B.C. Liberal MLA Mike de Jong is asking the B.C. Legislature to launch an emergency debate into what happened before clerk Craig James and the sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz were put on administrative leave. De Jong says the steps taken last week by the speaker’s office led to “maximum degree of public humiliation and embarrassment” for James and Lenz.
“To describe what has take place as a crisis is I don’t think is to exaggerate, to suggest British Columbians are troubled and questioning the confidence they can have in this institution I think is an understatement,” de Jong said. “It runs deeper than that. I believe members of this assembly on both sides are troubled.”
WATCH HERE (aired November 22): Chaos as speaker of B.C. legislature accused of cronyism
NDP House Leader Mike Farnworth and Green Party leader Andrew Weaver rejected the call for an emergency debate. Farnworth says that there is an active police investigation and that the investigation “needs to be allowed to do its work.”
“The key issue here is the fact that there is an active police RCMP investigation underway, and in terms of public confidence, the public needs to know that a police investigation can continue unimpeded in a way that ensures that justice is carried out,” Farnworth said. “As a result, discussion and debate would not be appropriate.”
James and Lenz were put on administrative leave on November 20 after the legislature unanimously passed a motion. The pair were escorted from the legislature by Alan Mullen, a special advisor for the speaker, and a Victoria police officer.
The RCMP has not provided any details about what is being investigated or what the allegations against the two public servants are. There are two special prosecutors that are working on the case.
James and Lenz will be speaking to reporters on Monday in Vancouver at their lawyer Mark Andrew’s office.
But with so few facts available, Weaver says that a debate would have been useless.
“It reminds me of a parody site in the hard times where we would have a debate that goes along the lines of man with half the facts in heated debate with man with none of the facts,” said Weaver. “The danger of having such a debate in the absence of information while a police criminal investigation is on going with not one but two special prosecutors is very worrying.”
Speaker Darryl Plecas’ office responded on Monday to a request made last week by the lawyer of the two table officers now on leave.
“There was unqualified unanimity that it would not be appropriate for these permanent officers to continue to be at the Assembly in the face of an active criminal investigation regarding their actions related to the Assembly,” reads the letter signed by Plecas.
“The work of these officers is central to the operations and deliberations of the Legislative Assembly. They must have the unqualified trust and confidence of the House. They are entitled to the presumption of innocence in any criminal process, but the reality of an active criminal investigation concerning their activities as permanent officers of the House cannot be ignored by the House.”
Andrew’s letter to the speaker argued that the speaker’s office acted “unconstitutionally” by investigating James and Lenz. The speaker’s advisor told reporters last week that he was brought in last January to work on these allegations and turned over what he discovered to the RCMP in August.
“While much is being made of the use of the word “investigate”, the fact is that once serious concerns came to the Speaker’s attention, I had the right and responsibility to follow up and report concerns to the police if there was sufficient basis to be concerned about criminal activity,” Plecas writes,
“I recognized that it is for the police to investigate crime, but I also recognized that I should not approach police without exercising reasonable diligence and having some legitimate foundation for doing so. The process I followed included requesting and receiving legal advice regarding my constitutional authority as Speaker even to ask the police to investigate the conduct in question.”
WATCH HERE: Clerk of the house Craig James escorted from B.C. Legislature
De Jong says that when they voted last week to put Lenz and James on leave, a vast majority of members of the legislature had no idea that the speaker was doing any type of investigating.
“I am certain that when members were presented with the motion to suspend, they were not anticipated nor would they have sanctioned the deplorable, shoddy, disrespectful treatment that long-time public servants of this assembly, who are entitled to the presumption of innocence, were subjected to,” said de Jong. “I think this assembly needs to openly, honestly and in the full glare of public scrutiny re-examine what occurred last Tuesday.”
Comments