EMBITTERED SPEAKER, NERVOUS NDP
Plecas causing anxiety within B.C.’s governing party after recent meeting
Speaker Darryl Plecas was the focus last week during a raucous meeting at the legislature where he clashed with MLAs over his role in the suspension of the building ’s two highest-ranking employees.
The independent MLA for Abbotsford South went all in with his career, pledging through several tirades he would soon reveal “serious concerns,” promising forensic audits into the building ’s main offices and most memorably saying: “If the outcome of those audits did not outrage the public, did not outrage taxpayers, did not make them throw up, I will resign as Speaker.”
But there were other interesting observations gleaned from sitting in the overflowing public gallery of the Douglas fir committee room for the meeting.
Like how veteran staff sat ashen-faced as Plecas alleged financial problems have been going on inside the building for years.
Or how Auditor General Carol Bellringer — who has checked the legislature’s books for years and declared them clean — could barely conceal her surprise at Plecas’s outbursts.
Or how veteran Liberal MLA Rich Coleman, who despises Plecas for defecting from the Liberal party to become Speaker in 2017, sat in the public gallery gleefully laughing at Plecas’s tirades.
But the most important sight was the uncomfortable reaction of NDP house leader Mike Farnworth.
Normally jovial, the veteran NDP MLA spent much of the meeting with his face red, his lips tight in a grimace and his glasses twisted into the corner of his mouth where he chewed upon them as a kind of improvised stress-relief technique.
Farnworth and the three other NDP MLAs had come to the meeting with carefully prepared lines about how inappropriate it would be for Plecas to answer questions while the RCMP is investigating the suspended clerk of the legislature, Craig James, and the suspended sergeant-atarms, Gary Lenz.
The four New Democrats — including Jagrup Brar, Janet Routledge and Garry Begg — hoped Plecas would stick to the short statement he crafted with his legal adviser, Wally Oppal. If successful, the NDP and Plecas could simultaneously rely on the stonewall of a police investigation.
The governing party did not want Plecas getting trapped into answering questions about his secret seven-month investigation into the two officials, his attempt to install aide Alan Mullen into the sergeant-at-arms’s job, whether he had the legal authority to investigate anyone in the building, why Mullen called police to escort James and Lenz out of the building in the most humiliating way possible and any of the other questions the Liberals had lined up like cannon balls to fire from their side of the committee room table.
Alas for the NDP, Plecas quickly veered off course.
The Speaker embarked on a freewheeling hour of angry declarations. He expressed frustration at the criticism that he and Mullen have received.
“This has gone on far enough,” said Plecas. “I’ve been reduced to a cartoon character ... this is completely unfair.”
The outbursts made the NDP nervous. The governing party has a lot at stake in the Plecas case. The near-tie in the legislature means the stability of the NDP government rides on Plecas’s stability as Speaker. Plus Farnworth personally recruited Plecas from the Liberals.
Farnworth tried several times to guide Plecas to the escape hatch as the Speaker rose to the bait of the cross-examination by Liberal house leader Mary Polak.
“I appreciate your comments,” Farnworth said at one point after Plecas declared the situation had “degenerated into a circus.”
“But I also think that we need to reinforce that there is an ongoing police investigation underway that involves two special prosecutors and that whatever happens and how it happens, clearly, it cannot impact on a police investigation.” Plecas ignored the lifeline. The sum total of the hour failed to shed light on the unknown allegations against James and Lenz.
Neither man has been charged with any crime.
However, the meeting may have provided a few clues. Much of the Speaker’s comments were about his responsibility to “make sure that public dollars are spent appropriately” after receiving “very serious concerns” that “could potentially be criminal” on a problem that “needs to be fixed through the Speaker’s office because it hasn’t been fixed for years.”
He also mentioned taxpayers “want me to pay attention to the workplace environment and to make sure that people are treated fairly.”
The reference to an issue that “hasn’t been fixed for years” would seem to imply that whatever happened occurred during the tenures of many of the legislature’s current senior staff, financial managers in charge of expenses, past Speakers like Linda Reid, MLAs like Farnworth who have sat around the management table for years to provide oversight and the auditor general. No wonder so many people looked so shaken.
The road ahead is even more unclear after last week’s meeting.
If the RCMP and two special prosecutors really are investigating financial concerns brought forward by Plecas, it seems highly unlikely MLAs will authorize forensic audits in January, as Plecas has proposed. Politicians won’t want to run a concurrent audit while the RCMP examines the same records, for fear of stepping on the RCMP’s toes.
It seems equally unlikely Plecas will, as promised, explain all of his concerns when he reconvenes MLAs in mid-January.
“I will talk about everything but the criminal investigation,” Plecas said. “You want full disclosure. The public deserves full disclosure. Boy, are they going to get it.”
He added: “I’m saying let’s do this fast. Let’s not get back in February without any of this on the table.”
The NDP, now increasingly anxious about how the stability of its government rests on the shaky foundation of the Speaker’s credibility, will pull out all the stops to make sure either the meeting doesn’t happen or Plecas goes silent. Plecas’s own legal counsel will also likely advise him against voicing his concerns.
All of which leaves Plecas in a bind.
He clearly believes he has something big on both James and Lenz, so he’s staked his career on promises of a mid-January meeting and audits. If they both fail to materialize, where does that leave him? Perhaps, in an ironic way, in the same kind of reputation-destroying limbo as the two senior legislature officials he forced into suspension.
Everyone, then, will be left to wait for the police to one day shed some light on the crisis. Clarity can’t come soon enough.