Murray Mandryk: Abuse of Speaker a problem that calls Moe’s leadership into question

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“Hundreds and hundreds of text messages” from three of the most influential Saskatchewan Party government cabinet ministers?

All from government members to independent Speaker Randy Weekes, who no one — government or Opposition — has the right to influence?

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In no way should a Speaker ever be influenced or hectored or bullied, by the government or anyone else. It should have ended after the first text.

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But an exasperated Weekes on Monday took the unheard of step of revealing just one of the “hundreds and hundred of text messages” he has received.

Monday’s latest dustup at the Saskatchewan legislature between the Speaker and Government House leader Jeremy Harrison resulted in the latter being tossed for his abhorrently petulant behaviour.

If last week’s brouhaha between Weekes and Harrison offered a glimpse of the obvious tension between the Speaker and the irascible Government House leader, Monday’s explosion was a full spectacle shining a spotlight on two painfully obvious points:

The first is that out-of-touch arrogance is not just a Harrison problem. Based on Monday’s exchange, it’s penetrated most everyone in the Sask. Party government.

As such, this is a ridiculous sense of entitlement, evidently extending beyond Harrison to deputy Government House leader Lori Carr, Finance Minister Donna Harpauer and perhaps everyone else in government. This takes us to the second point.

Premier Scott Moe is responsible for allowing this hubris to fester into the clown show we saw on Monday. He is government leader. He wears it.

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Monday’s was a question period no different than the thousands upon thousands of others at the Saskatchewan legislature in which the Opposition of the day pokes at the government of the day over not only policy failings but perhaps a few personal peccadilloes.

In this case, what seemed to get the government’s goat was NDP ethics critic Meara Conway poking away at Health Minister Everett Hindley (and others in government) who awarded a Calgary clinic a single-source major contract to deal with surgical backlogs. Former Sask. Party government finance minister Kevin Doherty happens to be a registered lobbyist for this company.

Harpauer, among others, clearly didn’t like it, and — as evidently has happened on “hundreds and hundreds” of other occasions — texted Weekes in the middle of question period to tell him how to do his job.

“I have received literally hundreds and hundreds of text messages from the Government House Leader, the Deputy Government House Leader, and occasionally from the Minister of Finance,” Weekes said in the assembly on Monday. He then read one into the record.

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” ‘Randy, if you can blatantly lie, tarnish reputations of elected, unelected individuals with innuendoes but no proof, we have no avenue to push back, then this assembly has become a joke and a stage for an Opposition puppet show. Disappointing.’ ”

After Weekes’s unprecedented disclosure, Harpauer quickly apologized. But then Harrison made an inaudible comment — or at least, one that was inaudible to people in the gallery, but clearly heard by Weekes.

“I’m not deaf,” Weekes said, demanding Harrison withdraw whatever he said and apologize.

“I’m not,” said Harrison, who grabbed his papers and stormed out like a spoiled child.

For the first time in anyone’s memory, a Government House leader was booted from the assembly.

This is the same Government House leader who gleefully told us that NDP Leader Carla Beck “demonstrated contempt” for the legislature.

This is the guy we have spent hundreds of thousand dollars sending on international trade junkets. This is how he conducts himself? Why is he still Government House leader? Why is he still in cabinet?

One gets that politics is in play. One would be naive to think this was the first time this has happened. In days of yore, NDP deputy leader Roy Romanow was known to make thumbs up and thumbs down gestures to the Speaker.

But “hundreds and hundreds” of texts?

If Moe can’t figure out he has an arrogance problem on his hands, he is the problem.

Murray Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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