December 14, 2017: “I Know you are – What am I?” Brad Trivers & Heath MacDonald (PNP)

Remember that Juvenile comeback from grade school? The thing you’d blurt out when you were caught off-guard and couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say?

Well that’s the kind of exchange in today’s video clip from this afternoon’s Question Period – a back-and-forth between a Tory and a Liberal MLA, both trying to “one-up” the other on which Party has more loyal insiders with plum contracts as “PNP Intermediaries.”

Brad Trivers started it by asking how much money the “city-based” PNP Intermediaries receive for each Investor-class Immigrant…..asked with a thinly-veiled suggestion that the government is looking after their insider friends with the recent choice of 12 new PNP Intermediaries.

Hon. Heath MacDonald. Minister of Economic Development and Tourism, shot back with a list of the PNP Intermediaries who were (or still are) PC insiders or closely-aligned with the Tory party (proving what many of us already know about how members of the professional class and economic elite in PEI give donations to both parties, with roughly equal numbers from that close-knit group having close ties and insider influence with either the Tories or Liberals).

In other words, MacDonald threw a “I know you are – What Am I?” response! And Trivers, appearing to be caught off-guard and more than a little flustered attempted to reciprocate with his own list of Liberal Insiders who are PNP Intermediaries.

You know rural collapse can’t be too far away when the provincial government confidently puts the future well-being of rural PEI in the hands of former Tory and Liberal Lawyers and Accountants living in Summerside and Charlottetown who (1) are making a fortune from foreign Investor-class Immigrants whether they stay in PEI or not, or whether they even start or purchase a business; especially when (2) the provincial government only makes a fortune from failed deposits if they leave!

I felt ashamed watching these goings-on in the House today. Never hearing an honest and clear answer from the governing Liberal MLAs when great questions are asked, day-after-day, is discouraging for sure – but hearing a Tory and Liberal MLA banter back and forth like school children about whose Party has more non-rural insiders getting rich from a corrupt immigration program was really disgusting!