Greens extend fall sitting, call for vote on PC backbencher's bill
CBC
Members of the P.E.I. Green Party refused to provide the unanimous consent the governing PCs needed to bring a close to the fall sitting of the legislature Wednesday.
And when the minister of fisheries used the final minutes of daily debate to provide seafood cooking tips, Opposition house leader Michele Beaton called that "a kick in the teeth" to Islanders about to lose legislated protections to allow them to take unpaid leave from their jobs to isolate with COVID-19.
According to the Greens, it all came down to a failed agreement between the two parties to close the legislature.
Beaton said the Greens wanted government to provide time for PC backbencher Sidney MacEwen to bring his private member's bill to the floor for a vote.
That bill would establish a zero emissions vehicle mandate for P.E.I.
The Greens could have given some of their own debate time to MacEwen Wednesday, but wanted to bring their own motion forward to discuss the end of mandatory COVID-19 isolation in P.E.I.
Ultimately neither MacEwen nor the Greens got any debate time.
Instead, cabinet ministers took up all the Greens' allocated time, about 45 minutes, with nine separate minister's statements.
The first several statements announced new spending initiatives to spur housing builds and increased caps on funding to help Islanders heat their homes this winter.
By the end, Environment Minister Steven Myers was providing updates on previous government announcements.
"I'm having a hard time figuring, is this Christmas or is it Groundhog Day?" quipped Liberal MLA Robert Henderson at one point, as members of both opposition parties provided responses to each government announcement.
Later on, when the deputy premier asked for unanimous consent to allow third reading of government spending bills that have to be called before the sitting ends, the Greens refused.
After that, government gave the final minutes of debate time to Fisheries Minister Jamie Fox, who began sharing seafood recipes.
"We have so many Islanders right now that are out sick, and the protections for them to stay at home without repercussion from their workplace … they lost those protections today," said Beaton.
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