Archive for July, 2009

Back in April, I reported that far-right ideologue and former Calgary school trustee Danielle Smith planned to run for the leadership of the Wildrose Alliance Party. In May, she made it official. Since then, her candidacy has generated considerable buzz in the media and the blogosphere. She increasingly looks like a credible player on the Alberta political scene, not just as a representative of the fruitcake right, but as someone who could make real inroads on the Stelmach Conservatives’ power base.

Lately, she has been mopping the floor with her opponent for the Wildrose leadership, prompting debate that at times is both interesting and hilarious. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that one day she could mop the floor with Ed Stelmach.

Ms. Smith is a dangerous candidate – and not just to Conservatives – because she is smart and gets it about how to build media interest and package herself in a way that appeals to a broader public not usually attracted to far-right nostrums like those peddled by her former employer, the credibility challenged Fraser Institute.

Although she comes from pretty much the same ideological place as Sarah Palin – to whom she will inevitably be unfairly compared – you won’t find Ms. Smith marginalizing her electoral chances like the former U.S. vice-presidential candidate with inexplicable announcements and outbreaks of foot-in-mouth disease. Indeed, I think you’ll find this self-described “centre-right” candidate stays as far away as possible from what she really believes for fear of scaring off voters.

So far, she’s not made a false step. Anyone who doubts this analysis should read Ms. Smith’s clever announcement of her candidacy, in which she reassuringly attacks the Stelmach Conservatives from the left as well as the right.

Ms. Smith is also backed – generously, it would seem – by secretive and well-off corporate interests in Calgary who despise the Stelmach Conservatives for even momentarily considering an energy royalty regime that was fair to the Albertans who own the resources. So you can bet that in the months ahead, she will be able to afford better advertising agencies and media spinners than the leader of a marginal party on the fringe of the Canadian mainstream could normally count on.

But then, the U.S.-backed far right has always viewed Alberta as the place to make inroads, and Ms. Smith may be just the agent they are looking for.

Meanwhile, as Ms. Smith starts to build real credibility, all three parties with seats in the Legislature are led by lacklustre characters that between them can’t seem to generate the charismatic wattage needed to light up a fridge bulb!

In the end, of course, Ms. Smith and the WAP may amount to no more than a tempest in a media teapot. Mr. Stelmach is a formidable politician, consistently under-rated by his opponents – including this blogger, on occasion. Dr. David Swann, the Liberal leader, reminds me so much of Abraham Lincoln that, who knows, he may yet pull off a miracle like the election of 1864. And in Rachel Notley, the New Democrats have a leader as charismatic and appealing as Ms. Smith – if only they would make her their leader.

But so far, I have seen nothing that suggests Ms. Smith is not an Alberta political phenomenon to watch, and watch carefully.

You’ll notice these guys are reading the back of Pravda. Figuring out what’s going on in Ed Stelmach’s Alberta takes similar “Kremlinological” techniques.

Here’s an idea for some bright spark of a journalism student contemplating a lifetime of repeating the on-the-job mantra of the typical J-School grad: “Would you like fries with that, sir?”

Create an Alberta version of the Huffington Post, the entertaining (and apparently profitable) on-line collation of journalism that was written and paid for by other people, elsewhere.

In the Alberta case, there are things that could be learned by combing community newspapers from across the province, if only someone had the time to go through them all. Seeing as some of them are pretty awful, this might be a chore, but the occasional nugget from a local Conservative Tory MLA, overconfident because no one outside the riding reads the local rag anyway, could make it all worthwhile.

A case in point appeared in today’s edition of the St. Albert Gazette. Reporter Cory Hare, his story buried on page 5 and apparently not deemed worthy of inclusion on the paper’s Web site, asked our local Tory grandee, MLA Ken Allred, what the heck was going on with the province’s chaotic health-care upheaval.

The Stelmach Conservatives seem to be repeating the formula of the Ralph Klein years, in which the entire deck of cards is thrown in the air and the resulting mess when they land is described as “reform,” or “improvement.”

In the case of Alberta health care, of course, Mr. Stelmach’s rural caucus cronies had the added motivation of destroying a system that, while working pretty well, gave a lot of power to people who lived in cities and who were associated with Mr. Klein or, worse, with former leadership candidate Jim Dinning.

Now Mr. Hare, no doubt, put his question a lot more politely than I summarized it. What he got back from Mr. Allred was interesting, not least because it has the ring of the truth, a rare commodity when dealing with Canada’s most secretive senior government.

“I support getting the health care system in order,” said Mr. Allred, presupposing of course that it is out of order. So far so good, the St. Albert MLA was sticking to the government’s talking points. Then he went on: “Certainly there’s going to be a few people hurt on the way, there (is) no question about it.” (Emphasis added.)

This smacks of the cold, hard truth, normally discussed only behind closed caucus doors and not to be breathed in public, inadvertently let slip.

So, just who are these people who are going to be hurt along the way? Alas, Mr. Allred does not enlighten us. Could they be:

• Employees of the heath care system?
• Nurses, of whom there was a shortage, and then there wasn’t, and then there was, and now there isn’t again?
• Senior citizens, getting hammered now by drug costs and later by medical procedure costs?
• Poor children?
• People with disabilities?
• Citizens of other provinces, when their health care is ruined thanks to the combination of NAFTA and Alberta?
• Everybody except the extremely wealthy, Conservative caucus members, double-dipping doctors and corporate touts for private medicine?

It’s hard to say. Mr. Allred, judging from the story in the Gazette, didn’t have much more to tell us.

All he managed, other than the interesting confession that unlike everyone else in the Capital Region he was unaware that MRI services were being scaled back at Edmonton hospitals, was that “something’s wrong. There’s no question about it. We just can’t continue to let it continue out of control.”

In fact, of course, there is plenty of doubt about it. The statement that something is fundamentally wrong with our health care system is highly contentious, designed to create a sense of impending crisis requiring “reform” where no true crisis exists. Out of control? Please!

Yes, health costs are up. But so is the population.

Yes, provincial revenues are down. But this is thanks to irresponsible resource royalty policies and tax giveaways ($180-million in booze taxes, for heaven’s sake, $1-billion in health premiums) as much as temporarily depressed commodity prices.

Yes, efficiencies can be found. But the destructive ideologically driven private-sector “efficiencies” favoured by the Stelmach Conservatives are known to cost far more than our efficient single-payer system while delivering far less.

Sorry for the Stalin-era analogy, but figuring out what the Stelmach government is up to at any moment is an art akin to ‘Kremlinology’ in the bad old days of the Cold War. Just as the most important news was found on the back page of Pravda, in Ed Stelmch’s Alberta it’s often hidden deep in the insides of small-town weeklies.

Looking for it would be just the thing from that bright J-School grad. The time for Huffington Alberta is now!

Above, prime minister John Diefenbaker in full rhetorical flight. At right below, confronting the press at the dawn of the electronic age, when microphones and reporters’ collars came with strings attached. Reporting his fibs was controversial.

Now and then, prime minister John Diefenbaker would just make up a quote.

Or so I was reliably informed at the start of my journalistic career by a retired Toronto Star columnist of my acquaintance.

From time to time, this gentleman explained, the Progressive Conservative prime minister, jaws aquiver, would utter something along the lines of, “If you look on page 92 of the report of the Royal Commission on Tents, Sheds and Awnings, you will see that in March of 1959 Canada manufactured 9,382 pup tents. This proves Jack Pickerskill is a scoundrel and a knave!”

The media – or, as they were quaintly known in those days, “the press” – would rush to the report of the Royal Commission and discover, lo and behold, that it said no such thing. Indeed, that there was no page 92, and no mention whatsoever of pup tents.

Whether or not to report this, my friend recalled, was then controversial in the trade. “Not our job to correct the PM,” some newshound would argue. “Our job is just to report what the Chief says!”

This proves that while some things don’t change, some things do. It suggests, for example, that then as now, most journalists were “ignorant, lazy, opinionated, intellectually dishonest and inadequately supervised,” to quote Conrad Black, now Lord Black of Coleman Federal.

And it’s pretty clear from the news emanating from L’Aquila, Italy, that prime ministers – or their aides, at least, if we believe the excuses – still make up quotes now and then.

What’s changed, of course, is the influence of electronic media. Just as press reporters no longer “massage” politicians’ mangled quotes to make them sound better for fear of the ubiquity of news cameras and tape recorders wherever news is made, nor does any serious journalist believe a howler like unprogressive Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s misguided missile can be ignored or merely quoted as fact.

No, if a prime ministerial comment is manufactured from whole cloth, that must be reported. This is because of the presence of the blogosphere where, if the paid journalists won’t do their jobs honestly, unpaid ones are sure to mercilessly point it out. With the press in particular teetering on a precipice of insolvency, its minions can hardly permit another assault on the tattered remnants of their credibility. (It’s nice to know that mere amateurs, and badly dressed social democrats too for the most part, can impose the iron discipline on the media that even the mighty Lord Tubby Black could not!)

So the media really had little choice but to report it when the PM sourly told the gathered media stenographers that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff had suggested if we don’t watch our step a group of powerful countries could someday decide to cut Canada out of the action.

“Mr. Ignatieff is supposed to be a Canadian,” Mr. Harper sniped. “I don’t think you go out and throw out ideas like this that are so obviously contrary to a country’s interest and nobody else is advocating them.” He demanded Mr. Ignatieff withdraw the remark, adding that such statements would be “irresponsible coming from anybody, but they are particularly irresponsible coming from a senior Canadian parliamentarian.”

The principal problem, of course, was that Mr. Ignatieff had said no such thing.

Never mind that the remark, whoever said it, contains more than a grain of common sense and truth, things hardly contrary to the country’s interest. With the PM’s gaffe exposed, the media was pretty much forced to report it, since they knew well that if they didn’t someone else would. They were, as surely as the prime minister, “busted.”

The media quickly moved on to reporting Mr. Harper’s graceless, teeth-gritted “apology” – “IregrettheerrorandIapologizetoMr.Ignatieffforthiserror” – and an aide was hurriedly rounded up to fall on his sword.

Of course what is really interesting about this small incident is what it reveals about Mr. Harper’s strategy for dealing with Mr. Ignatieff – and presumably any other opponent who dares to be well traveled, intellectual, poised and polished.

“Mr. Ignatieff is supposed to be a Canadian,” Mr. Harper hissed, revealing pretty clearly the Conservative plan to attack the Liberal Leader’s patriotism, his very citizenship, for having had the sheer cheek to live and work abroad.

No matter what Mr. Ignatieff says – no matter whether it makes sense, indeed, no matter who actually said it – we can expect these so-called Conservatives, who are really not much more than radical American Republicans in everything but passport, to try to slime his Canadian credentials whenever he orders French fries or Italian dressing, let alone utters anything more substantive.

If that doesn’t work, presumably, they can wind up their supporters by assailing Mr. Ignatieff for reading books, or, worse, for writing them. What could be more un-Canadian than being a bibliophile, pray? Except, perhaps, a homo sapiens!

Question: I understand you have new field of studies, Perfesser Dave. Can you tell us about it?

Answer: Righty-ho! I’m pleased to announce the foundation of the Great Plains Institute for Para-Conservative Studies, right here in St. Albert!

Q: Terrific! What are para-Conservative studies?

A: Studies of para-Conservatives, obviously.

Q: OK. Let me come at this another way. What’s a para-Conservative?

A: Well, the term is derived from the Latin, Conservativus, meaning Conservative, and para, meaning something like, hence, “something like a Conservative.” But what we’ve discovered is that there aren’t many real Conservatives in Western Canada any more, and those that are generally don’t call themselves Conservatives. Almost all the Conservatives are para-Conservatives. So we decided to study ’em!

Q: So you founded an institute…?

A: Well, actually we already had the institute, but it was called the Pacific Rim Institute of Parapsychology. There was no money in parapsychology. So, after the charges were dropped and we had to get out of town, we were going to call it the Fraser River Institute, but it turned out that name was sort-of taken. So now we’re the Great Plains Institute. Capiche? We decided we liked the para part.

Q: Yeah, I “capische.” You were lying about the foundation!

A: It’s not a foundation. It’s an institute. Like the Fraser Institute. Except that we study para-Conservatives instead of just making stuff up.

Q: And what have you learned?

A: Well, like I said, there’s a whole new genus of Conservative in Canada and it appears to have completely pushed out the native variety, sort of like purple loosestrife, only not as pretty.

Q: Sounds serious. Where’d it come from?

A: We think from the United States. It looks an awful lot like Conservativus Republicanus, which almost completely wiped out Conservativus Americanus about 30 years ago. But it’s a completely new genus for Canada that has to be hardier because of the colder weather. We think global warming may be at fault.

Q: And what do you call this new genus?

A: Well, first, we call the old Canadian Conservatives Conservativus Exemplarus, or original Conservatives. You know, like Sir John A., John Diefenbaker and even John Clark.

Q: You mean Joe Clark?

A: Joe Who?

Q: Never mind. So what happened to these Conservativus Exemplaruses?

A: Well, it’s been a really rapid change. In about 10 years they’ve been almost completely pushed out by this new genus of para-Conservatives. We think they could be extinct in a couple of weeks. Or maybe not. I’ll get to that.

Q: Get to what?

A: Conservativus Knee-dippidus. But we haven’t got to the main part of the story yet.

Q: Which is?

A: Conservativus Tributum-Apsumptorusque.

Q: Apsumptorusque? What the hell does that mean?

A: Well, literally, “…and spend.” But the whole phrase means “tax and spend Conservatives.”

Q: I thought Conservatives were supposed to be, you know, conservative. What’s this tax and spend stuff?

A: Well, that’s what caught our attention when we started to study this phenomenon. You get Conservatives in power nowadays and they tax you like crazy and spend all your money like drunken sailors! Usually they pour it into vast containers called P3s – you can just imagine what that means! Conservatives didn’t used to do that. Now it’s about all they do. That’s why we think they’re not really Conservatives any more. It’s like their bodies have been snatched. Hey, where’d you get that nice gourd you’ve been carrying around?

Q: C’mon, Perfesser Dave, this is silly. You’re not suggesting that Conservatives have all turned into tax and spend nuts who couldn’t balance a budget if they wanted to?

A: Well, just about every elected politician in Alberta is a Conservative, right? Have you taken a look at your municipal tax bill lately? Hey! You ready for the anniversary celebrations yet? Got your new blue garbage can?

Q: I’m asking the questions around here. And you’re not making any sense. Premier Stelmach just told us to read his lips, there’ll be no new taxes!

A: Ah yes, “the Boy in the Bubble!” Remember, his entire cabinet is salivating at the thought of new taxes, especially a sales tax. Even Ted Morton, for heaven’s sake! And Ed still wants to spend your money like a sailor on shore leave. And then there’s the federal Conservatives! Say goodbye to your balanced budgets! What Eddie’s going to do is dump the cost of his spending spree on municipalities and public employees….

Q: Hmm. You may have a point there. What the hell, it worked for Ralph Klein! So you’re saying Conservativus Exemplarus has been wiped out?

A: Pretty well. Anyway, that’s what we thought at first. But now we’re wondering if they’ve actually just sort of gone underground and morphed into Conservativus Knee-dippidus, which means Knee-Dipper Conservative, or KDC.

Q: KDC?

A: You know, sort of like NDP, only with 66 per cent different letters. They’re the only people who seem to be inclined to balance a budget any more. So we’re starting to think the Knee-Dippers may be the only true Conservatives left! Pretty radical, I know, but just look at what happened in Saskatchewan. Conservativus Knee-dippidus balanced the budget, but then they were supplanted by Conservativus Tributum-Apsumptorusque, who screamed “tax and spend” until the Knee-Dippers went away. Then they spent all Saskatchewan’s money like drunken sailors, so now they say Saskatchewan is going to have to build a nuclear power-generation plant to get everything back into fiscal balance. Also, they plan to ban all unions and get rid of freedom of assembly.

Q: Hold it! That wasn’t Conservativus Tributum-Apsumptorusque, that was Saskatchewanus Tributum-Apsumptorusque. There’s got to be a difference. Anyway, why don’t you use Alberta as an example?

A: Because there’s been nothing to compare them with since Conservativus Socialcreditus, which was well before the last Ice Age and even before the Oiler Age. Go Wayne Go! But you may be right. We’re going to have to apply for a grant to study this some more. Too bad, I was hoping this would be like that new genus of monkey the Yale scientists found in Africa, Rungwecebus kipunji. We could all have been as rich as Yalies!

Q: I’ve got news for you, Perfesser Dave. That’s not why Yalies are rich. Say, if you were a real Perfesser, wouldn’t you know that?

A: Not necessarily. Science is very compartmentalized nowadays.

Q: What will you do now?

A: Well, we’d like to get a specimen of Conservativus Tributum-Apsumptorusque.

Q: That shouldn’t be a problem around here.

A: Yeah, but they resist gene splicing, unless they’re really drunk. We’d like to analyze samples of their tissue on a molecular level.

Q: What if that doesn’t work out?

A: Then we’re going to do something completely different, just like we did before.

Q: What do you have in mind?

A: We’re thinking of re-branding ourselves as the St. Albert Institute for the Study of Biblical Oddities. We think that with Bill 44, we should be able to do very well with that concept in Alberta.

Q: Biblical oddities?

A: Yeah, like, answering Biblical questions generally ignored by mainstream Biblical scholars, who are mostly crazy liberals these days anyway.

Q: Such as?

A: Such as, “Who was the shortest man in the Bible?”

Q: Who was the shortest man in the Bible?

A: Bildad the Shuhite!

[INAUDIBLE. MUFFLED EXPLETIVES. SOUNDS OF SCUFFLING.]

Federal immigration minister Jason Kenney wonders, “what da … heck?” while The Decider lays it on the line… No new taxes! Who is he looking at like that?

Oh crap! There goes another $180-million!

Alberta’s deeper in the recessionary muck by the day, short about $2-billion, and Premier Ed Stelmach’s loyal cabinet ministers are doing what they can to chart a politically plausible path out of the morass.

They’ve got to please the hard right banjo-plunkers in their rural ridings and hordes of feisty seniors in the big cities, not to mention all the usual suspects in the centre and on the left who aren’t about to have another of their oxen gored without bellowing.

Lloyd Snelgrove, that wily old smoothie, invited representatives of the “interest groups” from far and wide last month and sought their suggestions on how to come up with a billion or two. A million here, a million there, and pretty soon we could have had a budget that didn’t make anyone too mad.

“There are no preconceived notions of what will be done and everything is on the table except a provincial sales tax,” Mr. Snelgrove told the assembled Interests in a PowerPoint slide show, copies of which were inevitably quickly handed over to the media, presumably with the government’s connivance.

Later, when the screeching began, he could have always said, “Well, you suggested it!”

But did Mr. Snelgrove forget to tell his boss what he was going to do? Or did he just forget who his boss was likely to talk to next?

Whatever happened, Premier Ed spoke yesterday, and I’d be surprised if Mr. Snelgrove and some of the other grownups in Cabinet weren’t suffering from chest pains by the time he got finished.

Never mind the sales tax, said the premier. There will be no tax increases in Alberta.

“As long as I’m premier of this province, there will be no tax increases,” Mr. Stelmach blurted to Cowtown’s tame media, stenographers who by the sound of it didn’t think to ask any of the obvious questions. “There is no tax increase. Period.”

Oh well, at least their tape recorders worked.

What’s more, said the premier, he was immediately rescinding last April’s tax increase on booze, which will drain the province’s shrinking coffers by a further $180 million, a case of beer and a bottle of wine at a time.

Also drained, of course, were whatever diminished reserves of credibility Mr. Snelgrove, Finance Minister Iris Evans, Health Minister Ron Liepert or pretty much anyone else in the cabinet had left in the bottoms of their mugs.

Well, I guess that leaves service cuts and layoffs, just the thing for building mid-recession consumer confidence.

Of course, this turn of events is not without its comforts. At least it’ll be amusing to watch bug-eyed cabinet ministers explain over the next few days how they didn’t actually mean it when they said “everything’s on the table.”

So, how do we explain this?

It’s easy, actually. Ed’s the Decider.

Do you miss the real Decider? The laughs, the giggles, the missing weapons of mass destruction? Well, neither do I, but apparently our cranky premier does.

So the Decider is back – right here in Alberta – in the form of Premier Ed Stelmach, and he’s decided what’s best. And what’s best, read my lips, is no tax increases.

This leaves only two questions: (1) Which taxes will have to increase? (2) What are we paying those Cabinet ministers for again?

Before and after images of Stalinist purge of the NDP. Political figures may not be exactly as illustrated. Events depicted may not have actually happened.

A month ago to the day, the great minds who set the editorial course of the august Edmonton Journal penned a hysterical editorial assailing NDP Leader Brian Mason for having the effrontery to suggest in the Legislature that “Stalin would be proud” of a bill giving the government the power to freeze land development.

A bit of an overstatement perhaps – I’m sure Stalin would have been prepared to do more than just freeze land development – but all in all this seemed like the sort of harmless rhetorical piffle we expect in the Alberta Legislature.

Nevertheless, not being ones to allow a chance to bash New Democrats to pass, the Journal editorialists soared high on wings of outrage, hilariously excoriating the hapless social democrat for being “insensitive to the man who runs the government, a man of Ukrainian heritage.”

Oh my! Ed Stelmach’s ethnicity, they intoned, made such shots “profoundly personal,” and therefore called for unflattering comparisons with the late chairman of the late central committee of the late Communist Party of the late Soviet Union to be sent into permanent rhetorical exile.

Very well, we all agreed, and packed our Stalinist metaphors away with our last faded Che Guevara T-shirt.

So it came as a mild surprise yesterday morning to discover in the spot usually reserved for the Journal’s principal editorial the very same Stalinist metaphor directed at Mr. Mason and the New Democrats.

The offending piece was a lengthy screed by Alvin Finkel, the Athabasca University professor who calls with tiresome regularity in the pages of the Journal for a shotgun marriage between the New Democrats and the Alberta Liberals on the dubious grounds that this would put paid to our sensitive premier’s Conservative majority.

Never mind that it’s far from certain New Democrats would vote Liberal in the absence of a social democratic candidate, or vice versa. Or for that matter that the premier’s many supporters would for some reason stop voting Conservative.

Likewise never mind that the individuals whose donations finance the New Democrats would continue to give money to a Liberalized party run by people they see as not much more than Conservatives with a better brand of aftershave. For that matter, never mind that the Alberta New Democrats democratically considered the matter at their last convention and defeated it by between 95 and 97 per cent.

Prof. Finkel became so overwrought at thought of Knee-Dippers refusing to mount his creaky hobbyhorse that he accused them of plotting “a Stalinist purge” against him and his supporters. This passed blithely through the Journal’s thin line of editors and into print.

Now, the professor barely has enough supporters for a purge of Stalinist proportions. There seem to be about a half dozen of them in the entire province – half, presumably, on the Journal’s editorial board, judging from the amount of ink he receives.

Still, some New Democrats can be forgiven if they dream of showing the irksome prof the door.

But the real questions are whether, in the minds of the brainiacs who run the Journal, Stalinist references are only naughty when directed at Conservatives, or at Conservatives of Ukrainian descent. One also wonders, inevitably, if the Journal’s great thinkers have lost their short-term memories as their once-influential newspaper slips toward irrelevance. Or have things just got to a point where, like their colleagues over at Sunmedia, no one employed by CanWest gives a damn about a little thing like consistency?

I don’t suppose anyone needs to point out that asking an unco-operative and destructive party member to find a new political home hardly amounts to “a Stalinist purge.”

Your blogger with NDP MLA Rachel Notley. It’s time for Rachel to lead the Alberta NDP.

Don Sinclair’s excellent local news blog at www.mybirdie.ca continues to foster lively commentary about the state of politics and the economy in St. Albert and Alberta.

Prompted by letters I spotted there yesterday, I sent the following note, which Don published today:

Don:

I was very interested in the comments by George Proulx and Jim Starko on your Website yesterday about pensions and health care. They reflect what I believe is a fairly common sentiment in Alberta about the sense of entitlement and arrogance that characterizes the Stelmach government.

This government’s behaviour is typified by extreme, even obscene, generosity to people who for one reason or another are insiders and cronies, and mean-spirited parsimony and outright hostility toward programs that benefit ordinary taxpayers or society as a whole. Gold-plated pensions for well-connected senior managers are an example of the former; attacks on funding for pensioners’ pharmaceutical needs and on our public health care system are examples of the latter.

George is completely correct when he suggests it is nonsense to claim capable and talented people won’t do good work for salaries much more in line with what the rest of us are paid. And Jim is quite right to state that anything done by the Minister of Health must have the approval of the Premier. That’s how our Parliamentary system works. But I am growing impatient with suggestions like Jim’s that Premier Stelmach should pay attention to “what Albertans are trying to tell him.” Why should he? We never hold him to account.

Really, we Albertans have no one but ourselves to blame for this sorry state of affairs. We are perpetually dissatisfied with the government’s policies. We constantly complain we weren’t informed of the government’s agenda during election campaigns. And we regularly return this government to power with massive majorities. Is it any wonder they seem to grow more arrogant with each passing year? What would they have to do to incur our displeasure in the polling booth? Drop an atomic bomb on us? I fear the survivors would crawl out of the rubble and vote Conservative!

Questioned about their voting behaviour, Albertans often ask, “What alternative is there?” But really, shouldn’t the question now be, “What alternative could be worse?” At this point, letters to the editor, or letters to our Conservative MLAs, are not going to do any good. The only remedy that will work is to demonstrate our dissatisfaction by voting for opposition candidates on voting day. If we can’t bring ourselves to do even that, I guess we deserve our fate.

David Climenhaga
St. Albert

Don responded with the following comments:

I suspect there is much truth in what you write David, but until the NDP or the Liberals come up with a charismatic leader, a real leader, they will remain in the political wilderness in Alberta. Brian Mason is boring and tired and is seen as the bus driver he once was by most voters. The Liberals keep trying and failing to find that person as well.

Tired old familiar opposition faces just don’t cut it in Alberta. They need much younger people involved. Someone with vision and foresight and the guts to enact popular programs and protect seniors, but not forgetting all Albertans. That elusive mystery leader of either opposition party is still very much at large.

In fact, I believe the Opposition mystery politician that Don describes exists and sits in the Alberta Legislature. To wit: NDP MLA Rachel Notley.

I was not always a Notley fan, leastways, I admit that had my doubts when she was first elected as MLA for Edmonton Strathcona.

But Ms. Notley’s consistently strong performance in the Legislature has made a believer out of me. Ms. Notley is smart, hardworking, a fine speaker and, yes, quite charismatic. She has consistently mopped the floor with the government and the Liberals in Question Period. Her efforts this year have kept many important stories that otherwise would have been ignored on the Alberta news agenda.

Brian Mason has been a devoted and steady leader for the NDP. He has kept them on the political map for many difficult years. But, alas, I believe that Don’s assessment that Mason is “boring and tired” reflects the views of most Alberta voters.

It’s time for the NDP – and perhaps Ms. Notley herself – to recognize the need and make Ms. Notley the leader.

Never in Canada! No Canadian newspaper has a link like this one – and for good reason! What you don’t know won’t hurt you.

Edmonton-St. Albert Member of Parliament Brent Rathgeber has a contest going with some other Edmonton-area MPs, whose names mercifully escape me at the moment, to see who has the most patriotic constituents.

As soon as they arrive in the mail, we can all prove our loyalty to the Fatherland by posting little flag stickers in our windows and sending a reply card back to our MP. Whichever MP gets the most reply cards wins. (Wins what? Beats me. You’ll have to ask Mr. Rathgeber, at right, about that…)

Never mind the cost. This project should keep us all happy and our minds focused on the right things – i.e., not the federal Conservative minority government’s lame effort to deal with the recession.

Anyway, as Mr. Rathgeber’s political aide reminds anyone who writes him to complain about the expense to taxpayers, Parliamentarians get such a great break on printing and mailing that it’s almost as if we’re making money by sending these suckers out! (OK, I exaggerate. Click here and judge for yourself.)

Anyway, I’m sure a press release will be along shortly telling us who is most patriotic. Go St. Albert!

But in the meantime, I have an even better contest challenge for Mr. Rathgeber!

Back in mid-June, the Toronto Star phoned up a bunch of MPs (I have no idea if our Mr. Rathgeber was one of the anointed, but probably not) and asked them how they used their Parliamentary expense budgets.

Amazingly, almost all the MPs the Star approached basically told the newspaper (which is pretty much the only one in Canada that still does this kind of stuff) to, er, get lost.

The response was much the same, the Star said, whether they phoned Conservatives, New Democrats, Bloquistes or Liberals. (I put Liberals last on the list because, as it happens, there were four exceptions who were actually prepared to fess up the facts, and they were all Libs from Ontario or Quebec.)

By the way, don’t be concerned if you missed this story. It wasn’t you. As far as I can tell, our ever-vigilant Western Canadian dailies completely ignored this tale in favour of the usual U.S. sports gossip, celebrity drivel and assurances the local market for new 4X4 pickup trucks is about to turn around any moment now.

Regardless, the typical response to a newspaper reporter asking for details of an MP’s expense account with the intention of passing them on to the people who actually provide the cash was, apparently, “forget it, none of your business, take a hike, fly a kite, drop dead, we don’t have to tell you, and we never will.” Or words somewhat to that effect. To the public, I am sure, they are a little more gentle: “Trust us!”

Now, the conventional Canadian wisdom about Parliamentary expenses is that something like the recent expense-account scandal in Britain’s Parliament could never happen here because the level of scrutiny of MPs’ expenses in Ottawa is just so darn tough.

You’ll recall that about 20 British Parliamentarians have resigned or been pushed into retirement this year after details of their expense accounts became public – most famously chits submitted for dirty movie rentals and a moat-cleaning service. For some reason, this story was of interest to our Alberta media, possibly because there are so many moats out here in the New West.

But in Canada, the Star explained, “you can see how much of your money your MP has spent – an annual tally comes out each fall – but you have no right to learn how they spent it.”

So, while it might even be true that our Parliamentary expense-fudgery watchdogs are as tough as advertised, us taxpayers will never really know because no one is about to tell us if any of our MPs wanted to use our money to clean their moats or watch the video release of Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod (sorry, Parliamentary joke, at right), or whether such claims were honoured.

Apparently how our tax dollars are spent by MPs is not something with which we mere taxpayers can be safely entrusted – sort of like a military secret.

So here’s my challenge to Mr. Rathgeber and every other Alberta MP, including Linda Duncan of the New Democrats (at right): Give us taxpayers a full accounting of what you claimed on your Parliamentary expense account. Simple as that. It was our money, after all!

The prize to whichever MP is first will be the declaration in this space that you are Alberta’s Best MP – even if you’re not! (Just pop me a flare as soon as you’ve published the numbers.)

And if it’s you, Mr. Rathgeber, I also promise to put your flag in my window and mail back the postcard. In fact, I’ll do this even if you’re not the first to report.

So how about it, guys? Show us your expense claims!

This column appeared in today’s edition of the Saint City News.

The thing about writing a political column is you tend to be negative.

It can hardly be otherwise. You’re paid, after all, to pick nits!

So readers must forgive me if I stray into the positive and tell a good news story. That too can hardly be otherwise after last weekend. Let me explain:

Just a year ago I was asked to chair the community organizing committee of the 2009 Provincial Special Olympic Summer Games, which were scheduled to take place in St. Albert at the end of June, 2009. A certain willing suspension of disbelief was required: “It can’t be that much work,” I lied to myself, and cheerfully went off to the committee’s first meeting in the St. Albert United Church Hall.

Many of us on the committee didn’t know one another. Jobs remained to be filled. Even at that first meeting, though, the daunting nature of the task began to sink in.

Yet last Friday, as we sat with 1,800 other people at Servus Place watching our 880 athletes dance at the fabulous opening night show put together by the Canadian Progress Club of Saint Albert, we had the satisfaction of knowing we had created something special in more than name.

How was it done? Through the power of volunteers – proof of the reality that “many hands make light work.”

There were nearly 500 registered volunteers from Saint Albert, Edmonton, Morinville and other communities! What an incredible testament to our region that so many people would give so much time and effort to make these games a success.

It was also done through vision and commitment.

They come in for their share of knocks in this space, but Special Olympics 2009 would never have happened without the unwavering support of Mayor Nolan Crouse and city council. Nor would it have been quite the event it was without the generosity of Premier Ed Stelmach, who braved rock ‘n’ roll and dancers by the dozen to open the games.

City employees gave hours of their own time, as did the staff of Special Olympics Alberta. Whole platoons of Armed Forces personnel showed up in uniform to present medals. Paramedics volunteered to keep participants safe. Law enforcement officers raised funds and provided an honour guard. Businesses, unions, clubs and individuals contributed money, materials and time.

For me, though, the heart of this effort was our organizing committee.

There were Suzanne Kent and Elly Jagusch, who miraculously fed the multitude. My colleague Mary Guido co-ordinated a fleet of buses like Gen. Patton. Dennis Malayko organized sports venues with aplomb. St. Albert Recreation’s Roy Bedford greased the wheels at city hall when they squealed.

Leanne Mullen of AGLC organized volunteers. Councillor Gareth Jones drove us crazy guaranteeing we got protocol right. Paramedic Amanda Naven kept the games safe and secure. We never ran out of signs, pens or paper thanks to administrator Lana Gieck. Heather Schamehorn and Olav Rokne manufactured medals and generated publicity.

Paige Elniski of Special Olympics got us to our meetings. Athletes had a roof over their heads thanks to Gilda LaGrange. Terry Hillaby and Ian Thompson of the Progress Club created Friday night’s incredible entertainment.

Perhaps most important, Wendy Stiver of St. Albert Special Olympics never let us forget why we were doing this stuff.

And that’s just the organizing committee! Each one of these folks assembled their own energetic and talented committee. Together, they attended hundreds of hours of meetings.

When Special Olympics uses the slogan “Heroes in Life,” they mean our athletes, who made the games worthwhile with courage, maturity, good sportsmanship and dignity.

But I think we can use the same words to describe the many, many people who made these games a reality.

And that, truly, is a good news story!

Banned in Calgary: A clip from the Vancouver Humane Society’s advertising campaign.

Everybody in Alberta knows rodeo activities are cruel to animals. This is self-evident.

Whether roping calves is as unpleasant and unkind as, say, jabbing bulls with massive electrical shocks to make them buck or “accidentally” breaking the legs of chuckwagon horses in an attempt to cut off another team is a topic for debate, I suppose.

But the proposition that rodeo “sports” involve cruelty to animals is impossible to deny.

We let it go on because we don’t much care, because we enjoy it, or because there’s money to be made doing it. Sometimes all three.

Personally, I find many rodeo activities and the people who engage in them faintly distasteful. But whether rodeo is the hill to die on in a world full of injustice is a different matter.

Also self-evident is the fact that the Stampede Board owns Calgary’s soul and always has. This is so close to axiomatic that it is barely worth comment outside that benighted community – and unlikely to get much comment within its boundaries, as it turns out.

What may not be so evident to Albertans and others, though, is just how faint of heart and intellectually dishonest are the mainstream media in Calgary.

Word comes to us today that both the Calgary Herald and the Calgary Sun have refused to run advertisements – paid advertisements, for heaven’s sake – making the pretty obvious case that calf roping is cruel.

It was the Vancouver Humane Society that attempted to place the ads.

That the Calgary “Humane” Society failed to do so should surprise no one. Indeed, the Calgary Humane Society rather pathetically defines its goal as merely mitigating the effects of practices it knows to be cruel. “The Society recognizes that rodeo, chuckwagon racing and other related forms of entertainment involving the use of animals occur in Western Canada. Therefore, it is in the best interests of the animals involved that the Society work with those who use the animals to ensure the potential suffering is minimized,” it states weakly on its Internet home page. “As events, rodeo and chuckwagon races are not illegal.” (Right. Neither is cheating at cards.)

So the Vancouver Humane Society took on the task of tilting at that particular windmill. Good money after bad, if you ask me, because nothing is going to change in Calgary as long as there’s money to be made from hurting voiceless creatures. But it’s the Vancouver group’s right in a free society – if only there were a place it could run its ads. (Eventually the society managed to place one in a free entertainment weekly, where it will be seen by virtually no one.)

Given that anti-rodeo opinions are not going to gain much purchase among the denizens of so-called Cowtown, and given their constant whining about how tough it is to sell advertisements in this recessionary time, one would think the Herald and the Sun would jump to take the Vancouverites’ money.

Instead, they won’t touch it with an electric cattle prod.

I’ll tell you why: For more than 20 years, Calgary’s media have been afraid of honest debate.

The mainstream media in Calgary routinely suppresses opinions with which they disagree. (Or, in the case of routine Stampede animal cruelty, they suppress views that they know in their hearts to be true, but which offend the powerful clique to whom they answer.) This is as true of differing opinions about public health care, oil and gas royalties, the rights of working people and taxation as it is of the routine depredations of the “greatest outdoor show on earth.”

Of course, this is a big part of why readers and viewers in growing numbers throughout North America are giving up on mainstream media and turning to more balanced alternative sources on the Internet. In this regard, Calgary is not atypical. It merely illustrates the situation in particularly stark terms.

Mainstream newspapers and television stations are forever screaming about the vital role they play in local democracy as they come hat in hand to taxpayers for disguised subsidies such as favourable postage rates and tariffs on cable distribution of broadcasts.

But when an actual topic of debate arises in their community that is opposed by a wealthy and powerful group, they won’t even allow the proponents of an opposing view to buy an advertisement expressing a reasonable opinion.

They are craven cowards. They long ago forfeited any meaningful role in democracy, local or otherwise. They don’t deserve a dime of public money, or a shred of sympathy.

Let them live or die according the whims of their precious market. There’s more sport in watching their rapid descent into insolvency than there is in watching some poor beast be throttled at the Calgary Stoopede!