Drawing fire for deciding not to open the House of Assembly until 2012, Premier Kathy Dunderdale isn’t mincing words about how she feels about the House. “I don’t find it a place for a very healthy, open, constructive debate to start with,” she said. Explaining that she expects the government would be working until December to prepare legislation, and next spring is the earliest it would be tabled anyways, she sees no need not to wait until the Spring to open the doors to the Confederation Building. “Most of my issues are around the quality of debate and the research and the fact that you can pretty well get up in the house of assembly and say whatever it is you like. You don’t have to be concerned with truth.” Dunderdale is referring to both the sensational antics that take place in the House and the fact that MHA comments in the House are protected from slander in ways that saying the same thing outside the House aren’t. If you’ve ever seen the House of Assembly in action in person, you can’t blame the Premier… nonetheless, it is viewed as a core component of our democracy. We haven’t heard the last on this subject.
