P.E.I. Green leader apologizes to Speaker, but stands by use of the word 'farce'

Buck Watts, the Speaker of the P.E.I. Legislature,says he stands by his decisionWednesdayto suspend Peter Bevan-Baker for using the word "farce." And the leader of the Green Party says he stands by his decision to refuse to withdraw the word, in defiance of the Speaker.

However, Bevan-Baker said he called the SpeakerThursdaymorning to see if they could meet to clear the air. That meeting took placeThursdayafternoon.

"I apologized for putting him in that position. He had no choice but to name me," Bevan-Baker said, referring to the process by which an MLA is temporarily expelled from the legislature.

"I still feel that I did the right thing. As a politician you have to make difficult decisions every day, and that was one of them."

Watts ordered Bevan-Baker removed from the legislative assemblyWednesdayfor refusing to withdraw the word "farce," which Bevan-Baker used to describe debate over government legislation.

Government house leader Richard Brown raised a point of order over the use of the word.

After he was asked to withdraw the word, Bevan-Baker doubled down, reiterating his disappointment over debate on significant pieces of government legislation during which he said Liberal MLAs were ready to vote down opposition amendments before they'd been provided with written copies to consider.

"I will not withdraw my remark," he told the Speaker. "I think at times yesterday the display of the government side was indeed farcical."

Farce used before

According to online Hansard records, the words "farce"and "farcical"have been used more than 30 times in the P.E.I. legislature since 1997, without drawing the censure of the Speaker:

• Bevan-Baker himself used the word on Nov. 30 of this year in his response to government's speech from the Throne, without the word being ruled unparliamentary.
• Former finance minister Wes Sheridan referred to the opposition making a farce of its questions when PC MLA Jim Bagnall asked about spending on administration of the Smoke Free Places Act on May 7, 2009
• On December 9, 1998, then-opposition Liberal MLA Nancy Guptill referred to the Binns government's Act to Amend the Civil Service Act as not only farcical, but a "mean-spirited abuse of this Legislative Assembly," along with "dishonest and underhanded" and "sneaky and slippery." She also said Provincial Treasurer Pat Mella was "politically skewed" on the issue and called her a "one-sided person," all without drawing a rebuke from the Speaker.

But Watts told CBC NewsThursdaythe decision as to what constitutes unparliamentary language is up to each individual Speaker, and in this case he said the context was important. "He called the assembly and its working nothing but a farce, and that caused total disorder," Watts said.

'No choice' but to remove

Once he made the decision to rule the word "farce"as unparliamentary, Watts said he had no choice but to suspend Bevan-Baker when he refused to retract it.

"After two-and-a-half years [as speaker], I never thought I would kick anyone, and I certainly never thought it would be Peter Bevan-Baker, who I have a lot of respect for," Watts said.

It was a pretty heated moment. I had suggested my colleagues in the house were perhaps not doing their job as well as they should, and those are hard words to hear. Peter Bevan-Baker

Bevan-Baker said he respected the Speaker's decision to rule the word unparliamentary, despite the fact it had been used before.

"It was a pretty heated moment," he said. "I had suggested my colleagues in the house were perhaps not doing their job as well as they should, and those are hard words to hear."

The clerk's office confirmed that Bevan-Baker's suspension was to last for the duration of the fall sitting which ended minutes after he was kicked out.

Bevan-Baker will be allowed to sit at committee meetings and will be allowed to resume his seat in the legislature when it sits again in April.

As for the next time Bevan-Baker might consider the goings-on of the legislature as farcical, he says "I'll have to look at my thesaurus and find an alternative word for that."

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