It is not very often that Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) will stand and continue the debate on a Bill at 3rd reading. It’s as unusual for MLA’s to vote 14 times on a Bill.
By 3rd reading most of the substantive work is done. There is a considerable amount of opportunity to debate legislation at 2nd reading. And, opposition MLA’s have the opportunity to dig into the details at the committee stage. So, by the time it gets to 3rd reading the vote usually happens right after the committee is complete.
Amended Bills need to be reprinted and so they come back the following day. This was the case of Bill 10 except it took two days to be reprinted and delivered back to the House.
In that time we had the ability to review Hansard, and look more closely at the questions and responses at the committee stage of the Bill. So many of the questions were left unanswered. In addition, the many of the answers were not available To the committee. The Minister of Finance told Members they had to go to Budget Estimates for the Minister of Jobs, Trades and Technology or the Minister of the Environment to get answers on important gaps in the information.
In light of this the BC Green Caucus decided to continue the debate at 3rd reading and offer new amendments to delay the progress of the Bill. We strongly oppose this LNG program developed by the BC NDP. And, we question our colleagues in the official opposition who exposed many holes in the program, yet continue to support it.
Our amendments failed and once again all the BC NDP and BC Liberals voted in favour of Bill 10 and the 3 Greens voted against the Bill.
Here is my speech for third reading debate.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHCtPrpUP90[/embedyt]
Here is my speech to Andrew Weaver’s amendment at third reading.
Thank you Adam for bringing this out to the light of scrutiny.
I want answers.
I need to know we are going to reach the targets of greenhouse emissions for our children’s world to thrive. Thank you for holding the line.