Allegations about intimidation from Saskatchewan’s speaker, Randy Weekes, amount to more than just bullying of one man by the government.
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Phil Tank • Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Published May 22, 2024 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 3 minute read
Prior to last week, you probably could have stumped almost everyone in Saskatchewan if you asked them to name the speaker of the province’s legislature.
That changed when Speaker Randy Weekes signed off with seismic allegations about what he deemed was harassment and bullying by government officials and ministers.
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The most explosive allegation involved House Leader Jeremy Harrison bringing a hunting rifle into the Legislative Building — an allegation Harrison has yet to address publicly, despite his status as a key government spokesman.
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While the gun allegation is very serious, so are the claims about harassment.
Parliamentary democracies like ours work best when you barely notice the speaker. So, if the general population cannot name the speaker, that can be considered positive — akin to failing to notice the officials at a sporting event.
When the speaker leaves with a blast like the one Weekes unleashed, it suggests a possible rot in our system.
Premier Scott Moe dismissed Weekes’s complaints as “sour grapes,” referring to the loss by Weekes of a party nomination contest. But his allegations have proven credible.
Finance Minister Donna Harpauer apologized last month for sending a text to Weekes saying the assembly had “become a joke and a stage for an opposition puppet show.”
Weekes joined the Saskatchewan Party a week after it was formed in 1997 and was first elected in 1999, eight years before Harrison’s first MLA election win and a dozen years before Moe was first elected.
The former government minister boasts as deep a history with the party as anyone, so his words carry weight. Weekes posted a photo on social media last week of his party membership card cut in half.
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Yet this appears to be more than just a disgruntled politician unhappy that his party has changed, taking a turn to the right under Moe, particularly since the 2020 election.
The speaker serves a critical role in democracy, as the legislature affords opposition politicians and those they represent the opportunity to hold the government to account. If the speaker, who is supposed to be impartial even as a government MLA, is compromised, so is accountability — and, ultimately, democracy.
But Weekes’s allegations of efforts to intimidate him as speaker suggest that some government officials view him as a puppet dressed in a robe and an unusual hat.
And they also reveal an insular and entitled government that seems to regard legislative proceedings as more relevant than they really are. Viewers of the legislature channel likely only number in the dozens, or perhaps hundreds — although a rerun of Weekes’s final day would surely score a ratings bonanza.
Yet harassment of a speaker who seemed to be performing his role capably, especially in the current combustible political environment, amounts to more than just bullying one man.
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The speaker ranks as a a critical symbol of our democracy and why it works.
These allegations land shortly after questions have again been raised about Saskatchewan’s anemic freedom of information laws, which let the government decide if it wants to release documents sought by the public.
Soaring fees and irregular compliance with requests for information make transparency and accountability optional for this government, which is seeking re-election in October.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation was quoted a fee of $11,850 to receive financial reports from the province’s municipalities. The Opposition NDP was forwarded a bill of more than $107,000 to see details about Saskatchewan’s drainage policy.
In the past year, Saskatchewan’s government has also demonstrated a willingness to flagrantly defy the rule of law, another vital tenet of democracy.
Moe has acknowledged that his refusal to remit the carbon tax to the federal government constitutes a violation of the law. And this government infamously invoked the notwithstanding clause to suspend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code to protect its pronoun policy from legal challenges.
All of this makes it easy to see why Weekes feels he no longer belongs in the party he joined 27 years ago.
Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
ptank@postmedia.com
twitter.com/thinktankSK
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