Higgs minority government suffers first legislative setback

New Brunswick's Progressive Conservative minority government suffered its first legislative setback Wednesday when it was forced to withdraw one of its centrepiece bills on fiscal transparency.

The PCs pulled the proposed Fiscal Transparency and Accountability Act after the Liberal, Green and People's Alliance MLAs on a legislative committee ganged up to try to amend it.

The legislation was withdrawn before a vote could be held on one of the amendments, introduced by Green Leader David Coon. It's the first time the Tories have had to retreat on a bill since taking power last Nov. 9.

"Everything is going to be a learning curve," PC house leader Glen Savoie acknowledged after the committee adjourned.

He said the government would go back to the drawing board and ask the opposition parties for input in order to "get this bill into the form that it needs to be in."

Cross-party criticism

Several of the bill's elements attracted criticism from the three opposition parties, who hold a combined six out of 10 seats on the committee, excluding the PC chair.

Both Coon and Alliance Leader Kris Austin said a formula to penalize cabinet ministers if the deficit isn't reduced by a set amount each year was a gimmick.

"The accountability mechanism in our system is called elections," Coon said.

Coon and Austin both voted against a Liberal amendment to increase the penalties because they were against them in principle.

Austin said he felt another element of the bill, requiring political parties to produce a cost estimate of their election promises, was aimed at smaller parties who lacked the resources to fill out mounds of paperwork.

"I'm sure there's a better way to do it than this convoluted mess that we have to deal with every election," he said.

The PC bill would replace a similar Liberal law. 

Green amendments

Coon introduced two amendments to the PC bill.

The first would replace precise deficit-reduction targets of $125 million per year with vaguer goals. With Austin's support and a tie-breaking vote by PC committee chair Gary Crossman, the Tories managed to pass a motion to set aside that amendment.

Coon's second amendment would have changed part of the bill that allows a cabinet committee to exclude spending for "extraordinary events" from the act's provisions. The Green leader's amendment would require that decision to come back to the legislature.

The PCs tried to set aside that amendment, too, but in that case Austin voted with the Liberals and Coon to prevent that.

The Tories then moved to pull the bill altogether, a motion that passed with Austin's support and another tie-breaking vote by Crossman.

Minority woes

The committee vote was not a confidence matter, so the potential defeat of the bill would not have toppled the Higgs government or triggered an election.

But Liberal MLA Andy Harvey said it's a sign the Tories can't take easy passage of legislation for granted.

"The government needs to realize they're in a minority position," he said. "They didn't receive a majority of the votes and they didn't win a majority of the seats, and they should govern accordingly."

The government wouldn't be able to introduce a new version of the bill until the full legislature reconvenes on March 19.

But it could bring the existing version back to a new committee session before then and introduce its own amendments to try to satisfy the opposition.