VAUGHN PALMER
As Education Minister George Abbott took the wraps off the long- anticipated bill to deal with the teachers dispute Tuesday afternoon, the mood inside the legislature chamber was calm and attentive.
The Opposition benches were particularly quiet. Having sworn themselves to silence about what a New Democratic Party government would offer teachers in these circumstances, NDP MLAS weren’t about to tip their intentions with a misplaced heckle.
Plus the bill itself was more sparing than expected. Coolingoff period to the end of August. Money to settle a lingering court battle over classroom resources. Mediation on some issues, albeit on a narrow agenda preferred by the government.
All without stripping the contract or eliminating one last opportunity to settle within the net- zero mandate accepted by most other public sector unions.
Some rough stuff in the threat of hefty fines for any illegal walkout. But those were in a separate section of the bill, to be proclaimed into law only in the event of actual defiance of the legislated cooling- off period.
Not likely would the extension mean an actual negotiated settlement within the narrow confines of the government mandate. More likely the house would be called back into session by the end of summer to impose a settlement once and for all.
Still, after digesting the contents along with Abbott’s measured comments about wanting to give mediation a try, I was thinking that the Liberals had played this one fairly well.
Then Premier Christy Clark got into the act.
It happened during question period, as the New Democrats pitched a bunch of questions at her on the government plan to turn some $ 700 million worth of government assets into cash to balance the budget.
Her first appearance in the house since budget day Feb. 21. The Opposition’s first opportunity to challenge her on the contents. But Clark wasn’t having any of it. “I am very disappointed in the leader of the Opposition today,” she fired back after a boilerplate justification for the asset sale. “Today we have teachers around B. C. threatening to withdraw services to children ... It is time for the Opposition to stand up and be responsible and place the issues on the floor of this legislature where they belong.”
Dix wasn’t having any of it either. Question period is for the Opposition to ask questions, not answer them. But every time he brought up the budget, she came back to the teachers, getting more personal with each response.
From her second answer: “He refuses to get up and talk about his position on this issue. The leader of the Opposition needs to stop hiding. He needs to come clean.”
From the third: “On a day when this threat hangs over our public education system, this member doesn’t have the backbone to stand up and talk about it in this legislature.”
The backbone? One of the better things Dix has done since assuming the leadership of the NDP is to avoid personal attacks in an effort to elevate the policy debate. Clark, on this occasion, chose to take the debate in a downward direction.
But apart from the un- premier-like behaviour, Clark was also increasingly out of order with her effort to get the NDP talking about a bill that had been tabled in the legislature only minutes before. As she was about to discover.
“You cannot continue to dodge these questions,” she returned in reply to a followup from NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston. “Where does the member stand on net zero? Where does the member stand on many of the other big issues that have been out there with respect to ...?”
This brought an admonition from Speaker of the legislature Bill Barisoff. “Premier,” he advised, “you can refer to the bill itself, but you cannot refer to the contents of the bill.”
The rules, sensibly enough, are crafted to confine discussion of the contents of legislation to the lengthy periods set aside for debate on same.
But even after that gentle reminder from the chair, Clark still didn’t get it and again demanded that the New Democrats say where they stood on “net zero,” a key provision in the bill, forcing Barisoff to issue a second corrective.
“Premier, you can refer to the bill itself, but you can’t refer to the contents. The contents of the bill has ‘ zero’ in it.”
She said she got it — “Okay, thank you, Mr. Speaker” — but moments later she was insisting that “it is important we debate this today in the legislature.”
Actually, by the rules, they couldn’t debate the bill because it had just been given first reading, and was thus not open for debate until the next sitting after that day in the legislature. So Clark was offside once again.
Full marks to Barisoff for trying to bring the premier to order, never an easy call for a Speaker to make. But the day ended with government house leader Rich Coleman disputing the call. “I’m going to have a word with the Speaker,” he told reporters.
Far better for him to offer the premier a refresher course on the rules of the house. For her display of bad judgment managed to upstage an otherwise able handling of a difficult issue by the minister of education.