Moe doubles down on defence of MLA Jeremy Harrison

The recent allegations against Jeremy Harrison are unequivocally false, according to Premier Scott Moe.

Moe was responding again to allegations made in the legislature Thursday from Speaker Randy Weekes about years of harassment, intimidation and threats from Harrison. Weekes also said Harrison had brought a gun into the legislature and wanted to wear a handgun.

Friday morning, Moe said he’d spoken to Harrison since the allegations and that Harrison said they were false.

“The method that this has all come to the front is as shocking for me as anyone else, and just don’t have an explanation,” said Moe.

Harrison wasn’t made available to media Thursday to answer to the allegations and a he was replaced at a public event he was meant to be at Friday morning with another minister.

When it comes to the texts, Moe said there needs to be communication between government and opposition house leaders and the speaker.

Weekes had read out some of the hundreds of texts he said he got from Harrison, including one which criticized one of his rulings, and a series of texts from the deputy house leader who was asking him to keep things on track in debate.

“(Texts from the deputy leader) were very polite and had words in them like ‘thank you’ and ‘please.’ I don’t view those as harassing texts of any nature,” said Moe.

“Some of the other texts were more ambitious for sure, and I wouldn’t know that I would categorize them as harassing texts. But you’re not here to judge the speaker either, and that most certainly should be and is the case.”

Moe said he couldn’t speak for what the speaker might have been feeling but said there were other ways to deal with it.

“There’s other avenues that the speaker can have if he feels that he’s being harassed, he feels that in any way he’s being threatened,” said Moe.

The premier said he hasn’t spoken with Weekes, either after the first incident of texts being read out or after Thursday’s speech. He also didn’t intend to direct any investigation into the allegations.

Moe repeatedly characterized the complaints from the speaker as coming from someone who had sour grapes after losing his seat nomination in the winter.

Former Saskatchewan Party MLA Supports Weekes

Former Sask. Party MLA Greg Brkich has come out to say that he believes Speaker Randy Weekes.

“When he says something there’s basis to it, I believe that there’s a very good base to what he’s saying. I believe him, plain and simple,” said Brkich.

Brkich and Weekes were both elected in 1999 and he said Weekes isn’t the kind of person who would come out with baseless allegations.

The former MLA said he didn’t like how the premier handled the allegations, he said is seemed like they were almost laughed off.

“Maybe (Moe) ought to have said ‘this needs to be looked into, these are serious allegations and let’s explore them,’” said Brkich.

He left his seat before Weekes became speaker and said he couldn’t confirm whether the same kinds of things were happening to Mark Docherty, the previous speaker.

Brkich was deputy speaker and government house while he was in office and said that he respects the house and wants everyone else to as well, but he saw a lot of deterioration of that in his last terms. He said there was a lot of name calling, on both sides, and that no one seemed to respect the house. Brkich said it was part of the reason he decided not to run again.

“We were making $100,000 a year gross – act responsibly, act like you should be earning that $100,000, not yelling back and forth and getting on the personal end,” he said.

Brkich had been the MLA for Arm River-Watrous and later just arm River. He ended his political career, deciding not to run again in the 2020 election. Jeremy Harrison came after his as government house leader.

There was some friction between Brkich and Moe when he left. In his farewell speech, Brkich used the phrase “all lives matter” and cautioned against social activists swaying politics. Afterward,

Moe denounced the comments to the media, saying those comments shouldn’t have been made in the house.