Last month, the increasingly famous Speaker of the B.C. Legislature, Abbotsford South MLA Daryl Plecas, released a 76-page report backing up the claims he’d made of financial malfeasance within the provincial government. Those claims led to the suspension of long-time Clerk of the House Craig James and Sergeant at Arms Gary Lenz in November, highlighted by a humiliating police escort out of the building for the two men.
After two months of assurances from Plecas that he had the data to back all this up, the report now lays bare the details he’s been promising. And there’s no doubt they’re damning.
Plecas cast himself in the role as a sort of undercover agent over the last 18 months, accompanying James and Lenz on government-expensed trips to London and Scotland and documenting every luxurious whim they charged to the taxpayers. Tailored suits, tours of St. Andrews Golf Club and, bizarrely, a high-end wood splitter jumped out as headlines, while the most egregious item may be the $300,000 ‘retirement allowance’ James asked Plecas to approve, even though he has no plans to retire.
These claims - which James and Lenz adamantly deny – would certainly justify their suspension and will most likely trigger court-ordered repayments of the illegitimate expenses. The claims have also shored up Plecas’ hero status among progressives, secured when he broke with the Liberal Party in 2017 to accept the position as Speaker. The Liberals couldn’t be more outraged with their former star candidate, kicking him out of the caucus for essentially handing the NDP-Green coalition an unchallenged hold on the legislature and the provincial government.
Wherever you side on judgments of his actions, Plecas, a former tenured professor of criminal justice and part-time prison judge, has shaken up Victoria like a snow globe over the last two years by refusing to play by any set of traditional political rules.
The public is fascinated by him - is he a maverick, a man of integrity who sees the right choice and makes it despite the political consequences? Or is he a “self-serving opportunist” who’s just betrayed the trust of his party and his colleagues to secure an ever-increasing hold on power and prominence?
I am convinced he’s the former. I first met Plecas when he was a student of criminology and Plecas was a dean. It’s always been clear to me that Darryl lives to be a principled person. First of all, any notion that he’s motivated by money is absurd. He was offered the Speaker position three times before finally seeing that it was the right thing for him to do. The extra ten grand a year or whatever it is has nothing to do with the decision. He’s already a wealthy man, and he’s leaving his money to charity. He’s an enigma to politicians and political reporters because I think he genuinely wants to do what’s best for the people of B.C. He was asked to compromise his principles over and over again by the Liberal leadership and he kept refusing. He’s not going to be a guy that does whatever his party tells him, and that makes him scary to people.
I believe Plecas’ situation is a perfect example of how our party system at both the provincial and federal levels doesn’t work. You can’t have your own opinion. You get kicked out if you differ. And that’s what happened to Darryl. I know plenty of people who are frothing at the mouth with anger at him for enabling the NDP. He’s become the most powerful person in the province. He controls the legislature building, he controls the docket, how long a topic can be held. He’s the judge for parliament. But he’s in that position because he refused to compromise his ethics. He’s a one in a hundred guy, and we should all be standing up for him. But instead, he’s getting lambasted because people are too cynical to believe in his true motives.
The now-independent MLA may be back home in Abbotsford soon. There’s a good chance that a recall campaign, organized by voters in his riding, may actually work. No MLA has ever been recalled, but with Plecas, the unprecedented is starting to seem normal.
