Sask. Speaker says legislature not out of control

Despite a speech pleading for decorum a couple of weeks ago in the Assembly, Sask. legislative Speaker Todd Goudy doesn’t believe the Assembly is out of control.

Goudy spoke on The Evan Bray Show on Wednesday, in a rare conversation with media.

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Listen to Speaker Todd Goudy on The Evan Bray Show:

At the end of March, Goudy stood and spoke for nearly seven minutes, asking a rowdy assembly to calm down.

“It is not up to us to set your conscience; I can’t raise the bar for someone else, but I certainly can raise it for myself. I can’t legislate morality in this chamber, but we can certainly do it for ourselves,” he said.

However, when speaking to Bray, Goudy downplayed any perceived disorder.

“I am not exasperated or thinking that Saskatchewan’s legislature or MLAs are out of control or that things are getting extremely bad in the Chamber, not at all. I actually feel very privileged to serve with the other 60 members,” explained Goudy.

“I’ve been in Ottawa as well, and we’ve all seen the question period there; it’s nothing like Saskatchewan, so I really hope that the public doesn’t feel like the MLAs and that the Chamber is out of control in Saskatchewan.”

He said he likes being in the middle, like a peacemaker, but doesn’t like when students come into the legislative building and see MLAs acting like what they’ve come to see, as normal, but the students would see as abnormal.

Goudy said, since the issue of decorum has been getting more publicity, he’s been getting more texts and emails about it and thinks people in the province are glad to hear he’s moving things more in that direction.

“I think, in general, the public is tired of politicians fighting with one another,” said Goudy.

He has regular meetings with the house leaders for both the government and the opposition, and Goudy said they get along. He said he spoke with other Speakers, and they said they don’t have meetings with their house leaders because they don’t get along.

Goudy allowed that things might get more frustrating in the assembly for the Opposition NDP, saying there are more rules around the kind of questions that can be asked, rather than what answers can be given.

“It’s their job to question the government concerning policies and laws that they’re bringing forwards, but it’s my role to keep it as balanced as I can,” he said.

Nicole Sarauer, Opposition House Leader, said it can be frustrating when the NDP members are asking questions and not getting straight answers, which can kick off some heckling. But she said the main difference these days is that there are quite a few more NDP MLAs in the house.

“When I was first elected, there were 11 Sask NDP MLAs and 50 Sask Party MLAs, not a lot of talk and concern from the government at that time about decorum or heckling, in fact, probably I would say the opposite is the case,” said Sarauer.

She said the NDP hasn’t been backing down from their role to hold the government accountable.

The last Speaker, Randy Weekes, ended his tenure by talking about feeling harassed by disapproving text messages and conversations with both sides, but particularly calling out a few government members.

Goudy said there’s been nothing like that in the time he’s been Speaker.

Earlier in the week, Government House Leader Tim McLeod said a change had been made to say that individual members shouldn’t contact the Speaker about legislative assembly business.