All posts tagged CBC

CBC journalist Charles Rusnell: slaying Alberta’s Tory dragon, one scandal at a time …

by David Climenhaga on May 17, 2013 in Alberta Legislature, Alberta Politics, CBC, Investigative Reporting, Media, Progressive Conservatives with 1 Comment

Your blogger with CBC investigative reporter Charles Rusnell. Below: Edmonton-Manning MLA Peter Sandhu; Mr. Sandhu with Alison Redford in a Tory Party photo grabbed from the Daveberta.ca blog. The photo-bomber is Calgary-Fort MLA Wayne Cao.

You’d think it would be easy to run a petroleum-soaked, cash-rich jurisdiction like Alberta, but a day seldom seems to pass out here on the western edge of the Great Plains without our governing Progressive Conservative Party suffering another pratfall or embarrassment.But how many Albertans know that so many of these scandals bedevilling our permanent governing party have been uncovered by the same guy — a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. investigative reporter named Charles Rusnell?

It was Mr. Rusnell who broke stories on, among other things, former Tory leadership candidate and senior minister Ted Morton’s bogus government email account; a host of illegal political donations, including the one from Athabasca University; Tobaccogate, wherein a law firm that had the premier’s ex-husband for a partner got picked for years of highly lucrative legal work; former Alberta Health Services CFO Allaudin Merali and his wonderful expense account; Alison Redford’s sister’s iffy political donations; and the disturbing tale of the whistleblower at Transcanada Pipelines.

The latest Conservative caucus calamity (C3) uncovered by Mr. Rusnell is the troubling case of Peter Sandhu, the Tory MLA for Edmonton-Manning, who since his election in 2008 has generally been assessed as a legislative under-performer but not much more.

A low performance rating is no barrier to re-election around here, however, as long as the MLA in question has official permission to put his or her face on a blue-and-orange PC lawn sign, something Mr. Sandhu proved in April 2012.

Nevertheless, Mr. Sandhu is performing well beyond specifications in the press clippings department right now – indeed, to such a degree that he’s at least temporarily no longer a member of Premier Alison Redford’s PC caucus.

On Tuesday, the Edmonton investigative staff of the CBC was reporting that Mr. Sandhu’s house-building company, NewView Homes, not only has a history of chronic debt and faces dozens lawsuits for unpaid bills, but a goodly portion of its liabilities weren’t properly disclosed as required of an MLA under the province’s Conflicts of Interest Act.

Worse, Mr. Rusnell revealed, his investigation “uncovered a false statement made by the MLA in a sworn affidavit filed in a civil court case involving a dispute over an alleged debt.” The CBC says it can show Mr. Sandhu was in Canada at a time he swore he was in India.

Yikes! Now the opposition parties of the left and right are screaming for Mr. Sandhu’s head and demanding that the RCMP step in and lay charges.

The Redford Government would really rather do nothing at all, thank you very much. Premier Redford and Human Services Minister Dave Hancock – who is also the Government House Leader and as readers of this blog will recall, according to the Edmonton Journal the moral compass of the Tory caucus – lamely tried to praise Mr. Sandhu for doing “the honourable thing” and jumping before he was pushed.

So, is Mr. Rusnell on a crusade against the Progressive Conservatives?

No doubt it seems that way deep inside the Redford cabinet bunker, but it’s said here that it wouldn’t really matter which party was in power, Mr. Rusnell would be going after bad behaviour with the same pit-bull fervour.

Charles Rusnell is just one of those guys who can’t stand hypocrisy, special dealing, rule breaking, insider trading and the idea that the law is for everyone else – just the sort of things you’d expect to be rampant in a province that has been run by the same party for 42 years and essentially the same crowd for almost twice that long. Really, probably the only way to get him off your case is to behave yourself.

If Mr. Rusnell were a police officer, he’d be the kind of cop who’d ticket the chief’s car at a funeral. Instead, he’s a former print reporter with a lot of knowhow about filing Freedom of Information requests.

Years ago, Mr. Rusnell worked for the Edmonton Journal, but they pushed him over the side along with many other skilled senior reporters who cost too much and knew too much for the beancounters in Ontario who run the paper.

So nowadays, while the investigation-free daily timorously ducks behind its leaky new paywall, Mr. Rusnell wins awards and breaks scandals one after the other for the national public broadcaster, which is hated by Conservatives everywhere for doing just this kind of thing.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised Mr. Rusnell will be breaking another C3 very soon.

Meanwhile, in other news, Mr. Merali, the former AHS CFO, is back in the news, demanding the payment of the $580,000 severance package he was denied when he was made to walk the plank for embarrassing the government when his sometimes lavish expenses turned up in one of Mr. Rusnell’s most famous reports.

And reading between the lines of the news coverage Wednesday, it sounds very much as if the people who run AHS recognize they’re going to have to pay him – which will be yet one more serious embarrassment for the Redford Government.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Mysterious 2011 review of Alberta Labour Code explained – corporate influence, of course!

by David Climenhaga on April 26, 2013 in Alberta Federation of Labour, Alberta Politics, Construction Competitiveness Coalition, Labour Relations with 4 Comments

Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan, right, speaks to yesterday’s AFL news conference at the Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre. Your faithful blogger can be glimpsed at the far right. Beside him, the CBC’s Charles Rusnell. Below: Rusnell, Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason.

Back in the summer of 2011, as Ed Stelmach’s reign as premier of Alberta ground toward its inevitable terminal moment, then-employment-minister Thomas Lukaszuk sent around a letter advising stakeholders he was about to commence a review of the Alberta Labour Code.

It had to be done, said the minister responsible for the province’s labour portfolio, “to ensure we remain competitive over the longer term.”

Major players in Alberta’s labour movement found this development disquieting, not because the Code doesn’t need revising, but because no one in labour had any idea how such a thought had come to enter the minister’s normally relatively empty headspace.

No one connected with a labour union had been given a hint anything was up – with the sole exception, it turned out, of the Christian Labour Association of Canada, a group condemned in labour circles as an employer-dominated union that works hand in glove with construction employers.

It also seemed like an odd time to launch a review, with the government about to change leaders. Moreover, the make-up of the two-member review panel hardly inspired confidence – a lawyer with tight connections to the Progressive Conservative government and another known for his anti-union views.

So union leaders could be forgiven for wondering what the heck was happening.

Now we know – thanks to some assiduous research work by the Alberta Federation of Labour and some investigative journalism undertaken by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Yesterday morning, CBC Edmonton investigative reporter Charles Rusnell revealed a tangled web of unregistered lobbying, donations to the Progressive Conservative government and Premier Alison Redford’s leadership campaign, and behavior by a well-connected coalition of construction companies and anti-union contractors that one lawyer quoted by the CBC suggested “crosses the line in the Criminal Code bribery provisions.”

Regardless of the merits of that claim, for sure substantial donations were made to the PCs and there was intense lobbying by the group, made up of companies and individuals who with one exception were not registered as lobbyists.

It appears quite clear from the correspondence uncovered by the AFL researcher that members of the group, which termed itself the “Construction Competitiveness Coalition,” tried to tie generous support of the PC Party to specific changes in legislation, namely the Labour Code, desired by member companies.

Many of the changes the CCC wanted were clearly designed to put construction trade unions out of business. The Code as currently written, they claimed at the time, was “making Alberta companies uncompetitive,” which likely explains where Mr. Lukaszuk got his breezy explanation for his actions.

The evidence reported by the CBC yesterday also suggests several influential government members – including then-premier Stelmach, Premier Redford and Mr. Lukaszuk – enthusiastically entertained the CCC’s lobbying efforts, although they must have known only one member, the virulently anti-union Merit Contractors, was registered as a lobbyist.

In fairness, Alberta’s lobbying law is subject to interpretation in places, allowing unregistered lobbyists 100 unregulated hours as freebies. But it is known that Ms. Redford’s leadership campaign received donations of $26,900 from CCC members, and all leadership campaigns received donations of at least $121,800 from the group’s members. The PC Party got $186,750 in donations from the anti-union coalition between 2009 and last year.

CCC members received close to $1 billion in government contracts and grants over a six-year period.

By the 2012 election campaign, many of the CCC’s ideas had made it into the PC Party’s official election platform, where they can be found on page 30.

Less than two months later, when Ms. Redford was premier and the CCC was growing dissatisfied at the pace of the changes it was looking for, Tom Brown, a senior vice-president of Ledcor, one of the companies in the CCC, fired off a sharp note to the executive director of Premier Redford’s Calgary office.

In it, Mr. Brown said of his company and PCL Construction, “We both made major contributions to Ms. Redford’s leadership campaign and to the PCs’ election campaign fund (in Ledcor’s case up to the legislated maximum). Other members of our Coalition were also significant supporters of both the Premier and the PC Party. … there will be huge disappointment and possibly misgivings within our Coalition if I do not have something concrete to report next week.” (Italics added by me.)

For all intents and purposes, it sounds very much as if Alberta’s anti-union construction companies demanded, and very nearly got, the chance to write their own governing legislation!

As Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason noted at a news conference with AFL President Gil McGowan yesterday, “what these letters and emails show is that the PCs have been more than willing to collude on changing laws that affect Alberta workers and their families with the usual group of funders, friends and insiders.

“The premier accepted significant donations from Merit and the rest of this coalition during the PC leadership race and the last election,” Mr. Mason said. “It’s very clear they weren’t asking for changes to the Labour Code – they were expecting them.”

By the way, Ms. Redford’s office fought hard to keep several pages of this correspondence secret – but was overruled by the province’s privacy commission when the AFL appealed.

The AFL has called for the review put into motion by Mr. Lukaszuk in 2011 to be scrapped immediately as it is obviously hopelessly tainted.

The labour umbrella organization also demanded a full investigation of the CCC and the government under the Conflict of Interest Act and the Lobbyists Act.

Observers of the continuing travails of Ms. Redford’s government can only shake their heads and wonder, “What next?”

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Sorry for anti-Roma rant? As It Happens interviewer demolishes Sun News VP

by David Climenhaga on March 26, 2013 in Ezra Levant, Media, Sun News Netwrok with 10 Comments

CBC interviewer Carol Off, photo grabbed from the Internet. Below: Kory Teneycke, Ezra Levant.

If you think Sun News Network is bad now, just wait until they’ve got their ruling from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that their broadcasts must be carried on basic cable television and paid for by cable subscribers.

Any listener could infer they’ll be much worse after listening yesterday evening to CBC interviewer Carol Off demolish Sun News Network Vice-President Kory Teneycke’s slippery attempt to defend the far-right network’s commentator Ezra Levant for his racist diatribe against the Roma people six months ago.

In a short segment on the CBC’s As It Happens radio program last night, Mr. Teneycke, a former communications director for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, remained determinedly barricaded inside his “message box,” doing his best to sound contrite while refusing to acknowledge the patently racist intentions of Mr. Levant’s remarks on the Sept. 5, 2012, episode of his regular Sun News program.

“I don’t believe his intent was racist,” Mr. Teneycke insisted at one point in response to Ms. Off’s persistent questioning, which could serve as a textbook example of the now mostly forgotten art of how to conduct an interview with an evasive subject. “I don’t think his intent was spreading hatred.”

Indeed, Mr. Teneycke suggested at one point, Mr. Levant’s rant was just misunderstood … it was merely meant to be entertaining and satirical, even if it didn’t quite make the grade in that regard.

And why did Mr. Levant himself wait six months, Ms. Off wondered, to apologize for his remarks? Really, Mr. Teneycke seemed to suggest, the network’s sly apology in September 2012 ought to have been enough.

As has been noted in this space, it was hard to take that apology very seriously when it stated, “it was not the intent of Sun News, or anyone employed by Sun News, to promote negative stereotypes about the Roma people.” Excuse me!

“Why didn’t you fire him?” Ms. Off persisted, noting, “I would have been fired for saying that.”

Ah, Mr. Teneycke responded, but he knows Mr. Levant. “There’s no hatred in his heart.”

Anyone who heard the original nine-minute episode of The Source back in September would find this explanation very hard to square with what was actually said by the well-known commentator. Unfortunately, readers will be hard pressed to confirm that now, since Sun News as washed all copies of Mr. Levant’s vicious screed down the corporate Memory Hole and a recording placed on Youtube.com by a third party has been removed “due to a copyright claim by Sun News Network.”

Ms. Off’s interview left listeners with the inevitable conclusion that the timing of Sun News Network’s pleas to the CRTC for must-carry instead of optional status for its broadcasts on basic cable service – and the $18 million or so in consumer subsidies that would flow to it each year as a consequence is what is driving the network’s untypical and convenient remorse.

Not having that money, Mr. Teneycke claimed, poses an “existential threat” to the survival of Sun News – a bit of a stretch to anyone who understands the economics of the broadcast industry in Canada.

Still, the timing of Sun News’s CRTC application and the market fundamentalist network’s desire to get its snout deep into the public trough is no doubt part of the story. Its application is scheduled to be heard by the CRTC in less than a month, on April 23.

But other commentators on the Internet, like Rabble’s Karl Nerenberg, have made a persuasive case that Mr. Levant came very close to being charged with hate speech by the Metro Toronto Police Service and was saved only by highly unusual political interference with the police investigation by senior officials of the Ontario government.

Now that would have looked really bad for the network’s shredded credibility!

The Ontario officials, wrote Nerenberg, were “deterred by Levant’s well-known reputation for being a loud-mouthed bully, and didn’t want the Ontario government getting into a public spitting match with Sun News’ professional ranter. So Levant, ironically, was saved by his own notoriety and unsavory reputation.”

The Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui reports that staff of Toronto’s Roma Community Centre were told by police “they found more than enough evidence to charge Levant under the Criminal Code, and the Crown attorney agreed.” Detectives said they’d never before encountered a decision to reject charges in such circumstances.

This is why, of course, Mr. Teneycke’s previous employment in the Prime Minister’s Office is important, as is the warm and prominent reception received by Mr. Levant at the recent Manning Centre conference on conservative big ideas – which one hopes do not include encouraging organized attacks on identifiable cultural groups.

As Mr. Nerenberg wrote, “despite his near-buffoon status, Levant is still capable of striking politically-motivated fear in the hearts of senior decision makers.”

Well, we all know from experience how bullies operate.

If the Sun News Network and Mr. Levant are now rewarded for their glib and evasive apologies – which parsed carefully were only for causing offence, not for the offence caused – they will be further empowered.

If there are no consequences for their actions because they have friends in high places, their behaviour will grow more extreme.

This is just the way bullies are. So if you think Sun News Network is bad now, count on it they’ll be much worse if the CRTC forces cable subscribers to subsidize their activities.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Progressive Conservatives and Alberta’s government: one entity, indivisible, under God?

by David Climenhaga on February 9, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics with No comments

Participants in today’s Alberta Economic Summit solemnly await Premier Alison Redford’s arrival at Calgary’s Mount Royal University. Many are called but few are chosen, and they may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Stefan Baranski, Charles Rusnell and Stephen Carter.

As befits an almost exclusively political event, criticism of today’s Alberta economic summit by the Opposition Wildrose Party prompted a harsh and highly partisan riposte by the Redford Government.

A news release issued yesterday on government letterhead over the name of Stefan Baranski, Premier Alison Redford’s communications director, accuses Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith of a “deliberate misinformation campaign” against the premier, the summit and the March 7 budget.

The release was responding to an opinion piece in the Calgary Herald yesterday by Ms. Smith that accused the Redford government of favouring “tax hikes over spending cuts” and claimed the premier “can’t stop talking about taxes.”

Under the heading “Danielle Smith wrong about Alberta Economic Summit,” the highly partisan government/PC release uses colourful language to excoriate the Wildrose Party, which it says “from one day to the next … can’t quite get its story straight” and additionally accuses Ms. Smith of flip-flopping on the MLA pay cut.

OK, this is all in good fun and part of the rough-and-tumble world of politics. Indeed, the government has a legitimate gripe about Ms. Smith’s characterization of the premier’s position on taxes.

But the issue here is that by sending its media release out on government stationery, Ms. Redford’s Progressive Conservative Party blurs the line between the party and the government and oversteps the traditional limits on what’s properly a partisan party activity and what’s an official government act.

But then, after more than four decades in power, it’s not hard to understand how Alberta Progressive Conservatives have come to think of their party and the province’s government as one entity, indivisible, under God.

The partisan nature of Mr. Baranski’s release sparked a short and highly entertaining slapfest on Twitter between CBC investigative journalist Charles Rusnell and former Redford chief of staff Stephen Carter, now the Hill & Knowlton PR agency’s Calgary-based “national strategist.”

“Another blatantly partisan #pcaa release on #abgov letterhead,” Mr. Rusnell groused. “Anything goes now?”

“Same tax dollars used by the opposition to attack govt. and by Chaz #doublestandard?” Tweeted back Mr. Carter, whose paw prints are reputed to be all over the summit plan and who lately is reported by Mark Lisac’s subscription-only Insight Into Government newsletter (which does not appear online) to have reemerged in the premier’s office “helping with logistics.”

Mr. Rusnell’s reference to another party release on government letterhead acknowledged that this has happened before, back in December, when the government was accused of crossing an ethical line for responding the same way to Opposition attacks in the Tobaccogate affair.

“I think it’s definitely a transgression,” said political scientist Simon Kiss in a CBC story at the time. “It’s pretty inappropriate for government resources and government staff to be including partisan attacks in public communications,” explained Dr. Kiss, a former Alberta NDP staffer who is now an expert in political communications at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

In fairness, Mr. Baranski’s news release did not appear on the official government website – nevertheless, its presentation certainly gives the impression that the PCs either don’t get, or don’t care about, the difference between their party and the government they’re entrusted to lead.

Indeed, one could argue that the entire one-day economic summit exercise, set to begin this morning at Mount Royal University, intentionally blurs the lines between partisan PC party campaign activities designed to achieve political goals and the government’s role running the province.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

With no market for hate and right-wing drivel, Sun News comes cap in hand for public subsidy

by David Climenhaga on January 22, 2013 in Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Sun News Network with 16 Comments

More gruel, sir? The face of Sun News Network that Sun News Network would like you to see as they beg for public subsidies. Below: The real face of Sun News Network.

Sun News Network, that fearless foe of state subsidies for the CBC, wants you, Dear Television Viewer, to directly subsidize it to the tune of $18 million a year.

Have no doubt, that’s just the beginning, but it would nicely cover losses the company says now amount to a modest $17 million a year – hardly a corporate killer, one would think, but apparently enough to get Sun News queuing up at the public trough.

It turns out, as others have discovered before them (Ted Byfield, c’mon down!) that there’s not much of a market in Canada for the kind of market fundamentalist pap Sun News peddles – at least when consumers have the choice not to pay for it.

There’s even less of a market, by the sound of it, for the filthy language and outright hate-mongering indulged in by some of the network’s so-called commentators.

Given the opportunity to choose to watch Sun TV, viewers run away in droves. And who can blame them with boring drivel like Ezra Levant’s regular venomous rants about the Roma, Idle No More protesters, Hispanic business executives, environmentalists and anyone else who provokes his ill-managed anger to fill the seemingly interminable 24-hour broadcast day?

Now the so-called news channel, which disseminates anything but news, has gone with its grubby cap in hand to one of Mr. Levant’s targets, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to beg for the right to inject its poison directly into almost every Canadian home because it desperately needs the wholesale revenue that would then automatically flow back into its coffers.

To put this in broadcast-speak, Sun News and its separatist bosses at Quebecor Inc. want the CRTC to grant it “mandatory carriage,” which means you can’t keep it off your TV dial because it would be included in basic cable coverage everywhere in Canada. That way, I guess, it’ll be easier for them to campaign against opposition parties led by committed federalists from Quebec, of which there will soon be two.

In the normal course of events, a broadcast regulatory agency like the CRTC is the sort of group that would provoke one of Mr. Levant’s trademark jeremiads, complete with accusations it is staffed by civil servants itching to help out “union bosses” by “censoring” his harangues.

But for the moment, Mr. Levant and the chorus of right-wing hysterics employed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s semi-official and ideologically approved state broadcaster are silent on the topic of the CRTC while they direct their supplications to it for a flow of public subsidies to be directed their way.

You see, Sun News Network is going deeper into the hole every day, with erstwhile Harper Government spokesthingy Kory Teneycke, now a vice-president of his former boss’s favourite network, pleading that opening the money tap “is live or die for us.”

For its part, the company claims it has market research that shows viewers would watch its programs if only they knew where to find them. But this is highly suspect, since cable companies push packages that include the network and viewers aren’t biting.

The fact is, if you wish, you can get a well-run focus group to endorse a ham sandwich for prime minister – which, come to think of it, is pretty much what Sun News Network spends its days doing right now to the minuscule audience of angry white gun-owning males and zitty-faced Internet trolls it has managed to attract so far.

The subsidy Sun News Network is seeking now would add up to about $4 a year from all cable subscribers to directly subsidize hate and propaganda, but you can count on it that, in the manner of all their ilk, the corporation will soon be back at the well for more.

So tell me, with Sun News imploring a federal agency for a quick infusion of cash from hard-pressed taxpayers, granted in the form of a bogus “user fee,” where’s the always noisy Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation? They’re like the proverbial cop, I guess, never around when you actually need them.

Regardless, according to the Globe and Mail, Sun News faces “stiff odds” in this effort, seeing as there are lots of other more credible and creditable broadcasters vying for the 10 channels that must be carried by all cable companies.

But Harper cronies and sympathizers are now deeply embedded in key positions at the CRTC and it has a proven track record of backing down and running away from confrontation with Sun News, as when the broadcast regulator hastily dropped its investigation of Mr. Levant’s on-air obscenities last fall after the network issued a vague and insincere apology.

Given all that, I don’t think we can count on the CRTC not to agree to put the Tory back into regulatory.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Raj Sherman must’ve nailed it, or Fred Horne would’ve walked from talks with docs

by David Climenhaga on December 3, 2012 in Alberta Medical Association, Alberta Politics, Alison Redford, Canada Health Act with No comments

CBC investigative journalist Charles Rusnell goes through Alberta Health Services expense accounts in the upcoming motion picture, All the Premier’s Relatives. Rusnell is played by actor Robert Redford, no relation. Don’t worry, people, I just made that up. But who could resist? Below: Dr. Raj Sherman, the Liberalberta leader, played by himself, and AMA President Dr. Michael Giuffre in his cameo appearance.

Lost last week in all the shouting about how much Alberta Premier Alison Redford had to do with that tobacco lawsuit work her ex-husband’s legal firm picked up was Liberalberta Leader Raj Sherman’s argument Health Minister Fred Horne broke the Canada Health Act when he imposed a pay formula on the Alberta Medical Association.

This may actually turn out to be the more significant story for Albertans, at least in terms of dollars spent. At any rate, it seems as if Dr. Sherman nailed it in the letter he sent to Ottawa last Thursday demanding the feds step in and make the province submit its dispute with the powerful physicians’ union to binding arbitration, as the docs desire.

How else can we explain Mr. Horne’s sudden change of heart with the AMA – telling the association on Nov. 16 that Alberta’s 7,200 physicians could like the deal he was imposing or lump it, then dropping the whole matter like the proverbial hot potato last Thursday?

Dr. Sherman, occasional Emergency Room physician that he still is, was presumably privy to the same physicians’ shoptalk as AMA President Dr. Michael Giuffre. To wit, that the Canada Health Act requires provinces to use either conciliation or binding arbitration to settle a pay dispute with its physicians.

“Failing to so means that the province isn’t meeting the accessibility provisions of the Act and could result in the federal government imposing penalties,” the former PC MLA turned Liberal leader said in a news release that was significantly underplayed by media.

Dr. Sherman also complained that Mr. Horne’s decision to stuff the pay deal up the docs’ noses didn’t exactly send the right message from a government that’s “trying to shake off allegations of physician bullying and intimidation,” but here’s a guess that this wasn’t the part of his message that lit the fire under Mr. Horne.

Regardless of how it came about, Mr. Horne and Dr. Giuffre emerged from Government House Thursday evening to announce that, lo and behold, it was all a misunderstanding, nothing was ever imposed, surely everyone understood that, and the talks were back on again, even though they’d never really been off … etc., etc.

In fairness to Mr. Horne, his original letter laying down the law to the AMA was cleverly written, and never really completely slammed the door on the resumption of bargaining.

Whatever transpired, pay negotiations between the Alberta Government and the AMA are now on again, and it seems likely Canada’s best-paid physicians will get more in the end than they would have from Mr. Horne’s seemingly arbitrarily imposed deal.

Perhaps the government can save a little money for the physicians’ by cancelling what’s left of its radio and newspaper ad campaign explaining to Albertans why imposing a deal on the docs was a righteous policy.

Mr. Horne must be hoping that the AMA has learned its lesson about the wisdom of buying advertisements attacking he government just hours before a hotly contested election, which is what they did last April. It’s not impossible, however, to conclude that this turn of events might have the opposite effect on the AMA’s strategic brain trust.

Meanwhile, with that hurdle out of the way, tout le monde political Alberta, gauche et droite, can get back to the business of excoriating the Redford Government for conflicts of interest, real and imagined.

It is said here that the CBC’s revelations about Premier Redford’s role in the choice of ex-hubby Robert Hawke’s law firm to do some of the legal work in the government’s massive lawsuit against Big Tobacco is just the opening act of the Opposition’s plan to paint the PC Government as corrupt all the way from now to the next election in 2015.

Bet on it that the spotlight will soon return to the role of the premier’s sister, a senior official of Alberta Health Services who as an employee of the old Capital Health Region improperly charged expenses to her employer that were directly used to support the PC Party.

One can only hope for the premier’s sake that no more Redford relatives are lurking on or near the government payroll in any capacity.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Expense account outrages? Only in government, you say? Puleeze!

by David Climenhaga on November 22, 2012 in Alberta Medical Association, Alberta Politics, Health Care with 5 Comments

Executives of Covenant Health enjoy a bottle of 2001 Il Piggione over lunch at Edmonton’s Characters Restaurant. Catholic health care executives may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Liberalbertaliberal Leader Raj Sherman.

Alberta’s health care gong show continued to wheeze along yesterday with another revelation by the CBC that a couple of senior execs at a publicly funded Catholic care provider bought expensive bottles of wine at lunchtime and billed them to their taxpayer-financed expense accounts.

Since the original founder of the Catholic Church is said to have made pretty good wine but also to have spoken disparagingly about extravagance, one could easily be conflicted about the $110 bottle of Il Piggione 2001 purchased by Covenant Health VP Jeffery Robinson in 2008.

But me, I have to admit I’m having trouble getting my knickers in a twist about this particular episode of the CBC’s long-running expense accounts series. Perhaps expense claims fatigue syndrome is setting in. Leastways, I felt that way until I heard Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman’s bloviations on the topic.

Dr. Sherman has been pretty quiet for the past few days while the Wildrose Party on the right and the New Democrats on the left did the heavy opposition lifting on this issue. (Government members got their exercise by running … away!)

So Dr. Sherman must’ve felt it was time for him and his Albertaliberals, Liberalbertans or whatever it is they’re calling themselves nowadays to step back into the ongoing brouhaha. He’s a medical man, don’tcha know, and therefore uniquely qualified to prescribe instant cures for all the Alberta health system’s many ailments.

“Here we have a religious organization – good people, God’s people – spending money on alcohol,” Dr. Sherman told the CBC. (So far, so good; with my previous caveat about God and alcohol in mind.)

He went on: “You tell me, which employer will allow their employees to start drinking on the job and ask the employer to pay for it? I only find this in government. It’s ridiculous and ludicrous.”

OK. Ridiculous and ludicrous it is, I guess. But Dr. Sherman only finds this in government? Excuse me? He must have lived a sheltered life. Sheltered in particular from the routine practices of the so-called business community, where making shareholders pay for a glass or two of high-priced booze at lunch is not exactly unheard of.

The difference, of course, between the expense account practices of the public and the private sectors is that everything in the private sector is a total secret. Shareholders and customers pay, and we never find out. The extravagances are much worse, but no one knows about them because (a) it’s a secret, and (b) we’ve been thoroughly propagandized into believing businessmen can do what they want with “their” money. And it’s still “their” money, in this view, even when it comes indirectly from taxpayers’ pockets via contracts with public agencies.

If there’s a reason expense account abuses are becoming more prevalent in the public sector, its said here, it’s because for the past 30 years or so we’ve been buying into this barrage of palpably false right-wing propaganda about how business does everything better.

So if we have to hire half-million-dollar-a-year executives instead of career public servants to run our public enterprises, they’re bound to bring their questionable private sector perks with them. And that includes, I’d suggest, $100-plus bottles of wine with lunch.

Indeed, now the rot is seeping more deeply into the public service where we feel compelled to pay outrageous private-sector salaries to get “the best people” and end up instead with some who are, let’s say, not the best.

The idea of public service – which was what built our great national public institutions, including our universities and public health care – has gone out the window, to the great detriment of our society.

Is it only me, or is it powerfully ironic that we hired these characters from the world of business to run our public services (and in many cases, where right-wing governments are in the driver’s seat, to intentionally run them into the ground to justify their privatization) and now we’re complaining that the managerial malpractices they brought with them are typical of the public sector?

Or, as Dr. Sherman outrageously misstates the facts, “I only find this in government”? Please!

We’d do better to consciously try to recreate the public service model of the not-so-distant past than pay attention to the anti-public-service blatherings of Dr. Sherman, a former Tory health apparatchik himself.

While we’re speaking of Alberta’s doctors, as predicted last time in this space, Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne now appears willing to restart negotiations with the Alberta Medical Association after he unilaterally ended them.

According to the Globe and Mail, Mr. Horne now says he’s willing to reopen talks with the docs – but not about money. However, with the physicians’ powerful union threatening job action – while promising to do nothing to harm their patients – you can expect the government to crater soon on that commitment too.

This is not necessarily bad news for any group that faces negotiations with the Alberta government in the next couple of years, and the political consequences for the government are probably less severe than those of a full-blown physicians’ uprising as the next general election in 2016 grows closer.

+ + +

I’ve been ranting here for months about how there’s only one true word in the title Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and that’s Canadian. And for all we know, even that might not be true.

It’s certainly not a federation and it surely doesn’t represent the interests of taxpayers. It’s another far-right AstroTurf group set up to advance the neoconservative agenda of “austerity,” anti-unionism and corporate tax breaks.

So what a delight it was to read of the CTF in Thomas Walkom’s column in the Toronto Star yesterday morning that this group “is an interest group, not a federation of taxpayers.” Thank you, Mr. Walkom, for stating this obvious and necessary truth. I believe this is a first for mainstream media.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Something hits the Alberta fan: Allaudin and his wonderful expense account revealed by CBC

by David Climenhaga on August 2, 2012 in Alberta Health Services, Alberta Politics with 9 Comments

Allaudin and his wonderful expense account? Departing Alberta Health Service executives may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: One of the few photos available of Allaudin Merali; CBC investigative journalist Charles Rusnell.

One is practically struck dumb by the astonishing CBC revelation that the Chief Financial Officer of Alberta’s massive single public health care agency was once accustomed to spending public money on his expense account as if there were no tomorrow.

Indeed, after yesterday’s revelation by the only investigative journalist still gainfully employed in that field in Western Canada that Allaudin Merali submitted expense claims for such items as fine wines, succulent gourmet meals and repairs and upgrades to his foreign-made luxury automobile totalling $346,208 to the old Capital Health Region between January 2005 and August 2008, there was no tomorrow.

Leastways, Mr. Merali’s career with Alberta Health Services, which took over the operations of the Capital Health Region in May 2008, was abruptly terminated mid-afternoon by the top bosses of the health behemoth, which is Canada’s fifth largest employer.

Back in the day when all this was apparently going on, by the way, Mr. Merali was CFO of Capital Health at an annual salary of $487,000 a year, give or take. Despite that healthy income, apparently no item was too picayune to escape inclusion in his busy expense account. Tea and a muffin? A bottle of soda? Minor parking fees? In they went!

Yesterday’s soothing AHS press release that announced Mr. Merali’s unexpected departure – which is sure to be a comfortable one, with a rich payout euphemistically referred to in the AHS statement as “a severance in accordance with the terms of his employment contract” – went to great lengths to assure taxpayers the expenses were nevertheless legitimate.

“Mr. Merali’s responsibilities in previous roles in health care included developing relationships with external partners, businesses and service providers and acting as an official representative in numerous meetings and functions. This included hosting events as well as representing the organization locally, nationally and internationally,” the news release urged readers to understand.

“These were an integral and necessary part of his duties,” we were assured by Acting AHS Chief Executive Chris Mazurkewich, who is normally AHS’s executive VP and chief operating officer, while CEO Chris Eagle was enjoying a hitherto quiet vacation somewhere far enough away not to have to put in an appearance.

Still, notwithstanding the complete legitimacy of these expenses large and small – which are thoroughly set out in the CBC story by investigative journalist Charles Rusnell, the man whose Freedom of Information request caused Mr. Merali’s well-appointed house of cards to tumble – the province-wide health agency quickly determined that the discovery “will detract from his ability to act as AHS’ Chief Financial Officer…” And thus it was… Allaudin, be gone!

It is known that after his departure from Capital Health, Mr. Merali moved to Ontario where his expense accounts as a consultant for EHealth Ontario, the government agency with the job of implementing that province’s electronic health records system, also made uncomfortable headlines.

It is not known if Mr. Merali’s expense accounting habits continued after his return to Alberta Health Services – although it is safe to assume that question will be asked at this morning’s news conference by Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne, at which pandemonium is certain to reign.

So what conclusions can we draw at this early moment in a story that is sure to linger uncomfortably for a long time? Here are just a few:

  • Very few people involved will escape embarrassment for something certain to outrage large segments of the taxpaying public. Indeed, it is fair to ask, how could this have been allowed to happen? Sheila Weatherill, once the well-paid CEO of Capital Health and back again as a member of the AHS Board, signed off on these expenses. Mr. Horne, back in the day as a health care consultant, enjoyed a nice meal on Mr. Merali’s tab – which means your tab and mine, baby!
  • Indeed, it is fair to say that if this had been revealed before the April 23 Alberta election, Danielle Smith would be premier of Alberta today! Ms. Smith, the leader of the Opposition Wildrose Party, was of course beaten by Premier Alison Redford and her Progressive Conservatives, in large part on the premier’s promise to preserve and protect Alberta’s public health care system – though surely this wasn’t the kind of thing voters had in mind.
  • Friends and foes of public health care alike will see arguments for their positions in this mess. And it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this kind of thing is why our public health care system costs so much. Surely it indicates that the superstition public sector managers must be paid and babied like corporate bosses has to end. Good people can be found who will run sophisticated organizations well out of a sense of public service and not bill their muffins and luxury car repairs to the taxpayer.
  • And Charles Rusnell, who broke this story and many others like it, will never win the National Newspaper Award he deserves. Why is that? Well, he doesn’t work for a newspaper any more, does he? Mr. Rusnell works for the “state broadcaster” that Canadian Conservatives would dearly love to destroy – and you can see why! The Edmonton Journal got him and many other talented journalists off its payroll long ago.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Top Ten Losers and Winners of the Alberta Election

by David Climenhaga on April 24, 2012 in Uncategorized with 15 Comments
Danielle Smith, leader of the upstart Wildrose Party celebrates her… Wait! That’s not Danielle! That’s Alison Redford! (Reuters Photo, snatched from the Internet.) Remember: Alberta political winners may not always be exactly as illustrated by the media and the pollsters. Below: The real Danielle Smith.

’Tis late and the CBC’s pancake makeup weighs heavy on your blogger’s face. As all the world must surely know by now, Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s hole card turned out to be an ace yesterday and Alberta’s 41-year Progressive Conservative dynasty will live a little longer, perhaps a lot longer.

So today there is no joy in Mudville – whether that place is located in the town of Okotoks, site of the world’s largest glacial erratic, or at 24 Sussex Drive – for the Mighty Flanagan has struck out. You can almost hear the disgruntled Wildrosers chanting 45 years is enough!

At least the good Dr. Tom Flanagan, hyperventilating neo-Con ideologue and author of the best-selling Harper’s Team, How I Created It All By Myself Without Any Help At All and Made That Little Twerp From Calgary West Into a Prime Minister, will have plenty of people to drown his sorrows with. They include the pollsters who intentionally or accidentally got it all so spectacularly wrong, the media pundits who spun their upstart Wildrose narrative for three years without reference to facts, to the blogosphere, which drank the media’s bathwater without so much as a gin chaser.

In these wee hours, though, we can merely hastily catalogue yesterday’s election losers and winners and leave the explanations and the more nuanced analysis to the morrow:

Loser No. 10: The Alberta Liberals
Winner No. 10: The Alberta New Democrats

Loser No. 9: Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman
Winner No. 9: Alberta New Democrat Leader Brian Mason

Loser No. 8: Private health care company executives
Winner No. 8: Alberta Health Services executives

Loser No. 7: Preston Manning
Winner No. 7: Peter Lougheed

Loser No. 6: Wildrose Campaign Manager Tom Flanagan
Winner No. 6: Progressive Conservative Campaign Manager Stephen Carter

Loser No. 5: Harper Conservatives
Winner No. 5: Red Tories

Loser No. 4: Ted Morton, the worst premier Alberta never had
Winner No. 4: Doug Horner, the best opposition leader Alberta never had

Loser No. 3: The Wildrose Party
Winner No. 3: The Progressive Conservative Party

Loser No. 2: Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith
Winner No. 2: Alberta Premier Alison Redford

And the No. 1 loser and the No. 1 winner are…

Loser No. 1: Alberta’s professional pollsters
Winner No. 1: There is no winner in this category

NOTE TO READERS: I just shamelessly revised this this morning when I thought of a better line!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Goodbye sweet Prins – did he jump or was he pushed?

by David Climenhaga on March 22, 2012 in Uncategorized with 8 Comments
Ray Prins prepares to walk the plank, possibly with a little prodding by his premier. Unexpectedly departing Alberta Conservative politicians may be pretty much as illustrated. Below: Mr. Prins as he appears to his friends and family.


Now hear this! Now hear this! All hands to Damage Control! All hands to Damage Control!

Did Ray Prins jump, or was he pushed?

We’ll probably never know for sure, but it certainly sounds as if the Progressive Conservative MLA for Lacombe-Ponoka and chair of the committee that has become Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s No. 1 political problem, exited stage right with a good hard shove.

At any rate, barely hours before an Alberta provincial election is likely to be called, Mr. Prins up and announced he wouldn’t be running for re-election after all, as his constituents had believed, leaving the governing party short one candidate at a decisive moment.

He made his unexpected announcement late Tuesday, ambiguously telling the CBC: “The media, opposition parties and public questioning my integrity as a person and an MLA. While I firmly believe that I have not contravened my oath of office, commitment to Albertans or the tenets of my faith, the issues surrounding the MLA compensation were an unnecessary distraction for my caucus colleagues in the upcoming election.”

Mr. Prins has been the chair of the Alberta Legislature’s now-notorious “do-nothing committee.” The Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, Standing Orders and Printing sparked widespread outrage when it was revealed members from all parties have been accepting an extra $1,000 a month even though the committee hasn’t met in almost four years.

For his troubles as chair, or lack of them, Mr. Prins has been getting an extra $1,500 monthly.

When the pot boiled over a few days ago and the appalling money-for-nothing optics turned the payments into a minor scandal, orders came down from the Premier’s office that at least some of the money must be repaid by government MLAs on the committee. After all, Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman had already handed back the full $40,000 he’d received for doing nothing on the committee.

Legislature insiders suggest the government members of the committee were in a state of apprehended insurrection when their boss demanded they cough up the dough – which many of them, presumably, had already spent. It’s not clear if Mr. Prins was one of the most mutinous committee members, but you can count on it that his belief he did nothing wrong in the eyes of God or Man is completely sincere.

A compromise of sorts was worked out, averting an outright rebellion, and the PC committee members agreed to pay back the portion of the overpayment accumulated since Ms. Redford became premier. Even so, in some cases that’s going to bite.

The trouble is, the compromise essentially required the committee members to concede they were taking money for nothing – and also refusing to pay everything back. Is it just me, or does that make the situation look even worse? Wouldn’t the optics be better to say this illustrates he problems with the intentionally deceptive pay scheme for all Alberta MLAs and make a case for paying them a straight-up salary that reflects their responsibilities?

Of course, another sensible thing for a government to do in this predicament would be to stall for a few weeks until the public had moved on to something else. Alas for Premier Redford, she is hoist on her own petard – having just eliminated her room for maneuver by getting a “fixed election period” law passed.

This might have sounded like a good idea a couple of months ago. Now it looks like the party’s been tied to the mast while the electoral ship takes on water! At any rate, with an election unavoidably looming and the CBC breaking a new embarrassing illegal donations story about the government virtually every day, it’s pretty clear Mr. Prins would have become the excruciating focus of voter outrage if he’d stuck around.

This way, the premier can lamely insist her caucus is united and all is well.

However it came about, someone decided Mr. Prins had to go. Maybe he took one for the team. Maybe someone pushed him down the plank.

Whatever it was, that splash you just heard was the sound of Ray Prins hitting the water.

That is all! That is all!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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