Liberals demand meetings on legislature budget be public
VICTORIA — B.C.’s Opposition Liberals are refusing to attend closed-door meetings on the legislature’s $80-million budget, saying the current scandal inside the building means public money must be debated in the open, starting at a meeting Thursday.
Liberal house leader Mary Polak said in camera meetings of the legislature’s finance and audit committee should be suspended immediately. Any discussion of the legislature’s finances should be held in public using the allparty legislative assembly management committee, or LAMC. It includes Green, NDP and Liberal MLAs and is set to meet Thursday, Polak said.
“It is the position of the opposition that no budget submission can be approved and provided to Treasury Board until such time as all members of LAMC, the auditor general and the public have their questions answered to make an informed decision on a $80 million budget for the legislative assembly,” Polak wrote in an email Wednesday to the acting clerk of the legislature, Kate Ryan-Lloyd.
“In our view, the (finance and audit committee) has assumed a far too expansive role, replacing LAMC for a majority of deliberations as they relate to the operations of the legislative assembly. The original decision to conduct LAMC meetings in public was taken to enhance transparency.
“Therefore, LAMC must be the primary and only body subject to public scrutiny. Given the extraordinary circumstances, it is the position of the official Opposition that in camera meetings of the (finance and audit committee) be suspended. Instead, this years’ legislative assembly budget submission must be canvassed in the public setting of LAMC.”
The transparency demand is the latest wrinkle in an evolving scandal at the legislature. The building’s two highest-ranking non-partisan officials, clerk Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz, were suspended last month following a secret seven-month probe conducted by Speaker Darryl Plecas and his aide Alan Mullen into undisclosed allegations that they subsequently turned over to the RCMP. Two special prosecutors are now overseeing a police probe.
The Liberals — who resent Plecas because he defected from that party to take the Speaker job last year — have accused Plecas of withholding his role in the investigation, and attempting to install his friend Mullen into the vacated sergeant-at-arms job.
James and Lenz have said they still don’t know what they are accused of doing, but their reputations are destroyed. Neither man has been charged. Plecas, the RCMP and the special prosecutors have refused to provide any details about the investigation.
LAMC began public meetings after a scathing audit in 2012 found the legislature’s finances were in disarray and shrouded in secrecy. The intention, MLAs said at the time, was to provide basic transparency and accountability.
However, LAMC has only met three times since the 2017 election and increasingly chooses to do the majority of its business through in camera finance and audit committee meetings that the public is barred from attending.
Polak said Liberals would not ask direct questions about the RCMP probe, which the government has said it cannot answer because it would risk tainting the investigation.
“However there are questions about this situation that should be asked,” wrote Polak. “And the public deserves their questions answered in a public forum.”
The Greens and NDP did not comment Wednesday.