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“Challenges to the authority of the speaker are unacceptable and will not be tolerated in the future,” Plecas warned.

Photo by BC legislative assembly

The B.C. have called into question the professionalism of Plecas for his sudden change of the rules.

Liberal house leader Mike de Jong issued a rare public rebuke of the Speaker for the decision, saying he’s damaged his non-partisan office by unilaterally changing what has been considered parliamentary language in the house for decades, without properly consulting MLAs.

“Regrettably this Speaker believes he is going to assume the role of rewriting the parliamentary rules and parliamentary convention,” de Jong told Postmedia News on Monday. “Were he to call the house leaders and have a discussion, all of these things are possible. But to intervene in the way he did several weeks ago and again (Monday) when he is so clearly offside the rules and conventions, I think does a disservice to his office.”

After Plecas’s ruling Tuesday, de Jong went further, saying Plecas’s unilateral move to set limits on language “is a very dangerous precedent” he’s never seen in almost 25 years as an MLA and comes close to infringing on the principle of freedom of speech.

“I think you are seeing evidence of the frustration that members have with a Speaker who has chosen to be far more unilateral, far more dictatorial than any I have seen in the almost quarter century I’ve been here,” de Jong said, adding the move has diminished Plecas in the eyes of many Liberal MLAs. “But that has been his choice.”