The B.C. premier is standing by the Speaker of the legislature after his office’s attempt to secure employees' hard drives spilled out into the hallways and led to allegations of "bullying."
John Horgan says an offer by the opposition BC Liberals to put up one of their members to replace Speaker Darryl Plecas isn’t welcome – and instead chastised the party for continuing to attack him.
"We have a Speaker. And it’s not the responsibility of the opposition to say we need a new one," Horgan said at an end-of-session news conference.
"We’ve passed budgets. We’ve passed legislation. We have had the wood splitter that goes down in infamy as part of B.C. lore. That wouldn’t have happened without Plecas’s curiosity," Horgan said, referring to the Speaker’s series of reports on the lavish expenses of the former clerk, Craig James.
James and suspended Sergeant-at-Arms Gary Lenz were accused by the Speaker of misspending as much as $780,000, including on suits, luggage and a $258,000 retirement allowance that was paid despite James not retiring.
Former B.C. Supreme Court Justice Beverley McLachlin determined that James committed misconduct, and he retired with a "non-financial settlement" that has yet to be disclosed. She cleared Lenz of wrongdoing.
BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson told the Legislature, "The Speaker has embarked upon new intrusions involving employees in this House. Some employees seek to insulate or protect themselves from this effort by the Speaker, while others are leaving or planning to leave."
"Immediate action is required to re-establish the orderly conduct of this institution, which represents 5 million people in British Columbia," Wilkinson said.
The allegations concerned the Speaker’s attempt to copy, or “clone” the hard drives of legislature employees including acting Sergeant-at-Arms Randy Ennis and acting Clerk Kate Ryan-Lloyd.
The Speaker said the action was voluntary, and necessary because of documents that had gone missing during his investigation.
"It’s simply a case of making sure data is secure. We have ongoing investigations. We don’t want to have an instance where we have data that’s not available to investigators. It’s that simple," he said in an impromptu scrum in a legislature hallway.
"We’ve experienced incidents here where the data has not been kept secure."
Plecas said many other allegations – including that some legislature staff had stayed overnight to protect their computers from a surprise intrusion – were "absolutely ridiculous."
The RCMP investigation into James’ and Lenz’s expenses continues, overseen by two special prosecutors.
In his press conference, Horgan said Plecas is not the problem.
"We had a Liberal speaker when this parliament began and he chose to resign. And another Liberal stood up and is now the Speaker. There is a challenge in this building for sure, but the bulk of the challenges are in the Liberal caucus," Horgan said.
The NDP’s control of the B.C. legislature with the support of the Green Party remains very tight, with 42 BC Liberal MLAs, 41 B.C. NDP MLAs, and 3 Green Party MLAs, and one independent MLA, Speaker Darryl Plecas.
Any replacement of the Speaker by another MLA has the potential of affect the balance of power.
This is a developing story. It will be updated throughout the day.
