 On February 19, William Carlos Ives of the Supreme Court of Alberta dealt the government another blow when he struck down key provincial legislation, including one act reducing the interest paid on the province's bonds by half (though this was only a technical defeat, since the government had been defaulting on its bond payments since the previous April).On February 25, a new session of the legislature opened with the speech from the throne, delivered by Chief Justice Horace Harvey in the absence of Lieutenant-Governor Philip Primrose.Its commitment to social credit was limited to a vaguely worded promise to pursue "a new economic order when social credit becomes effective."