It may be a new year but at the legislature the same controversy continues to swirl around the Speaker of the House.
BC Liberals leader Andrew Wilkinson says Darryl Plecas has really put himself in the jam this time.
“Well wait a second you had a guy who was your friend with no qualifications at all hired to investigate a guy and wanted to take his job. The conflict of interest is flagrant in that situation. Then we had the meeting where Darryl Plecas felt obliged to blurt out that this is under a police investigation so he can’t say anything but by the way it is about the finances of the people who work here. This is ridiculous.”
Should Plecas resign as Speaker?
“I don’t know if that is the answer at this point. He is certainly going to have to step away from these audits because he is asking people to audit himself and you can’t do that. Auditors have to be completely arms length. Darryl Plecas has really cornered himself this time. He is really discrediting the role of the Speaker.”
However the leader of the BC Green Party says the Speaker of the House should be given some room to see what the result is as the police investigate two legislative staffers.
Andrew Weaver says the investigation and overall process need to be respected.
“There is a whole bunch of questions that I have that I will be asking. Before I start asking those questions we really need to get to the bottom of what this investigation is going on. We need the RCMP and the special prosecutors to actually complete what they are doing. We need to actually give the Speaker a bit of room here to let this finish.”
Weaver says the questions he would ask depend on the outcome of the investigation itself.
“Well lets suppose hypothetically there is something that is found through all of this, I don’t know or not. I would ask why did it take until now? Why has it taken so long for this to come forward? And if nothing comes out of this then I would ask questions like why did this happen in the first place? Who knew what when? Or who didn’t know what when?”
Plecas has promised to unveil what evidence he can at a Legislative Assembly Management Committee meeting this month to support the need for the suspension and subsequent police investigation of Clerk Craig James and Sergeant at Arms Gary Lenz.
Plecas has called for audits of the legislature’s books and threatened to resign if the results don’t make people want to throw up.
