theBreaker.news Podcast: Question Period cacophony earns BC Liberals an earful from Speaker Plecas

The Andrew Scheer-led Conservatives erected a wall of noise on federal budget day, to protest the Trudeau Liberal government’s shutdown of justice committee hearings into the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

That inspired the BC Liberals to turn up the volume in Question Period at the B.C. Legislature. So much, that NDP cabinet ministers' answers could not be heard over the din.

Speaker Darryl Plecas had enough. He issued an extraordinary and lengthy warning on April 10, directed primarily at his former caucus-mates.

“We will not have interruptions of a speaker,” said Plecas, the independent MLA for Abbotsford South who could revoke an MLA's question privileges and order the expulsion of an MLA for disorderly conduct.

On this edition of theBreaker.news Podcast, listen to highlights of two April 9 incidents and Plecas’s April 10 address to the Legislature.

Meanwhile, the BC Liberal Opposition caucus has joined the NDP Government caucus in spending taxpayers’ money on partisan radio ads, after the NDP broke an election promise to ban partisan government ads.

Like the NDP, the BC Liberals are refusing to release the amount spent. 

Also on this edition, hear unapologetic BC Liberal house leader Mary Polak and Green Party leader Andrew Weaver, who said the caucuses should pay back the public treasury. The spending is happening in secret because the Legislature is not yet covered by the freedom of information law.

This is all happening under the cloud of an RCMP investigation into corruption at the Legislature. Retired Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin is expected to report May 3 to the Legislative Assembly Management Committee on whether to stop the paycheques for the Nov. 20-suspended Clerk Craig James and Sergeant-at-Arms Gary Lenz.

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