The Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly has shut down for the next couple of weeks, and will reconvene once government is ready to table its budget.

The closure comes after only seven days of the spring sitting.

While government house leader Lisa Dempster defends the move as “business as usual” for the budget-focused spring sitting, PC Leader Tony Wakeham and NDP Leader Jim Dinn disagree.

Wakeham says he doesn’t know what the Liberals are doing, not that “shutting down the house after only seven days—that’s what the people want to see.”

Dinn calls it “shameful” and argues that what dictates the Liberal agenda as their own agenda, and not what the people want.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Siobhan Coady says exactly when the House will be reconvened to table a budget is still up in the air.

She says she will be announcing a budget date “in short order,” and it will likely be before the Liberal leadership is decided.