Yesterday afternoon I went to watch the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, which is in a short session right now primarily to consider a spending bill. But yesterday afternoon was the one afternoon during this short session that private members’ bills would be considered, and Progressive Conservative MLA Ted Morton endeavored to bring up a bill that would allow Alberta marriage officiants to refuse to solemnize same-sex marriages and permit both students and teachers to refuse to participate in courses that discuss same-sex marriage. The Alberta Liberals, official opposition to the Progressive Conservative Government, threatened to filibuster the bill to keep it from even being considered again until next spring. So I went to see what would happen.

I had to wait quite a while to get in. Assembly meetings begin at 1:30 PM each day, so I arrived at 12:45, early enough to be the very first in line for a pass to the public galleries. But, part of the Liberals’ stall strategy was to introduce a long list of constituents (and opponents of the bill) attending the meeting, and so there were close to 100 people with reserved seats who had to be let in before me. The security staff at the legislature were completely unprepared for this, despite that they had a folder full of lists of all the reserved guests. To make matters worse, security did not begin checking people in until 1:00 (later than usual according to someone I spoke to in line) and spent nearly a minute processing each person by looking through multiple unalphabetized files on a laptop. After about 15 minutes of this, a PR person for the Liberals showed up, trying to prod the security personnel to speed up the check-in process so that guests could get in before 1:30 and in time to be introduced. At one point, the PR staffmember whispered to a friend of hers in line that she thought this could be a stalling tactic. My impression, though, was that the staff in charge of the galleries were innocently unprepared–it took, for instance, a long time before the man behind the laptop figured out why so many people were visiting the Assembly.

Standing off to the side allowed me to watch the media circus one floor below. One MLA got plenty of attention from the media for wearing a “Straight, Not Narrow” t-shirt over his required shirt and tie, for which he was ultimately called out during the meeting on a point of order raised by a PC backbencher. The Speaker refused to rule on the question, though. Other Liberal MLAs showed their solidarity with their LGBT&c. constitutents by wearing rainbow pins and wristbands; Liberal House Leader Laurie Blakeman wore a bright rainbow top and a rainbow brooch. Finally, just before 2:00, the Liberals’ Outreach Coordinator could see the end of the line and eased up a little and got the check-in guy to let me in (there were still reserved guests in line, but the introductions were over and so it wasn’t strategically important that they get in, I guess). So, I took my seat in the middle of Oral Question Period.

Although the Liberals successfully killed the bill’s chance of being considered this year, I was amazed at how quickly the throngs of bill’s opponents lost their interest in the proceedings. When I sat down, there were easily 100, and probably over 150 people in the galleries–making them about 75% full. This filled the whole legislative chamber with political energy, but it was not long at all before the opponents began trickling out. Even before the filibuster was clinched (as far as I could tell), the galleries had dwindled to less than half full. By the time Speaker Ken Kowalski gave his lecture on the abuse of procedure to ruin private members’ day, there were very few people still in the galleries. Those of us who stayed to the end, though, were proud of ourselves and still a little roused as we rode back downstairs on the elevator. Even had the filibuster been a sure thing (and perhaps it was), the opponents en masse had a power that they could have amplified into a lasting impression had they been willing to stare over the Government’s shoulder all afternoon. And, as legislative meetings go, this one was hardly boring.

It was, truly, a great time, and I was particularly impressed by the cupholders in each MLA’s desk. These are ingenious inventions that Canada ought to export to every courtroom in America.