Given the layers of approval provincial government news releases go through, the glaring error in this one speaks to a problem with what public servants know about the political system in our province.
The Provincial Government has passed a new act respecting architects which replaces the previous Architects Act of 1995.
The Provincial Government?
Forget that, strictly speaking, those two words don't get capitalized in this context.
What's noticeable here is that the very first statement makes a fundamental mistake about which authority approves legislation.
The provincial government is the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. In other words, the provincial government is the administrative body that delivers programs and services under the constitution. The executive power - the administrative decision making power belongs to the Lieutenant Governor in Council. That's the cabinet by another name and while the Lieutenant Governor is largely a ceremonial position, the Council, or cabinet happens to be the executive officers of the the government.
But in order to spend money or indeed to even carry out its administrative functions, the government needs to get approval from another body. That body is the House of Assembly and the approval comes from laws approved by a majority of the elected representatives of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Following so far?
It's really pretty simple. The Government didn't pass this new act. The House of Assembly did.
And to be absolutely strict about it, this new law isn't even a law with full force until the Lieutenant Governor nods his head - quite literally - or signs the legal document approving it.
According to the House of Assembly website, that nod hasn't been given. Check the progress of bills page and scan across to the column marked Royal Assent. It's blank. While it's possible that the thing just hasn't been updated, it's actually more likely given parliamentary tradition that this bill is not law until His Honour attends the House at the end of the current session and nods after the title of each bill is read.
Aside from the capitalization thing, this news release is fundamentally wrong. It misidentifies where the legal authority for the new bill comes from and it has been issued before the bill has completed the legal process.
Talk about contempt of the Crown, the legislature and the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and displaying a complete ignorance of how our democracy works.
Some may toss this off as a trivial issue.
Well, those are people who likely also don't have any regard for how our democracy works both in theory and in practice. The more we minimise and trivialise the roles different people play in our democracy, the weaker our democracy becomes.
Next thing you know, some newly elected member of the legislature will be thanking his party leader for the privilege of being allowed to join the leader's team.
Or a briefing note on a major issue will skip past the office of the minister responsible and head straight to the leader's suite.
Oh wait.
Those things already happened.
[Almost immediate update: Same minister, same department, same deputy minister, same communications director, same mistake, done a day earlier.
Same problem: This is not legally enforceable today, but the release suggests it is.]
-srbp-