Green Party asks ethics commissioner to investigate alleged political interference in referendum drafting
Attorney general says it's 'totally wrong' to suggest politics involved
P.E.I.'s Green Party is asking the P.E.I. ethics and integrity commissioner to investigate whether the province's attorney general allowed political interference during the drafting of legislation on electoral reform.
The Electoral System Referendum Act set the stage for holding a binding referendum on electoral reform in conjunction with the next provincial election.
Party Leader Peter Bevan-Baker says he is "very concerned that the Liberal Party was actively interfering with the legislation as it was being debated on the floor of the legislature."
That concern is focused on the involvement of Charlottetown lawyer Spencer Campbell in drafting the referendum bill. Campbell is a former spokesperson for the Liberal Party of P.E.I. and is still a party member.
Bevan-Baker said his party obtained hundreds of pages of documents related to the drafting of the bill through a request under P.E.I.'s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, or FOIPP.
That package included an email from June 4, 2018, that says "Spencer is redrafting." The bill passed on June 12 after extended debate in the provincial legislature.
"When you have a political operative who's joined at the hip as closely as Mr. Campbell is with the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island, that raises serious questions about the objectivity of this bill, and whether or not there was political interference in drafting it in a certain way to slant it towards being beneficial towards the governing party," Bevan-Baker told CBC News.
Political affiliation not a factor, says Brown
P.E.I. Attorney General Jordan Brown says party affiliation was not a factor in who worked on the bill.
Brown said it is not uncommon for government to hire outside counsel, and in this case government hired law firm Stewart McKelvey to work on the legislation. Brown said Spencer Campbell was just one of several lawyers with that firm who were involved.
"We have a very well-respected local law firm that would have lawyers of all different political stripes that was asked to review work that had been done by executive council office, by legislative council office, and by our staff in the Department of Justice to prepare a very significant piece of legislation," said Brown.
"They did that to the utmost, I would assume and understand, of their professional capacity."
Brown said many lawyers do have political affiliations, but he said they are are trained to put aside their political and personal affiliations at work.
Partisan 'fingerprints'
Bevan-Baker said he thinks government should have looked for lawyers without any political ties — even if it meant going off-Island — so that there was no political interference and no perception of it.
"It's so important that this bill not have any fingerprints of the governing party on it, that it be an independent bill to serve the laws of this province, rather than a bill which could be slanted in such a way that would favour the governing party," said Bevan-Baker.
Brown said he welcomes an investigation by the ethics commissioner and is confident that a review would find no wrongdoing.
"To try to create some conspiracy because there was one lawyer in a particular local law firm … had an involvement in the file it's somehow politically motivated, I think is just totally wrong," said Brown.
The referendum will be included with the ballot in the next provincial election, which will be held this year.
Voters on P.E.I. will be asked to support either the current first-past-the-post system of electing MLAs, or switch to a mixed member proportional voting system.