If the province’s Liberals live up to the promise made in a news release issued Monday, they’ll make local legislative history.
Andrew Parsons, MHA for Burgeo-La Poile, announced today that he will be introducing a Bill to regulate the opening of the House of Assembly in the future.
Since Confederation, opposition political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador have contented themselves with taking one afternoon a week to debate a meaningless resolution.
While they’ve had the ability all along to introduce bills that could become law, no opposition party has ever tried before. It’s so common elsewhere that no one really pays attention to it.
Of course now that Parsons has told everyone, you can expect the NDP will start drafting bills and the Tories will try to figure out some procedural reason to stop it.
Good luck on the latter.
On the former that just means the Tories will have a much harder time in the House this spring than they expected.
And when the governing party has to work hard during a legislative session, that’s only a good thing.
- srbp -