Compass political panel on the latest from the P.E.I. Legislature

Well, the fall sitting of the PEI legislature continued this week with a new capital budget. More questions about the province's debt and further debate on a motion of non-confidence of the Premier. Our panel is back with its take. Sally Pitt and Paul McNeil join me tonight in studio. Really good to see both of you. All right, Sally, the capital budget, a scaled back spending plan compared to last year. What did you make of it? Well, I kind of anticipated this might happen last fall when the AG came out with the criticism about the debt. So it's a relatively painless, pain-free way to reduce spending without getting into staff cuts and program cuts. So it's certainly a good first step. There's still a long way to go, obviously. But it may be enough of an indication to help. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute. Paul, anything stand out for you in this capital budget? Well, it's still $1.3 billion over five years. It's a lot of money. I'm always sort of amazed at how... Limited government's thinking is in terms of what's possible. I mean, every maritime government is struggling with the same issue. And yet nobody says we all have the same health care issues in terms of back end delivery. We all have the same built in bureaucratic silos. Why don't we have a chat to have the conversation about. Sharing those resources, right? Because the only one who wins in this is Oracle, who supplies the software. It's ridiculous. Thank you, Les. I just don't think the political leadership is there. I mean, Premier Lance, when he was asked about the MOU on the energy file, basically said, it's gone nowhere, right? And that's a complete lack of leadership. Sally, you noted the cut to housing. Okay, so last year's capital budget included about $128 million for social housing, construction, and repairs over five years. This year, it's about $51 million over five years for both maintenance and construction. That is a significant drop, although they do say that some projects have been completed. Yeah, I mean, it is. And they are making progress, but it's still a drop in the bucket to what's needed. And when you think that, you know, health care affordability, housing comes into that affordability issue, that pillar. Because when you think of what you spend on your mortgage or rent, that's a good chunk of what you take in. And affordable housing is what's needed. It's like the housing first strategy has just totally disappeared or stalled or moved in reverse. There's just no, doesn't seem to be any movement on that file. You've still got the homeless shelter there. You've still got people struggling with addictions and mental health issues. I know they're talking about progress on the mental health hospital. And there's still that gaping hole where the curling club used to be and promises of something there. And there's still all those lovely little tiny homes sitting out on the outskirts of Charlottetown waiting for a home to place them. So certainly disappointed that there hasn't been some movement there. It's needed. Yeah, the affordability word, that's the key word in all of this. So, Paul, where would you have liked to have seen more spending or less? Well, on the housing bit, Gordon McNeely raised the housing first concept. That's been rhetoric. They have never made it a whole government solution, and they're not going to. The minister seems to think that apartments are the ideal housing for everybody, and we've got a whole slew of islanders who have no option or no opportunity to get into housing. There's nothing. I would like government to be smarter. I would like government to be. To find opportunities to share on things like health care, because we waste so much money and the $300 million is going to be cut over five, five years. But that doesn't mean that the government's off. They're going to have to cut the minister, minister of finance completely avoided your question about her review of programs, all government programs. And if government isn't taking that process seriously, her answer. Certainly implied that they aren't taking it very seriously. She would object to that, I'm guessing. But they should know what low-hanging fruit they can tick off, and they haven't. It's certainly good to see some progress on those two committees that were set up to look at duplication and efficiencies within government. The Green Motion of Non-Confidence in the Premier has not been voted on. It may never be voted on. Sally, did that do anything for anybody? Well, I mean, it did something for the Greens. It got that issue out there. People are talking about it, and it kept it front and center in the legislature. I'm really excited about that. It's a wonderful creature. But then, you know, yesterday I was listening to comments on this motion, and I'm like, did I miss something? Are they debating something else now? It had kind of devolved into something completely different. So it just seemed like a waste of time, honestly, beyond that first little strip of comments from the Green Party. Um, and the, some shows of support from the, the government members. Um, but I think they should cut their losses and move on to other things that Islanders want to talk about, want to hear about. Paul? Well, I think it is actually important because, because that motion stems from the fact that the Premier's office, starting with Dennis King, when he appointed Rob Lantz, without a vote of caucus, without a vote from the PEI, PC party executive, broke the constitution. And this caucus. stood by and put their hands under their butts and did absolutely nothing when the process was being abused and the timeline was, and the premier's office and the party were doing everything they possibly could do to ensure Rob Lantz won. And what happened over 14 months is a lot of people said, this is not right. This is not fair. And that's why Rob Lantz only got 53%. So I think it's, what I found fascinating are the Tory MLAs. The righteous indignation that they showed, what they should do is look themselves in the mirror and ask whether their, how they looked or treated the leadership question was leadership, because that's where this motion comes from, their lack of leadership. But you know who's not being asked anything on this? You mentioned his name, the former Premier Dennis King. What he was allowed to get away with, and what Rob Lantz accepted, and then dithered for 14 months, And the caucus... was silent on the abuse. There's a reason why the Tories are at 15%, and that whole debacle is a large reason for it. I expect there'll be a lot of questions on the campaign. The next time there is an election, there'll be a lot of questions at the doorstep. It's going to be an interesting next election, whenever that may be. January, February. Okay, Paul. All right, we'll see, Paul. Okay, you heard it here first from Paul. Thank you. Thank you both for coming in. Have a great weekend.