HALIFAX: After facing criticism for missing half of the fall legislative session, the Independent MLA for Cape Breton-Richmond was undaunted as the winter session got underway.
On February 26, Alana Paon lauded the government’s adoption of road and other infrastructure repairs and improvements that she said she brought forward to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal (DTIR) in October 2019.
The province’s 2020-21 Five-Year Highway Improvement Plan for Cape Breton-Richmond includes capital investments in erosion repair/slope failure, paving and repaving, various road-maintenance projects, and overpass maintenance.
“These are actually big wins for our community,” Paon told The Reporter Monday afternoon. “It’s a perfect example of how community involvement, community advocacy, and advocacy on my part as the MLA, and working cooperatively with government really works.”
Since becoming first elected in 2017, Paon said she has been consulting with residents in her constituency to help set priorities and holds quarterly meetings with the local DTIR to discuss her constituents’ concerns and to plan for priority projects.
Paon said the upgrades to the road coming from the Highway 104 turn-off in Louisdale and leading into Isle Madame has been on top of her priority list for some time but needed to wait until the Lennox Passage Bridge Rehabilitation Project was completed first.
“There’s a lot of roads in our constituency that are in terrible condition and that’s one of them,” she said. “It’s a main access route and it’s driven by thousands of people every week.”
Since being removed from the Progressive Conservative caucus last June, Paon said there’s been a huge weight taken off of her shoulders. She said being a member with party-affiliation was a hindrance.
“Now that I’m an Independent, it seems more people feel more free to come up and speak with me in regards to their concerns,” she indicated. “Because suddenly, I’ve just become me again.”
Being able to go across the floor and speak to ministers on behalf of her constituents and bring forward what people are really asking her to talk about, is a wonderful feeling, the MLA noted.
“I can do that now without any fear of reprisal and it’s a pretty glorious thing.”
Also on February 26, Paon introduced legislation to ban party whips and the taxpayer-funded extra compensation they receive after she criticized the role of political party whips in the House of Assembly the day before.
“Eliminating political-party whips will encourage free expression, debate, action in the greater public interest and consensus-building by party leaders,” the bill’s objective reads.
Bill 229, is aimed both at the role whips serve and the function performed by any other party member, regardless of title. Paon stated that whips serve as party discipline “enforcers.”
“I certainly don’t want to be implicating anyone in any bad behaviour, [but this] is an overall-arching theme within the political structure as it exists today,” she said. “There is a lot of pressure that comes from within caucus, especially in the upper leadership. It’s unfortunate but it’s the way our partisan system is set up and I truly feel that that needs to come to an end.”
The bill restricts the House of Assembly Management Commission from paying the additional $5,300 per year compensation to whips of recognized parties.
The introduced legislation also prohibits anyone from threatening an MLA’s status in a party through threats or intimidation, “or making promises in respect of the party status of a member in an attempt to influence the member’s vote.”
“I’ll be very frank with you, that there [was] more than one occasion that I felt that I should be voicing my opinion on matters related to concerns my constituents would want me to bring up,” Paon explained. “And that perhaps, it was not something that was made a priority within [our] caucus.”
Every member that is elected, she said, is elected to represent the people and it’s the people that need to be represented first – not the party.
“It’s extremely important I believe that elected officials are permitted to do their job unencumbered and without any kind of harassment when they’re sitting and representing the people of their communities.”
For more on the MLA’s absences in the fall sitting of the legislature, go to: https://prwpuploads.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/mla-points-to-privacy-when-asked-to-explain-10-day-absence-from-legislature/.