MLA's Week: May 16-19, 2016

The final week of the spring session, offered few opportunities for the North Coast MLA to speak to public issues in the Legislature, other than for a few salutes to visitors to the public gallery, or to viewers tuning into the Legislature from home.

On the week, Ms Rice was not listed in the archive of participants for the ten sessions of the Legislature for May 9-12, though she did take advantage of her time as part of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth which had a Thursday morning session to bring the spring duties to a close.

Her comments in the committee session were directed towards the Representative for Children and Youth and dealt with issues related to accommodation for those in Ministry Care.

The full scope of the Thursday session with Representative for Children and Youth can be reviewed here, Ms. Rice's inquiries begin at just after the 9:25 mark.

For the most part, the Spring Session seemed to set the tone for next years election campaign, with both the Liberals and NDP floating their trial balloons to see which themes might capture the interest of the voters in 2017.

For Ms. Rice, the last few months found her engaged in a number of issues, from concerns over rural health issues and environmental issues, to a topic on the need to address lead in the drinking water at British Columbia, that theme provided for much of her conversation in recent weeks.

Spring session at BC Legislature comes to an end

The lead in water issue also was the focus of one of the last pieces of business of the Spring Session, with the Provincial Government announcing increased funding for British Columbia School Districts, with a portion of the 225,000 directed towards SD52 earmarked for remediation efforts on the lead issue in the community.

School District 52 to receive $225,000 in provincial money from 'fix-it' fund

Members of the Legislature now will scatter across the province and beyond, a little bit of constituency work to be mixed in with some down time as they head through the summer months and the call, sometime this fall for a return to Victoria.

A period of time where the real preamble to the 2017 election will begin to take shape.

There is more background on the North Coast MLA available from our MLA's Week Archive as well as our General Archive on the Legislature.