Notley just couldn’t put off the sitting of the Legislative Assembly forever. Despite deferring the sitting for an extra month, the session began with a series of scandals and bungling as the inept collection of accidental MLAs tried to find their footing.
With support numbers for Notley in an outright free fall in Alberta, the NDP government has taken on the strategy of doing as little as humanly possible in the legislature in hopes of avoiding further disasters.
This desperate tactic of doing nothing is clearly evident in the vacuous Bill 1 tabled by Deron Bilous last week.
This empty waste of paper truly has to be read to be believed.
Bill 1: Promoting Job Creation and Diversification Act
Bill 1 is an utter waste of legislative resources and time. The act changes nothing and provides no less or more power to the Minister than already exists. Bill 1 is simply pointless fluff devised by the NDP brain trust to clutter the legislative session with something that they hope is harmless while they try to figure out how to escape the inevitable fallout from the pending, disaster of a budget that Ceci will have to table eventually.
This video is great. Prasad Panda masterfully leads Bilous into a corner by feeding him terms from his own bill (sort of makes one wonder who actually wrote the thing). Panda then knocks it out of the park on Bilous leaving the Minister stumbling and trying to justify this bill about nothing.
Yesterday I questioned Minister Deron Bilous about the capacity and ability of his ministry. The minister confirmed what we already thought – Bill 1 is a Bill about nothing.
It’s time for the NDP government to stop talking about jobs and start taking action and creating them!
Posted by Prasad Panda on Friday, 11 March 2016
While it is comical to watch the NDP lurching around while pretending to be a competent government, it is a dark comedy. We are sinking into a recession with record government deficit levels. If the NDP continues to mismanage the province like this, it will take generations to recover.
Lets hope that Notley’s gang of baristas and liberal arts grads find their legislative feet soon as hiding behind vapid, empty bills for fear of screwing up further is not exactly a good long term solution to anything.
I expect nothing – therefore will not be disappointed. A pathetic and desperate government grasping at dogma. Can hardly wait for the budget, carbon taxes and the imposition of a PST.
Be careful about criticizing any Bill 1. In Parliamentary tradition Bill 1 is always a meaningless act not mentioned in the Throne Speech Its purpose is to demonstrate the independence of Parliament from the Crown.
In federal parliament yes, not common in provincial legislatures. Those pro forma bills also include that in their text.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bills_C-1_and_S-1
This bill from Bilous however is not like that (though still vapid).
The NDP have never been ones to go out of their way to respect parliamentary tradition either.