Filibusters rarely bring out the most cogent of political arguments or the wittiest rejoinders, especially as the hours wear on and legislators confined to their seats get punchy.
And so late one night last week, Premier Jason Kenney, not the funniest guy to begin with, displayed a lack of comic timing with a "lighthearted" prank apparently directed at the opposition to his government's bill to stall contract mediation with Alberta's civil service.
He handed out earplugs to fellow UCP caucus members as an NDP MLA continued the impassioned debate over Bill 9, the Public Sector Arbitration Deferral Act.
It wasn't the best look on a premier who has proclaimed he wants to bring civil discourse back to the legislature.
Rachel Notley and NDP supporters across the province spotted the dissonance immediately.
"This premier lowered the bar once again in his display of disrespect for the people of Alberta," said Notley. "They literally plugged their ears when Opposition members raised the concerns of these 180,000 Albertans."
Those 180,000 Albertans are the public sector workers watching their hopes for a wage bump evaporate with the mediation halt, and waiting with trepidation for an expected further attack on their existing wage and job security.
Kenney's reaction to the NDP's jowl shaking over disrespect in the legislature could have gone three ways. He could have apologized and admitted the earplugs were an ill-conceived jest.
Or he could have decried the NDP's lack of a sense of humour.
Instead he started giving interviews about how the earplugs were prompted by an MLA who suffered from tinnitus being unable to bear the loud commentary from an opposition member topping out at more than 100 decibels.
That came after his press secretary dismissed the incident as "a harmless and light-hearted attempt to boost Government Caucus morale."
Say what?
The NDP could have made their point and gone back to more substantive issues, including Bill 9 itself which did pass, no surprise given the UCP majority, on Thursday.
Instead they pushed it into a point of order in the Legislature charging that UCP House Leader Jason Nixon had misled the house when he declared that his fellow MLAs hadn't actually used the offending earplugs.
Speaker Nathan Cooper ruled that there was no foundation to the complaint. He wasn't happy with either party about the initial incident or the resulting complaint.
"It has not been my experience that there is a positive correlation between sitting late into the night and decorum in this assembly," Cooper said after his ruling.
Theoretically the incident, which has had a six-day political life, is winding down now.
If Kenney is unlucky, Notley will find a way to turn the gaffe to her advantage as she did with an offhand insult from former Premier Jim Prentice about math being hard.
Bubbling along under the seemingly slight uproar about legislature decorum is the more substantive fight over the public sector contracts at the heart of Bill 9.
The contracts signed under the NDP government called for wage freezes in 2017 and 2018 with a reopening on the wage issue in 2019. Presumably the intention was that a small hike might be possible if the provincial economy was back on the upswing.
The UCP government bill delays that wage mediation until after its "blue-ribbon" panel on government spending reports on how to wrestle provincial finances back into the black.
Public sector unions are proclaiming the tactic a precursor to major cutbacks.
The Alberta Union of Public Employees and the Alberta Teachers Association have both launched legal challenges against Bill 9, saying it violates collective bargaining rights.
This confrontation is just the opening salvo on the inevitable coming confrontation between the UCP government and public sector unions. And those unions are preparing to fight, or at least to protest as loudly as possible.
Kenney will need his earplugs.
Photo Credit: Global News
