The spring session of the Manitoba Legislature ended this week and it proved to be one of the most active sessions in recent memory with a number of important issues being debated and NDP scandals exposed.

The early part of the spring sitting was dominated by discussion around the Red River flood, the economic recession and the H1N1 virus. Each of these important issues resulted in numerous questions being directed at the government to ensure the proper steps were being taken to deal with their impact on the province.

There was also significant debate around a number of pieces of legislation. Most notable was the concern over the NDP government’s intention to suspend all repayment of the provincial debt for the next three years. After extensive pressure, Manitoba Progressive Conservative’s were able to get changes to the legislation to ensure there would be at least $130 million put against the debt in the next three years.

Much of the media coverage of the session centered around two significant issues.

The first was the issue of photo radar tickets issued to people driving the regular legal speed limit in construction zones where there were no construction workers present. The court ruled that these tickets should never have been issued in the first place. The problem was that nearly 60,000 of these tickets had already been issued and paid and the NDP government wanted to ignore the court ruling and keep the money.

The thousands of people who had already paid the tickets that the court said should never have been issued, rightfully demanded their money back and wrote thousands of emails and letters to all MLAs. After weeks of flip-flopping on the issue, Gary Doer and the NDP decided they would ignore the court and instead keep the millions of dollars they should never have collected. It’s an issue that the thousands of wrongfully ticketed Manitobans won’t soon forget.

As well, major media outlets and senior government officials were calling for a public inquiry into how Gary Doer and the NDP Party tried to collect more than $76,000 in taxpayers’ dollars through the wrongful filing of election returns in 1999. Despite the fact that 13 NDP candidates filed false election returns that triggered thousands of dollars being wrongfully given to the NDP as a rebate from the election and which violated the Elections Act of Manitoba, no charges were ever laid against the NDP. Why charges were never laid and why it took an NDP whistleblower with inside information to reveal this scheme years later needs to be the subject of an inquiry to restore faith in our electoral system.

We will continue to raise these and other issues publicly in the weeks ahead. I also look forward to meeting with many of you throughout the summer months and hearing about your ideas and concerns that can be brought to the Legislature when it resumes sitting in early September.