BC speaker should be non-MLA: watchdog

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – As BC politicians prepare to return to the legislature with nary a whisker separating the number of seats between the Liberals and NDP-Green partnership, a national watchdog group is calling on the house to appoint a non-partisan and non-elected official to the speaker’s chair.

“The speaker is a judge of the conduct of politicians in the legislature, and it’s just a bad idea to have one partisan politician judging others,” Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher says.

Speakers are currently elected by a secret ballot among all members of the legislature and must be an elected MLA themselves. Speakers are typically, though not always, elected from among the ruling party. Electing a speaker is the first order of business for a new legislative assembly.

The speaker’s duties include keeping the house in order, enforcing the rules of parliamentary procedure, and in the event of a tie vote, they cast the deciding ballot. The latter has become increasingly important given the 43 (Liberal), 41 (NDP) and three (Green) seat split.

If the house elects a Liberal speaker, it would mean that party would have to convince more NDP or Green members to support it. However, if they elect either an NDP or Green member, they risk a tie vote, which the speaker would break.

“You could have that person casting a lot of votes to break ties, but why not just take them out of that position, because there’s also all sorts of other rules they’re going to be enforcing,” Conarcher says.

Switching to appoint or elect anyone else would also require changing the province’s Constitution Act, which would require the house to first elect a temporary speaker in order to introduce the needed legislation.

“Hopefully all the parties would agree that this is just a good change to make, even if it wasn’t such a slim minority,” Conarcher says, adding ties would then result in a bill not being passed and promote more collaboration between parties.

Democracy Watch had previously released eight rules they would like to see minority government’s adopt, including allowing the Lieutenant Governor to give the opposition parties an opportunity to govern if a majority of members reject the Speech from the Throne.

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