Spring legislature sitting comes to a close on P.E.I.
CBC
After 28 days of often heated debate, Prince Edward Island MLAs shook hands and went their separate ways Tuesday as the spring sitting of the legislature came to a close.
It began in February, and April 23 became the earliest the spring sitting has finished in at least three decades.
Eleven government bills received royal assent, as well as a private member's bill that will declare April 25 as Cyberbullying Awareness Day.
As it did for most of the spring sitting, health care remained a contentious topic on Tuesday.
There are currently 36,947 people on the P.E.I. Patient Registry waiting for a family doctor, down by 23 since the last update.
Premier Denis King promised it would go down by 1,000 people when the sitting began.
King wasn't at the legislature Tuesday, but deputy premier Bloyce Thompson said P.E.I. is at a turning point, and that the province hired almost as many doctors in the first quarter of this year as it did all of last year.
"We are at the cusp and you're going to see great things happen here in the next year or couple years where we really see an improvement in health care and the work that the department is doing, and Health P.E.I., to make sure those improvements happen [and] are moving steadfast," Thompson said.
Interim Liberal leader Hal Perry wasn't convinced, noting that it will take 134 years to get everyone off the registry if it continues to go down by 23 people a month.
Also of note was the lack of collaboration among the three parties with sitting MLAs. Debates became more heated and personal than they were when the King government was first elected in 2019.
Recently, Green MLA Peter Bevan-Baker asked the premier pointed questions around a lack of transparency in government money going to privately operated long-term care homes, and the premier responded by calling Bevan-Baker, the former leader of the Green Party, an ambulance chaser, a headline chaser, and talked about his "fall from grace."
The bills receiving royal assent include:
The next sitting of the legislature is scheduled to begin Nov. 5.
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