Article content continued

After all, didn’t the Opposition want to know what it was voting on before it voted?

Photo by CHAD HIPOLITO / CP

“No,” replied the NDP Mike, summing up the Opposition state of mind with a single word. Fed-up with delays, evasions and political stunts, Farnworth and colleagues were focused on the confidence vote, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, that is expected to deliver the Liberals into Opposition and the NDP into government.

The three Green MLAs were also surprised by the Liberal move to reduce the threshold for party status from the current four to three.

“A rather expensive bill for us to not vote for,” as party Leader Andrew Weaver put it, since the change would have provided premium pay for him as party leader and the other two MLAs as House leader and whip.

Still the Greens were no less resolved than the New Democrats to get on with bringing down the government. “Our caucus will not debate legislation until the confidence of the House has been tested,” said Weaver via news release.

So when Speaker Steve Thomson called the vote after the obligatory five minutes of bell-ringing, the Greens and NDP combined to defeat the Liberals 44 to 42.

Rare enough for there to be a recorded vote on first reading, rarer still for a government to be defeated. Indeed, a search of the journals of the House going back to colonial days turned up no previous instance where a government bill had been subjected to such indignation on first reading.

Five minutes later it happened again, this time on a Liberal bill to reform campaign finance along the lines proposed by the Greens and NDP before the election.