The legislative agenda (I)

Last year, former Minister of Education and Sycophancy, Joan Burke, claimed, in effect, that the House of Assembly was too busy to get around to the long-promised, never-delivered Grenfell autonomy bill. (Never mind that it might be a good idea to give autonomy to MUN itself first...)

The CBC quoted Burke last July:

The province had promised the college in Corner Brook, a campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland, that it would become an autonomous university by the fall of 2008.

Burke said Friday that will not happen for another year.

"We are just at the point, I guess, with a busy schedule in the house of assembly and certainly the tedious work in developing the legislation, that we didn't have sufficient time … for the full debate that it deserved," Burke told CBC News.

Since last July, the House of Assembly sat for seventeen days in First Session, and a whopping nine days so far in the Second. For those, like the former Minister of Education, who are good at math, that's 26 days in total, several of which were occupied with formalities like Throne Speeches and budget speeches.

And when the House comes back on Monday, after a two-week break, it will likely be for only another five or six weeks of four-day sitting weeks, with at least one more mini-holiday break coming up in late May. And it's not as if the legislative calendar is chock-a-block with business.

So, is the real problem with getting the Grenfell bill through that the Legislature is too busy... or that it's not busy enough?

In short, Dr. Darin King, what will your excuse be, come July?