismissed the government’s reasoning it ought to be able to defy convention and release the contents of bills when the house is not in session.

“To say, ‘We know we have a ton of legislation we want to ram through. We don’t know what it’s going to be, but we know we want to do all this stuff and we want to make sure it’s done by June, so we’ll put in a bunch of placeholders’ — that’s not acceptable in a democracy,” Lamont said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca