Maintaining the status quo
Liberals keep official Opposition status after Green byelection win earlier this month
P.E.I.’S Liberals will retain their status as the official Opposition at the Coles building.
In a statement before the P.E.I. legislative assembly on Feb. 27 on the opening day of the spring sitting, Speaker Darlene Compton told MLAS that a tie of three seats apiece between the Liberals and Greens would not displace the Liberals from their Opposition status.
A byelection win in the riding of Borden-kinkora on Feb. 7 by Green candidate Matt Macfarlane brought the total number of seats held by that party to three, the same number the Liberals won during the April 2023 provincial election.
Green interim Leader Karla Bernard had appealed to Compton that her party should ascend to the official Opposition status due to the higher vote proportion of the vote won by the Greens in the 2023 election. Bernard had also argued the Greens had held Opposition status from 2019 to 2023 and that a change would produce minimal disruption in terms of caucus staff between the two parties.
Liberal interim Leader Hal Perry had argued that his party should retain its status as Opposition, based on past precedence in similar ties that occurred in other Canadian legislatures.
In her ruling on the matter, Compton noted that the rules of the P.E.I. legislative assembly had no provisions to guide her decision.
But Compton noted previous rulings on tied seat counts in New Brunswick in 1994 and in the House of Commons in Ottawa in 1996 had favoured maintaining the incumbent party that won Opposition status in a general election.
Compton stated that while the circumstances in P.E.I. currently may be different from past seat ties in other legislative assemblies, “deviation is not justified in this instance" from past precedence.
As a result, Compton ruled that the Liberals would retain their status as the official Opposition.
The winter sitting of the legislature will continue for the coming weeks.