Scott Reid elected Speaker

Scott Reid has been elected Speaker of the House of Assembly.

The vote between Reid and former Speaker Perry Trimper was held on Monday afternoon on the first day of the fall sitting of the House of Assembly.

“The office of Speaker, I think, is a special place in the House. I worked around the House now a number of years. I started in 1989 in the Wells administration as a junior researcher. Those were the days before cellphones and things like that, so they needed someone in the caucus room to run messages back and forth to the members,” said Reid.

“That was my beginning, I guess, of being in and around the House.”

Reid was first elected as an MHA in September 2014 in a byelection following the resignation of former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Joan Shea. He has a number of degrees from Memorial University and the University of Ottawa, and taught courses in the political science and business departments of Memorial.

The Speaker takes charge of maintaining the order of the House during debate and ruling on points of order, and performs other ceremonial duties.

Reid says maintaining order in the House of Assembly comes down to respect.

“You have to gain the respect of the members. You have to take every opportunity you get to inform them more about the House rules, why they’re important, why it’s important to respect other members,” he said.

The role comes with a $48,8665 pay raise, on top of the $93,000 base salary for members of the House of Assembly.

The vote was a secret ballot, so the vote count is not known.

It’s the second time Reid had vied for the role, having lost his first bid to Tom Osborne in 2016. At the time, it was the first election for Speaker in the province’s history. Reid’s victory on Monday is the third time the Speaker’s chair was contested in the province’s history.