Sparks fly between premier, MLA at P.E.I. legislature

Things started off slowly in the Prince Edward Island Legislature Tuesday until former Green Party leader Peter Bevan-Baker rose with questions on two years of record extra-budget spending.

“The most open and transparent government has turned out to be the most closed and secretive,” said Bevan-Baker.

Premier Dennis King fired back at his former ally, saying he once had high hopes for the MLA.

“Certainly a shadow of himself compared to that today,” said King. “I had great hopes for the member from Borden-Kinkora to come in with a new attitude, but didn’t take him long to be bathed in the cesspool of negativity and nastiness that’s been going on with the Green Party.”

It was the support of Bevan-Baker’s Green opposition that kept King in power during his first minority government in 2019, but that solid public relationship seems to have soured.

“For all we know, politicians’ friends’ pockets are being lined, and millions of dollars, millions of dollars of islanders’ money is being wasted, because we don’t know,” said Bevan-Baker. “We don’t know.”

In the last election, the Greens lost six seats to the Tories.

“Is this the sort of openness and transparency you had in mind all those years ago when I had faith in you?” said said Bevan-Baker. “When you promised islanders that your government would do politics differently?”

King didn’t back down.

“He’s out there making wide innuendoes about things he knows are wrong because he thinks it might make a headline,” said King. “He’s a headline chaser, an ambulance chaser.”

It could be a sign of a new era for King as a fierce opposition replaces the more cooperative house he'd come to enjoy.

“Let’s not let the facts get in the way of a really good fearmongering story here by this member,” said King. “He’s become famous for it in here, sadly.”

Neither expressed regret for what they said.

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