The part of politics Canadians are most familiar with, in fact the only part many ever see on television, is Question Period. In Manitoba, it is the 40 minute segment of every day that members of the official opposition get to ask questions to government ministers about their respective departments.
Former Reform Party leader, Preston Manning, use to say the reason they call this part of the day Question Period and not Answer Period, is because you so rarely get an answer. Unfortunately, more and more that seems to be the pattern in the Manitoba Legislature under the NDP government, even when they know the question is coming.
One example came last week when Progressive Conservative education critic Ron Schuler asked the government in Question Period how many schools in the province have asbestos in them. This is an important issue because it relates to the health of children in our schools. In fact, the education minister couldn’t have been surprised by the question because weeks before in a Legislative Committee, Mr. Schuler asked the NDP education minister the exact same question and he stated he would quickly find out. Yet when asked in Question Period, weeks after being alerted to the issue, the Minister of Education still couldn’t provide the answer and had no idea when he would be able to.
A similar situation happened when conservation critic Heather Stefanson asked the minster of conservation why thousands of park passes were printed for this year when the government had already announced that there would be no admittance fee for Manitoba parks for the next two years. If you are not charging a fee, obviously there will be no passes for sale and they shouldn’t have been printed. The minister of conservation spent minutes in Question Period talking about how important it was to have free admission but didn’t even attempt to any answer why these useless passes were printed and what they cost.
This past week I also had several opportunities to ask the minister of justice whether he would follow a Manitoba court ruling and return the millions of dollars Manitobans paid in photo radar tickets given in construction zones where no workers were present. The court said these tickets were in violation of Manitoba law. In response to this question, the minister of justice talked about the number of nurses there are in the province. How this relates to the question on photo radar, is anyone’s guess.
Question Period is a historical part of our parliamentary system and it is important in providing accountability and government transparency. And while there has always been a degree of acceptable rhetorical back and forth given the nature of partisan politics, to repeatedly refuse to answer questions, diminishes the value of an important part of democracy.
