Minority report

We weren’t sure what to expect from this historic first sitting of a minority government in the provincial legislature. Nearly half of the elected MLAs were newcomers, including Premier Dennis King. Even the incumbent Progressive Conservative MLAs were thrust from their familiar role as critics in Opposition to now answering the critics. As June 18 – the first day of question period – approached, there were concerns about what all the talk about collaboration and parties working together would mean for the official Opposition Green Party and its role to hold the government accountable. The Greens set the tone right away by trying to civilize question period by introducing a motion to ban heckling. The Greens, especially its six new MLAs, looked like political veterans early on as they challenged unprepared PC cabinet ministers on specifics in their portfolios. The Liberals took the reins of reminding the PCs about discrepancies between their campaign promises and what was showing up in the budget – such as the small business tax and rental assistance. At the end of the day, the PCs led a functional minority government during this session of the legislative assembly. And King’s government successfully jumped its two main hurdles – passing the throne speech and passing a budget. King’s first budget increased spending in healthcare services, education and social housing and poverty, decreased the small business tax by 0.5 per cent, increased the personal basic tax amount from $9,160 to $10,000 and increased the low-income tax base from $17,000 to $18,000. As the summer session wrapped up, King was still banging the drum about how the parties collaborated on the throne speech and the budget. Well, that’s still an open question. Everything didn’t go as smoothly as the PCs would have us believe. There were rumblings from the Liberals and Greens about budget consultations not being as meaningful, adequate or detailed as they would have liked. Green MLAs Hannah Bell and Ole Hammarlund voted against the budget. Bell was upset about the absence of funding for a commission to look at Basic Income Guarantee in favour of a secure income pilot project, while Hammarlund has issues with the lack of funding for housing, transportation and climate change goals. Overall, the summer session of the legislature was interesting but largely uneventful. There were jabs back and forth, but no bomb shells. In this case, It’s hard to hold the PCs accountable for their broken election promises under the assumed “give and take” of collaboration and consultation. It’s still early days in this minority government. In the fall session, we can expect to see fewer hiccups as the learning curve for new MLAs straightens out. All things considered, the government performed as well as we could have expected.