Collaboration 'clearly gone' as MLAs wrap up acrimonious P.E.I. Legislature sitting
'We've seen a change in tone' since 2019, says political scientist
The spring sitting of the P.E.I. Legislature came to a close on the five-year anniversary of the 2019 election that made Dennis King's Progressive Conservatives the first functional minority government in the province's history.
"Collaboration" became the buzzword in those minority days, especially between the PCs and the Green Party, encapsulated in an image of the two party leaders hugging the day after the election.
If the 2024 spring sitting showed us anything, it's that the days of collaboration are definitely over, and there aren't likely to be any more hugs.
"We've seen a change in tone … and a different attitude toward the entire process," said UPEI political scientist Don Desserud, describing how the King government conducted business during the sitting.
Desserud described it as "a return to the way things used to be before," and not in a good way.
"The early days of cooperation that we saw going back to 2019 are clearly gone."
As the sitting was winding down, both opposition parties were left expressing frustration that bills they brought forward were not given a fair shake by the governing PCs, who've had a majority government since a byelection win in Nov. 2020.
Liberal MLA Robert Henderson decried it as a "cowardly approach" for Agriculture Minister Bloyce Thompson to shoot down Henderson's bill to establish a right for Island farmers to be provided service manuals from the dealerships that sell them equipment.
Thompson had been invited to appear before the standing committee that developed the bill but declined, sending a written critique from his department instead.
And the Green Party was left crying foul after King engaged in verbal sparring with the emergency room doctor the Greens brought forward to champion their bill which would have eliminated language from the Employment Standards Act allowing employers to require employees who miss three days because of sickness to provide a doctor's note.
In both cases there was no effort by government to collaborate with opposition parties to look for a middle ground; the entire PC caucus voted them both down.
It's not unusual for opposition bills to be voted down by government. Until 2019, it was the norm.
Desserud says it's "disappointing" that spirit of cooperation seems to be gone, because he says it changed the tone all parties brought to the house.
From this point, he predicts the opposition parties will take a firmer approach to opposing the PCs, "and that's going to make for a more volatile and acrimonious assembly."
Premier takes personal swipes
The sitting that just ended included a number of exchanges which could easily be described as volatile and acrimonious, and most of those exchanges involved the premier.
On multiple occasions King took personal swipes at his political opponents.
In one of the daily debates on health care, King called Henderson, a former Liberal health minister, a "hypocrite," then thought better of it and withdrew the comment (which, if the Speaker had been required to rule on it, was liable to have been deemed unparliamentary.)
If King felt chastened by having to withdraw the comment, he didn't show it.
"I am the premier and you're not," he quipped immediately afterward, responding to chirps from interim Liberal leader Hal Perry.
When former Green leader Peter Bevan-Baker brought forward concerns about a lack of transparency with P.E.I.'s procurement system, King called him an "ambulance chaser," one "bathed in the cesspool of nastiness and negativity" of the Greens, and a shadow of the politician who became Opposition leader in 2019.
Another time, the topic was a lack of transparency in funding for private long-term care operators, who Bevan-Baker described as "PC friends" (one was a former candidate for the party).
In his response King, who in a former life was a professional storyteller, told the tale of Bevan-Baker's "fall from grace, where he would come into this legislature as the beacon of hope and optimism, and all he does is continue to smear the good people across Prince Edward Island."
Asked about the comments afterwards, King characterized the questions as attacks on himself and on long-term care providers and staff.
"It's been very sparingly where I've taken that approach here in the legislature. I don't think there's been probably a premier in recent history who's turned the other cheek more than me when I've been sort of attacked, personally or otherwise," King told reporters.
"The member of the Third Party is free to say whatever he wants. So am I, and sometimes … if you keep slapping me, you might get one back."
Bevan-Baker, via email, described being "on the receiving end of an increasingly irritable and angry premier" over the past year.
"It has reached the point where I expect to be pounced on when I ask any pointed questions, no matter the subject. It's a super unhealthy environment to conduct constructive debate in."
Government 'apathetic and directionless'
While the PCs voted down bills the opposition parties brought forward during the sitting, they didn't bring a lot of their own business to the table, passing just 11 government bills.
Among those are a bill to end a ban on hunting on Sundays, and a bill to correct a small but significant error in the implementation of P.E.I.'s new child protection law: the new law passed last fall failed to repeal the legislation it replaces.
Speaking the morning after the Green's sick note bill was defeated, Bevan-Baker described the PC's legislative agenda as indicative of an "apathetic and directionless government," and went on to quote words the premier had said about him.
"This government is a shadow of its former self."
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With files from Gabrielle Drumond