A meeting of elected officials shut out Peace River-Westlock MP Arnold Viersen when federal infrastructure ministry staff barred the MP from sitting in on discussions.
The Conservative MP and Amarjeet Sohi, minister of Infrastructure and Communities, were in the Town of Slave Lake Thursday, Jan. 19 for a joint meeting to announce a $1 million infrastructure investment for three communities, including a $450,000 to upgrade the town’s rec centre.
Following the announcement, Sohi met with local politicians from the town and MD of Lesser Slave River to talk about the area’s infrastructure concerns.
“I was in the meeting room and then I was asked to leave,” Viersen recalled.
“Apparently the minister was not comfortable discussing the goings on in Peace River-Westlock in front of me.”
Viersen said he was surprised when he was asked to leave and the only explanation he received from a ministry staffer was that the minister would not have discussions in front of Opposition members.
“I’m not sure what they have to hide, but hopefully they’re discussing the billions of dollars of investment they’re going to be spending in northern Alberta and then I won’t be too upset about it,” he added.
“It was a little bit perturbing to be asked to leave, especially seeing as this is the new transparent government.
“It’s going to be difficult for me to represent my constituents if I’m not aware of the projects that they’re bringing forward.”
The MP said he had met Sohi a handful of times and he seemed “amiable enough.”
Slave Lake mayor Tyler Warman explained that the municipality had invited Viersen to join in on the conversation, which touched on airport funding, FireSmart training, roads and homelessness, but before it could start, ministry staff asked him to leave.
“We invited our MP to come listen in on that, but we were informed that there’s a protocol that when there’s a government-to-government meeting, a member of the opposition can’t be in the same room,” Warman said. “Unfortunately, I was not aware of the protocol. We had not been informed ahead of time and so we had to ask Mr. Viersen to step out before the meeting took place.”
Warman said he had never heard of the protocol before, although this was his first time in that situation.
“Arnold was extremely good about it and understanding.”
Sohi was not available for comment but press secretary Brook Simpson spoke on his behalf.
“The bigger purpose of the trip was to meet with local councils and discuss their infrastructure needs and get feedback for our long-term infrastructure plan,” Simpson said. “In order to have a good meeting and to get candid feedback and to be candid on our end as well, government-to-government meetings as they always are, are between representatives of the government.”
Simpson noted that it was standard practice for government-to-government meetings to be between representatives from those governments, in this case the municipal and federal governments.
“A lot of the feedback we get from municipalities is about how things were under the previous government and we wouldn’t want municipalities to be less candid because someone who is a representative of the party who formed that government was there,” he said.
