For anyone who thinks it is unusual for the provincial Conservatives to backtrack or apologise, recall, the massive deployment of cabinet ministers to the Straits-White Bay North by-election in the fall of 2009.
Then there’s the who transparency thing.
They started backing up on that as fast as the polls – not CRA ones – showed that Bill 29 was a political pig.
Restaurant inspection reports went from “can’t be released” to posted on the government website.
Ditto orders-in-council.
Then there was the early statutory review of the ATIPPA. Pulled forward in time purely to try and get rid of the Bill 29 albatross hanging around Conservative necks.
There’s nothing unusual about apologies from the Conservatives at all.
Just like it wouldn’t be unusual for the Conservatives to start out a session promising a landmark piece of legislation only to have the thing disappear.
The most recent example?
The Procurement by Public Bodies Act.
Long-delayed and finally announced as Bill Number One in the spring sitting, 2012.
Current status: on the side of milk cartons in the province. No one has heard tell of it since.
And given that its star role has been taken by another long-promised yet undelivered piece of legislation , odds are that the long-overdue changes to the Public Tender Act won’t be on the order paper this year either/
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