All posts tagged Dave Cournoyer

‘Excellence in commercialization’? University ‘mandate letters’ are dumb, but unlikely to mean much

by David Climenhaga on March 27, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alison Redford, Campus Alberta, Education, Post-Secondary Education, University of Alberta with 10 Comments

Contemplating the idea of Campus Alberta, which is not negotiable. Alberta post-secondary students, faculty, administrators and board of governors members may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Something really important, the Campus Alberta logo.

There’s really no need for Albertans concerned about higher education to get their knickers in a twist about the provincial government’s “mandate letters” to post-secondary institutions or the premier and her deputy’s maunderings about the state of political science and engineering education in this province.

Nothing much will come of these ambiguous notes, even if anyone can figure out exactly what their authors had in mind.

Anyway, it’s said here they’re just a diversionary tactic to distract voters from the real scandal: the deep and destructive cuts in post-secondary funding, especially the $43 million hacked out of the University of Alberta, which will go much farther than jargon-rich and barely literate mandate letters to reduce the institution from its present international status to that of the third-rate provincial technical school the Redford Government apparently has in mind.

“Hey,” the letters practically scream, “we’re not like that premier Ed Stelmach guy! This time we’ve got an actual plan!” And it involves “excellence in commercialization.” Really! I’m sorry to report I didn’t make that up.

But instead of getting mad about the fact the plan in question seems to boil down to cutting the crap out of every course that’s not endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and the Pipeline Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers, plus making sure the “Campus Alberta” logo is displayed everywhere, tout le monde Alberta has been in an uproar about Premier Alison Redford’s slapstick comment that “in order for us to be excellent, we can’t be mediocre everywhere.”

Well, God knows, though, we’re trying!

Ms. Redford asked, presumably rhetorically: “Do we need to have a political science faculty at every university, at every university and post-secondary institution across this province where every single one of them is aspiring to be the same? Do we? I don’t think so.”

This was apparently taken as a grave insult by political scientists everywhere, except most likely the ones at the University of Calgary’s cult-like “Calgary School,” until recently home to former Wildrose campaign manager Tom Flanagan, who probably reckon they’re a deadbolt cinch to become “Campus Alberta’s” single grand unified province-wide economics and poli-sci department.

(If this works out, maybe we can extend the idea to primary school and just have one Grade One reading class for the entire province, delivered by TV right after the Pepsi commercials. No wonder the Alberta Teachers Association signed off so peaceably on years of zeros!)

Where was I? Oh yeah, there was a similar uproar when the Deputy Premier and Advanced Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk, a former schoolteacher himself, started to ramble about the state of the province’s five engineering schools. “You don’t want to have five mediocre engineering schools. You’re better off having two really good engineering schools. There’s no doubt about it.”

Since, as my fellow blogger Dave Cournoyer pointed out on his Daveberta.ca blog, there’s also no doubt about it that there are actually only two engineering schools in the province of Alberta, a lot of Alberta engineers took this to mean that premier’s deputy took their work for, like, mediocre.

I wouldn’t know about that, although observation suggests their work stands up better than the loony theories of the Calgary School’s publicly paid ideologues.

There’s not much danger of anything much coming from these risible mandate letters because in every community where there’s a university with a campus and a history – and that would be all of them except Athabasca, where the university is only a virtual entity – there’s a community of well-connected and well-off people, many of them graduates and lots of them Tories, who will fight tooth and nail to protect it.

So it is preposterous to suggest, as the University of Alberta’s mandate letter does, that universities’ boards and administrations will sign on to anything much in the letter, whoever’s signature is forcibly affixed to the bottom on their behalf.

It’s even more preposterous to say, as Mr. Lukaszuk apparently did, that the whole scheme is not negotiable. Well, we’ll see about that!

Like bureaucracies everywhere, university officials will refuse to co-operate, drag their feet and argue publicly and vociferously with the government’s largely misconceived plan to somehow meld 26 universities, colleges, technology institutes and what have you into a bizarre Great Plains version of the University of California, only with higher fees, inferior offerings and no palm trees.

Indeed, the University of Alberta Board of Governors is already mailing out open letters.

They’ll keep it up until the nuisance goes away – which the way Ms. Redford and Mr. Lukaszuk are going about things, may not take too long.

And if Ms. Redford and Mr. Lukaszuk try to slap them down, graduates, students, faculty members, retirees, local business types and other dear friends will step into the breach with alacrity.

They’ll even, mark my words, resist about the only good idea in this whole dumb scheme – complete transferability of student courses between the institutions of “Campus Alberta.” Although, in fairness, you’d have to forgive a legitimate economics department for questioning the credentials of a “Calgary School” student who’s been taught Ludwig von Mises was an economist or Ayn Rand was a philosopher!

Expecting this to actually happen makes about as much sense as making under-funded universities guarantee they’ll ensure “Alberta’s economy is competitive and sustainable” – one would have thought that was the government’s job – or that they will develop “engaged critical thinkers, ethical citizens, entrepreneurial spirit.”

And don’t forget the need to “enhance your work with business and industry to maximize the responsiveness to regional economic and social needs.” Like, I guess, producing of compliant and obedient low-wage workers – so scratch “engaged critical thinkers” above!

Then we get to the really important part: “Actively engage in and promote the Campus Alberta brand, including the Campus Alberta logo on all institutional correspondence.”

Got that? Keep your eye out for the Campus Alberta logo. Especially as the next election draws nigh.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Education minister’s bluff called by apoplectic schoolteachers! Now what?

by David Climenhaga on February 27, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Teachers Association, Jeff Johnson, Labour Relations with 7 Comments

The trading pit: Is this what Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson sees when he thinks of the Alberta Teachers Association? Actual Alberta schoolteachers may not be exactly as illustrated. Then again, these days … Below: Mr. Johnson and ATA President Carol Henderson.

OK, Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson’s bizarre attempt to bluff the province’s 35,000 unionized schoolteachers into signing a contract has failed. Now what?

One week ago, Mr. Johnson mailed the president of the Alberta Teachers Association and the Chair of the Alberta School Boards Association a rambling letter setting out the government’s latest bargaining demands in what’s turned out to be a rocky round of negotiations with the province’s teachers.

While not particularly generous, it could be argued the government’s parsimonious position wasn’t all that far from the ATA’s modest last offer – a four-year deal with no pay increase in the first three years and a 1-per-cent lump sum in the fourth versus a four-year-deal with no pay increase in the first two years and 1 per cent and 3 per cent in the final two years.

The two sides also have differences over workload issues and how to resolve them. Still, veteran labour negotiators have bridged far bigger gaps when everyone agrees to sit down and act like grownups.

However, Mr. Johnson – who according to his official Legislature biography has a background selling photocopying machines and as a “futures trading floor pit boss” – blew the idea of playing nice to smithereens when he included a threat in his letter to cut teachers’ salaries if they wouldn’t agree to his proposal by March 7, when the provincial budget is scheduled to be tabled in the Alberta Legislature.

He’d already publicly mused about using legislation to force the teachers to live with whatever sort of a deal he wants to impose on them.

Well, maybe that kind of thing works when you’re a pit boss on the notoriously chaotic futures trading arena. But in labour negotiations it’s like waving the proverbial red flag in the face of a big angry bull.

Teachers all across the province – key members of the unnatural coalition that unexpectedly re-elected Ms. Redford and her government last April – collectively blew a gasket.

Yesterday, ATA President Carol Henderson told Mr. Johnson he could drop dead, although not in quite as many words.

“Teachers do not respond well to ultimatums,” she advised a news conference where, surrounded by teachers from throughout the province, she said the ATA’s Executive Council has unanimously rejected the government’s demand.

So if Mr. Johnson and the government of Premier Alison Redford had imagined they could force a deal with teachers to be signed by the time the budget comes down in eight days, that idea’s now done like dinner.

It’s almost as if Mr. Johnson had the misapprehension teachers couldn’t add up simple sums – they teach arithmetic, for heaven’s sake – and figure out that whatever they agreed to now could have no possible impact on a budget that is already written, sent to the printers and has quite possibly already rolled off the press!

It’s hard to imagine the pandemonium of negotiations among the ATA and various school boards across the province, which is apparently what’s on the agenda now that Mr. Johnson’s bluff has been called, being anything except protracted, acrimonious and politically deeply embarrassing for the government.

And if the government steps in now and legislates any deal for the teachers, it’s almost certain to destroy the progressive coalition that came to Ms. Redford’s rescue on April 23.

So what could Mr. Johnson have been thinking when he drafted his ridiculous letter – which seems to have been specially designed to wreck one of the few areas where the Redford Government has been doing quite well, labour relations with public sector unions?

After all, the fiasco that now seems very likely is sure to make us all forget the five years of labour peace with teachers shrewdly negotiated by the government of former premier Ed Stelmach, Ms. Redford’s unlucky predecessor, who nowadays looks pretty good.

In an excellent blog post yesterday, Daveberta.ca author Dave Cournoyer suggests the whole strange episode goes back to the deep divisions within the Progressive Conservative caucus over Ms. Redford’s leadership.

Mr. Cournoyer suggests Tory caucus members who supported other leadership candidates – which would be pretty well all of them – blame teachers for joining the party and electing Ms. Redford as leader.

“The tension is said to have led to more than a few heated arguments behind the thick wooden doors of Tory caucus meetings,” he wrote, considerably understating widespread rumours of screaming matches between the education minister and the premier. Well, she can hardly fire Mr. Johnson – the third education minister in as many years – without suffering another black eye.

So now, according to this way of thinking, disgruntled supporters of candidates such as Gary Mar, Ted Morton and Finance Minister Doug Horner are out for revenge against Alberta’s teachers.

On the face of it, this interpretation is almost as bizarre as Mr. Johnson’s negotiating strategy. After all, while teachers may have voted for Ms. Redford’s leadership, they also voted for her government – saving many a Tory MLA’s job in April 2012.

What’s more, they would almost certainly have done so again, had Mr. Johnson not blundered into their negotiations.

Still, as Sherlock Holmes so famously observed, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

And it’s getting so that Albertans need the assistance of a famous “consulting detective,” and not a fictional one either, to figure out what this government is up to!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Is Premier Alison Redford’s bitter fight with the docs about money, or control?

by David Climenhaga on February 1, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Health Services, Alberta Politics, Health Care, Health Insurance with 6 Comments

Who’s in change here? Progressive Conservative MLAs get ready to supervise the work of an Alberta Health Services medical team while Alberta voters look on. Health officials, physicians and electors may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: AMA President Dr. Michael Giuffre; a space invader

Is the increasingly bitter fight between Alberta’s government and the province’s physicians just about money? It’s said here it’s more about who gets to control the health care system.

If you need evidence for this assertion, look no further than the fact just two and a half months ago Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne said he was going to impose a pay deal on the docs that would have seen their salaries keep on rising.

Premier Alison Redford is now traipsing around the province explaining that these same doctors are being paid too much – why, they get 20 to 29 per cent more than their counterparts anywhere else in Canada!

“Quite frankly, before I start asking Albertans to pay health care premiums, I want to make sure that we’re getting the best deal possible with our doctors,” Ms. Redford told supporters during a recent telephone town hall. “At the end of the day, I think that’s really where we start to save some money with respect to things like health care.”

This is the leader of the same government that just days ago was about to force the same supposedly overpaid physicians to accept an imposed agreement that included a 2.5-per-cent lump sum payment and cost-of-living increases in each of the next three years.

Naturally, the doctors didn’t think that was enough and screamed bloody murder when Mr. Horne moved to unilaterally impose the contract on them. But it still raises the question: If they were not paid enough in November, why is the same pay too much now?

For his part, Mr. Horne has since withdrawn that deal, denied he imposed anything, and returned to the bargaining table with the AMA, setting the stage for the current slanging match.

AMA President Dr. Michael Giuffre conceded on CBC radio yesterday that Ms. Redford’s percentages are essentially correct, but argued that the costs of hiring nurses, renting space and otherwise operating a medical business in boom-bust Alberta are also higher by roughly the same amount.

He couldn’t resist the highlighting the irony of the fact that back in November the Redford Government spent $130,000 of taxpayer money on radio ads to promote an imposed settlement that now seems to have become far too expensive.

Accusing the government of “slamming” and “vilifying” physicians, Dr. Giuffre assailed the premier’s “often-confusing and frequently misleading” comments about physician pay as alarming and not particularly helpful to the on-again negotiations with the docs. He suggested the government is unfairly demonizing physicians because it desperately wants to hold the line on a budget deficit burgeoning in the face of lower prices fetched by Alberta petroleum resources.

Of course, the bitterness between the government and the AMA may go back a little farther than that. Alert readers will recall that the AMA backed the wrong horse in the final days of last spring’s election campaign, when the association bought advertisements that assailed the government and all but called on voters to elect a Wildrose government. Rest assured Alberta’s PC elephant has not forgotten!

Still, if you consider for a moment that the government’s real cost-control fight with doctors may be about who is going to be the boss of the health care system, the emphasis on Alberta physician pay premiums over other provinces suddenly makes sense.

Look at this from the government’s perspective. If you cede control of the system to physicians, who obviously have a dog in the hunt, the chances you’ll ever get health care costs under control are, shall we say, diminished.

Not only are Alberta physicians generously paid, but the billing structure is highly advantageous to their financial health. So it should come as no surprise that in the background of this public fight over wages, Mr. Horne has been chatting with his counterpart in Ontario about ways to change the formula by which physicians are compensated.

But if the government proposes any change to the billing process, it is likely to be attacked by the AMA as dangerous to patients – and chances are good many Albertans will listen. Both the government and the AMA also know that if you asked the typical Albertan in the street whom he or she would rather have in control of the health care system – doctors or politicians – the answer is likely to overwhelmingly favour the docs.

Yet if the government can’t slow down the rate at which health system costs are rising, the PCs and Premier Redford are bound to come under increasing pressure from the Wildrose Party – which can promise without a shred of evidence or accountability that its privatization schemes will deliver fairer, cheaper, more efficient health care.

Ergo, the government’s simplistic but easy-to-sell attack on the AMA from its flank makes political sense while Ms. Redford’s brain trust tries to figure out how to wrest control of the system from physicians and put it in the hands of more easily controlled officials.

Come to think of it, this is what former premier Ed Stelmach was up to when his government created Alberta Health Services back in 2008, not that that worked out the way anyone expected.

Saying doctors are paid 20 to 29 per cent more is just easier to explain than making a complex case for restructuring the way routine health services are delivered to most Albertans, many of whom are focused on the complaint they can’t find a family doctor.

Even Albertans who understand that health care financing is a complex policy question may not connect the dots that this argument represents a strange flip-flop by the government from what it was saying just a few weeks ago.

With the AMA, whose members are not used to losing, darkly hinting that it may resort to legal action if the government won’t bow to its will, look for this fight to continue for some time yet.

But don’t be surprised if this doesn’t particularly displease Ms. Redford, Mr. Horne and Finance Minister Doug Horner.

After all, given its vocal position on the need for austerity, the Wildrose Party can hardly rush to the doctors’ defence and call for a big salary increase, and fighting with the docs at least makes it look as if the government is doing something to respond to the Opposition’s screams about the deficit.

+ + +

BudgetChoice.ca – a coercive push poll or the greatest thing since Space Invaders?

Scoffers may try to dismiss www.budgetchoice.ca, the government’s $57,000 online do-it-yourself deficit-elimination tool “as a particularly coercive push poll” intended to soften up voters for another round of cuts to the public service or maybe a tax increase, wrote commenter Tom Fuller after yesterday’s post.

“But I think it’s a stroke of genius turning the budgeting process into an on-line multi-player role-playing game,” Mr. Fuller went on. “Assuming my avatar (Chlorox, the Elf Warrior) I vote to cut services to children and seniors, and lay off everyone at Environment. For reducing expenditures by 23 per cent, I get 5,000 special bonus points, and can claim the magic axe of Steve West, lost for lo these many years. I haven’t had this much fun since I spilled the beer on my Atari and shorted out Space Invaders.”

My blogging colleague Dave Cournoyer apparently agrees, observing: “It simplifies the process, but it also works to demonstrate that with modest tax increases and minor cuts to the Legislative Assembly budget, and cuts to wasteful programs like Carbon Capture, the government could easily balance the budget without burning down the house. And I did all that as a Level 4 Dwarf with a Stockwell Day amulet. It earned me 430,000 Gold Katzs.”

Personally, I’m not a gamer, so I have no idea.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

With the NHL back on the ice, why not let Chinese taxpayers subsidize Canada’s billionaires?

by David Climenhaga on January 7, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Energy Exports, Sports Subsidies with 4 Comments

The Great Leap Forum: what Edmonton’s luxurious new ice hockey palace could look like with a little gesture of internationist solidarity from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Communist Chinese friends. Conceptual art by Dave Cournoyer used with permission.

It’s a moment of such perfect convergence that it’s astonishing Alberta’s Wildrose Party, which last week proposed paying for professional sports arenas through the risky tactic of encouraging vulnerable citizens to gamble, didn’t think of it.

I speak, of course, not of the imminent return of the National Hockey League but of the strategy used to good effect by the Communist government of the People’s Republic of China to woo countries with resources the Chinese covet. To wit: building sports stadiums.

In what has been termed “stadium diplomacy” by the authors of a new book on Chinese trade policy, according to a review quoted recently on blogger Dave Cournoyer’s Daveberta.ca site, “dozens of ‘friendship stadiums’ are presented as gifts to countries around the world.”

So why not let the Chinese build sports palaces for Calgary and Edmonton?

Surely this is a better plan than letting the Wildrosers implement their dubious scheme of exploiting the gambling addictions of mostly poor and prodigal Albertans to build the plush arena Edmonton City Council wants to give drugstore billionaire Daryl Katz, lest he move the Oilers hockey franchise to Seattle or wherever. Something like this must be done, they claim, to avoid the thing they fear the most. To wit: a tax increase.

What’s Calgary got to do with this, you may wonder? Well, it’s the iron law law of Alberta politics: If Edmonton gets something, Calgary must have it too. This long march of public cash generally moves only from north to south.

Regardless, we can all be certain that with the NHL lockout now over, pressure on Canadian taxpayers to build new rinks, and the threats of what will happen if they don’t, will increase exponentially and immediately.

So, getting back to the main point: Talk about the planets all being in alignment! Consider these convenient – and entirely verifiable – facts:

  1. Edmonton is desperate to build a new arena, and will do anything or tax anyone to get the money it needs – anything, that is, except ask the guy who will benefit from the facility and keep all the money it generates to contribute very much.
  2. Mr. Katz, for his part, is desperate to have his Oilers play on a luxurious new sheet of ice – leastways, desperate enough to threaten to move them to Seattle if he doesn’t get his rink, although not so desperate, apparently, to pay for it himself.
  3. Huge numbers of Edmonton civic taxpayers are desperate to ensure that their municipal taxes don’t increase any more than they’re already going up. A similar number seem desperate for their neighbours to help pay for a new home for their beloved hockey club.
  4. Alberta’s governing Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose Opposition don’t agree about much these days, but they are in accord that they are desperate not to be seen giving provincial money to this project. They are also both desperate to sell Alberta’s rapidly devaluing bitumen abroad.
  5. The federal government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is increasingly desperate as well to sell Alberta bitumen to the Chinese government, having already approved the sale of large Canadian companies to the Chinese, surrendered huge chunks of Canadian sovereignty to their Communist government and pretty well gutted our environmental protection regime to grease the skids for these shipments and sales.
  6. Finally, the Chinese Communists are desperate to get their hands on resources like Alberta’s, and they’re known to be willing to build hockey rinks and the like to get what they want.

With all this desperation going around, if this isn’t the perfect setup for both Alberta and professional hockey, with something to please absolutely everyone, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

Even Mr. Katz should be delighted, surely, as long as someone else picks up the tab for his rink – although he might be less so if the Chinese demand naming rights for the new arena as befits their status as one of our leading corporate bosses, not to mention, for the next 31 years or so thanks to Mr. Harper, our new colonial masters.

Just the same, even if Mr. Katz objected, the Great Leap Forum has a nice ring to it! As would, say, the Red-Maple Leaf Gardens or the Iron Rice Bowl for Calgary.

And it’s not as if we Albertans have nothing to contribute to this deal. Maybe now is the moment for the Oilers to work out some of the kinks that have accumulated during their long stretch of idleness by extending some international friendship and solidarity to the China Dragon – China’s only professional hockey team, which still languishes winless the cellar of the Asia Ice Hockey League.

Canadians love hockey and we’re constantly told we need to look for markets in Asia. For heaven’s sake, what are we Albertans paying former PC leadership frontrunner Gary Mar to do? Professional hockey opportunities must abound in a country of a billion-plus people – not to mention numerous terrific locations for Tim Horton’s franchises! (Yìzhí xīnxiān! Yìzhí Tim Horton!)*

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communists who covet our energy resources will finally get a crack at our bitumen while we Albertans can judge the sincerity of their slogan: “Wei renmin fuwu!” (Serve the people.)

So who could find fault with a win-win proposition like this?

I mean, I suppose we could do something truly revolutionary and ask the guy who stands to benefit the most to put up a fair share of the cash. On second thought, that would never fly in Alberta.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

* Warning: I used an Internet translator. This could mean anything!

Potted history: why the winter of 2012 feels like the summer of ’73

by David Climenhaga on November 29, 2012 in Alberta Politics, U.S. politics with 4 Comments

Richard Nixon after his overwhelming 1972 re-election victory. Below: George McGovern, Alison Redford.

Here in Alberta’s icy capital, the winter of 2012 is starting to feel like the summer of ’73.

If you’re an Alberta Progressive Conservative, this is not a good thing.

Let me explain. In the spring and summer of 1972, Richard Nixon, a Republican, was running for re-election as president of the United States.

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested in the wee hours breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel in Washington.

On Nov. 11, 1972, Mr. Nixon was re-elected by a crushing landslide that swept away his peacenik Democratic opponent, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota. Sen. McGovern died at 90 in Sioux Falls, S.D., just 40 days ago.

But it turned out that those five fellows at the Watergate had something to do with Mr. Nixon’s campaign strategy. The rest, as they say, is history.

And so the summer of ’73 became the Summer of Watergate. Like the proverbial Chinese water torture, barely a day passed without a scandalous new story on the front pages that connected the dots back to that “third-rate burglary,” as Ronald Ziegler, Mr. Nixon’s press secretary, bitterly characterized the incident at the Watergate.

Even here in Canada, the grim parade of stories had their cumulative effect, the results of which – with 20/20 hindsight – now seem inevitable.

There was speculation not long after Mr. Nixon was finally driven from office in August 1974, and has been ever since, that the removal of this Republican, who on his domestic record was surprisingly liberal, had the hallmarks of a coup.

Fast forward to 2012, with Alison Redford, a surprisingly Progressive Conservative on some counts unexpectedly chosen as the leader of that party in the fall of 2011, securely re-elected as the Premier of Alberta in the spring with a comfortable 61-seat majority in the Legislature.

But the election was not as comfortable a one as her party’s seat total suggests. Ms. Redford’s principal opposition came from the market-fundamentalist Wildrose Party, which draws inspiration and ideas from the American right all the way back to Mr. Nixon’s Southern Strategy, which was only laid to rest south of the Medicine Line earlier this month by demographics and President Barack Obama.

As Alberta’s spring election campaign progressed, it increasingly appeared that the Wildrose Party was in a position to form a majority government, but at the last minute – frightened by the outbursts of some Wildrose candidates who drew attention to just how far to the right their party stood – voters flowed back to Ms. Redford’s comfortably familiar PCs.

Wildrose strategists, tied to the Republican-inspired federal Conservatives of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, were shocked at first by the way their victory had turned to ashes, but quickly regrouped.

Off the record, they admit frankly their strategy from now to election day 2016 will be to relentlessly paint the Redford Conservatives as corrupt – a tactic that worked for them during the campaign, only faltering in its last hours. It worked because the arrogance and entitlement of a party in power for more than 40 years gave the accusations a whiff of authenticity.

Wildrose strategist Tom Flanagan, who is no dummy no matter what you think of his views, says there will be no far-right bozo eruptions next time to save the day for the Tories. “The lesson for the future,” he recently told the Globe and Mail, “message discipline.”

The aggressive Wildrose tactics, combined with a new drumbeat of little scandals reported principally by CBC Edmonton’s investigative reporting team led by journalist Charles Rusnell, who seems to have become modern Alberta’s answer to the Washington Post’s Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, has in the words of blogger Dave Cournoyer “stunned the Tories into a stammer.”

Their responses to the series of accusations and scandals emanating from the CBC sound rattled and lame. Cabinet members run from interviews with the media, then have public temper tantrums when the stories don’t go their way.

The PCs’ unwillingness to have a thorough public air-clearing over accusations that physicians were intimidated, that public employees improperly donated public funds to the Conservative party, that one of those public employees was the premier’s sister, that outrageous expenses were incurred by health officials and no one blinked, and now that the premier herself may have had a role in selecting a law firm where her ex-husband worked for a potentially enormously lucrative government contract add up to a destructive drip, drip, drip of revelations.

Premier Redford sounded persuasive to me when she stood up in the Legislature to deny the latest allegations she was in a conflict of interest when she, or someone, chose her ex’s law firm to litigate the government’s fight with Big Tobacco – which, as alert readers will recall, has a committed friend and advocate in Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith.

Premier Redford stated yesterday: “When the decision was made by the government of Alberta as to who to retain on this file, I was not the justice minister, I was not a member of cabinet, I was an MLA running to be the leader of this party.”

But the drumbeat of corrosive accusations, even when they are effectively parried, is having its toll – and that is what so strongly reminds me in the winter of 2012 of the summer of ’73.

Will Ms. Redford, too progressive on too many files for the comfort of the people with their hands on the levers, be hounded from office as Mr. Nixon was?

Are some of the people doing the hounding, inside and outside Wildrose ranks, former Conservatives who have benefited from the same too-comfortable way political business has been conducted for too long in Alberta?

Just asking.

Regardless of the answers, Ms. Redford is going to have to sharpen up her game if she wishes to survive.

She might look to the sage advice of Mark Twain, the 19th Century American author who counselled those who find themselves in situations like hers to tell the truth: “It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Ambiguous Wildrose abortion statements emerge as NDP support jumps in Edmonton

by David Climenhaga on April 7, 2012 in Uncategorized with 8 Comments
Wildrose Apocalypse? Abortion chatter sparks new fears about Wildrose as poll shows NDP mini-surge in Edmonton. Below: NDP Leader Brian Mason.

Are residents of the Edmonton region, as disgusted with the antics of the long-ruling Progressive Conservatives as other Albertans, starting to have second thoughts about far-right Wildrose Party’s largely unknown agenda and the little-known characters that populate its slate of candidates?

A new poll by a well-regarded national polling company shows NDP support surging in the Edmonton area at precisely the same moment the Wildrose Party has been making ambiguous and contradictory statements on abortion that smack of a half-hidden agenda.

Meanwhile, throughout much of the rest of the province, voters who last spring were poking fun at Quebeckers for electing NDP candidates they hardly knew appear to be poised to do precisely the same thing with the cast of marginal unknowns who have won local nominations for the Wildrose Party.

The only difference is – unlike the new NDP MPs in Quebec, many of whom are now starting to shine in Parliament – the ranks of the Wildrose Party seem to be peopled with crackpot social conservatives who among other things would like to ban abortions, or at least de-list them, and party leaders who appear ready to humour them.

At any rate, this is one way to explain the growth of support in the Capital Region for the NDP, which Leger Marketing says a poll it conducted early this week shows is now in a statistical tie with the Wildrose Party. But while the survey put NDP support at 20 per cent in Edmonton, it lags at 8.5 per cent in the rest of the province.

NDP Leader Brian Mason explained his party’s increasing Capital Region support to the Edmonton Journal by drawing attention to “the missteps of the Conservative government” while observing that “people are also starting to look at the Wildrose more critically, and they’re asking themselves what kind of change that party will bring.”

If ever there was a political party that deserved to be punished by voters, of course, it’s the Alberta Progressive Conservatives under Premier Alison Redford. Arrogance and entitlement hardly scratch the surface of what ails the PCs after 41 years at the helm of the good ship Alberta. Somehow in the final few months of the last 41 years that message sank through to a very large number of Alberta voters.

But it’s hard to believe the same Albertans who are now thinking of replacing the suddenly despised PCs with the Wildrose Party have any idea of what – and whom – they are proposing to support.

For starters, virtually no one knows who these Wildrose candidates are – other than party Leader Danielle Smith, a pleasant young woman with an engaging smile who knows her way around a sound bite and how to keep inside a message box.

But Ms. Smith is also a former apparatchik in the web of far-right think tanks and Astroturf corporate front groups who in the past has advocated extremely harsh market-fundamentalist and social conservative positions on a variety of issues.

Daveberta Blogger Dave Cournoyer recently did an admirable job of highlighting the resumes of some of the other Wildrose candidates, such as public transit foe Don Koziak, and the likes of John Carpay and Ron Leech, who have taken positions strongly opposed to rights protections for homosexuals.

Then there is hyper-conservative icon and former polemicist Link Byfield, now running to the party in Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock, who based on his past writings in far-right publications seems to have his doubts about the market-distorting effects of the war on drugs (though he blames “utopian proto-feminists” for its beginnings), thinks marriage should be handed back to the church and believes state-run education was the ruination of the family.

Moreover, on policies the Wildrose Party is known to advocate – rock-bottom royalties for petrochemical companies and opposition to tax increases for others – the same Albertans who are contemplating voting for them are known to hold opposing views.

Another Leger survey late last month, for example, showed that close to 60 per cent of Albertans (70 per cent in the Edmonton area) do not believe their province is receiving enough royalties for the province’s oil and gas resources. In the same survey, 56 per cent of Albertans (almost 60 per cent in the Edmonton region) indicated they would be willing to pay higher taxes to protect government programs and services and build infrastructure.

This clearly demonstrates a disconnect in Alberta political perceptions, since this group included significant numbers of voters who also identified themselves as Wildrose supporters.

As Wildrose positions on health care and “conscience rights” issues have begun to winkle through to voters, now comes the revelation that Wildrose leaders have been playing footsie with social conservatives who would like to block abortions, while telling a different story to the rest of us.

Edmonton Journal columnist Paula Simons reported how Wildrose officials been telling people they assumed were supporters that they could use citizen-sponsored referenda, another longstanding plank in the Wildrose platform, to de-list abortions from health coverage.

Ms. Simons noted that 11 years ago Ms. Smith wrote a Calgary Herald column opposing public funding for abortions. In it, Ms. Smith proposed just such a referendum strategy as the perfect way to eliminate it.

In response, the Wildrose Party issued an ambiguous clarification that obscured their position more than it clarified it: “Like the Progressive Conservatives, Wildrose has absolutely no intentions of legislating on abortion, and that includes delisting. Citizen initiative is and has always been an important part of the Wildrose platform. However, any initiative must first be vetted by a federally appointed judge to determine whether or not it is constitutional.”

So … what? They still want to use a citizen initiative to de-list abortions? Or not?

Which brings us back to the NDP mini-surge. It offers voters in the Edmonton area and a few other ridings a way to punish the Tories for years of arrogance without helping to unleash a Wildrose Apocalypse.

But elsewhere in the province, many progressive voters will feel they have no choice but to hold their noses and vote for the Conservatives.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Wildrose strategists snarl at media to keep their overextended bubble unpricked

by David Climenhaga on April 4, 2012 in Uncategorized with 9 Comments
A bubble of Wildrose Party support hovers over Edmonton Journal political columnist Graham Thomson. Actual Alberta political writers may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Mr. Thomson; Dave Cournoyer.

Sitting atop an unexpectedly huge bubble of public support with only three weeks to go before Alberta’s provincial election, the tough and disciplined Wildrose Party campaign team’s No. 1 objective is now to ensure no one sticks a pin in it in the short time remaining.

Since they themselves did not predict the heights to which Wildrose support was going to soar or the popular appeal of Leader Danielle Smith – even more polls are about to suggest she could capture a majority government on April 23 – they have two serious problems that could pop their balloon:

  1. The campaign strategy they’re stuck with suddenly looks dangerous because it was designed to motivate the party’s social-conservative voter base to undermine an overwhelmingly popular ruling dynasty, not to sweep aside a government unexpectedly in freefall.
  2. The lamentable quality of Wildrose candidates, most of whom were nominated months ago when no one, including the party’s own strategists, thought the party had much chance to form government.

With the Tories and suddenly unpopular Premier Alison Redford still reeling from the unexpected turn their fortunes have taken, the main threat at the moment comes from the media – at least that part not controlled by Sun Media, which is operating openly as part of the Wildrose campaign.

As for Problem No. 2, there’s not much Wildrose strategists can do except rig for silent running and hope no one notices some of the eccentric super-social-conservatives who just might, as Daveberta.ca author Dave Cournoyer pointed out in a frightening post on his blog yesterday evening, end up in Ms. Smith’s cabinet.

To control the media, Wildrose campaigners have showed their teeth to mainstream journalists who failed to make sweet and raised questions about whether all Wildrose policies are ready for prime time.

For example, the Calgary Herald’s Bob Remington, who dared observe in print that the party’s economic program just doesn’t add up, revealed in a blog post April 1 that when reporters don’t toe the line, the party “puts out a bullying press release.”

“For a party that represents liberty and free speech and accuses the PC party of intimidation and bullying, they are turning out to be bigger control freaks than the Tories,” Mr. Remington observed.

He updated his post later this week, adding: “On Monday, one of the charter Reform Party members working on Danielle Smith’s campaign contacted some members of the media and gave them s–t for re-Tweeting this blog. After one week of fawning coverage from their legions of cheerleaders in the conservative media echo chamber, the Wildrose is already so drunk with power that they won’t hesitate to attempt to stifle dissent with media intimidation.”

Another dissident identified by the Wildrose attack team – Edmonton Journal political columnist Graham Thomson – noted yesterday that he had “just joined the illustrious band of political columnists who have been ‘corrected’ by the Wildrose party for offering an opinion critical of Wildrose policy.”

Mr. Thomson’s sin was writing a column that dismissed Ms. Smith’s plan for a $300 Ralph Bucks Redux “energy dividend” to all Albertans as “a cynical attempt to buy favour with the public using the public’s own money” and “a bad idea when Ralph Klein did it and a bad idea now.”

Now, Mr. Thomson is a pretty mild-mannered guy, and he doesn’t react as strongly as some of us might to being called a nincompoop who can’t get his facts right by the party that may be on the verge of forming the next government. The trouble is, this kind of thing does have an effect on nervous media managers, and, just as the Wildrose strategists obviously hope, pressure likely will come down from media managers not to antagonize them.

Arguably, the Dani-Dollars idea criticized by Mr. Thomson is more than just a cynical ploy to buy votes – if the Wildrose gets power it will also offer a cynical tool to starve government programs of funds and hasten the privatization of everything.

But for now, the Wildrose campaign is very anxious to suppress the idea that almost every mainstream economist in the country dislikes the idea, just in case the Alberta public wakes up and starts paying attention before it’s too late.

The best way to do that in the short term is to make it uncomfortable for journalists who don’t say the right things.

None of this should surprise anyone who has been paying attention, of course – notwithstanding Ms. Smith’s disarming smile and engaging manner, these guys are the provincial auxiliary of the Harper Conservatives.

Heaven only knows what they’ll do if word leaks out about the raw meat Ms. Smith has been tossing to her social-conservative supporters on such issues as abortion and gay marriage!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Does ‘Daveberta’ blog author have a secret evangelical agenda?

by David Climenhaga on March 24, 2012 in Uncategorized with 15 Comments
Is that Daveberta.ca author Dave Cournoyer in this advert for Christian radio station Shine FM? Say it ain’t so! Below: A prototypical Christian rocker.

While we wait nervously for the election call, ask yourself this: Does Dave Cournoyer, author of the Daveberta.ca blog, have a secret evangelical agenda?

I know readers of Alberta Diary will be as shocked as I was to see the advertising flyer illustrated above, which was produced by Shine FM, a local radio station that specializes in a sub-genre of music known as Christian rock.

Now, I have to tell you as someone raised in just the sort of circles that nowadays encourage their children to listen to this type of music (that is, if they aren’t too worried it’s a case of the Devil being really tricky), I’ve always felt the concept of a Christian rock concert is, right on its bearded face, oxymoronic.

What’s more, Christian rock ought not to be confused with rock music that happens to be produced by a Christian or Christians. It is, as John Jeremiah Sullivan pointed out in an entertaining essay called Upon This Rock, the only musical genre “that has excellence-proofed itself.”

His explanation: “Christian rock is a genre that exists to edify and make money off evangelical Christians. It’s message music for listeners who know the message cold and, what’s more, operates under a perceived responsibility – one the artists embrace – to ‘reach people.’”

As a result: “Every successful crappy secular group has its Christian off brand, and that’s proper, because culturally speaking, it’s supposed to serve as a stand-in for, not an alternative to or an improvement on, those very groups.” Ergo: Christian rock can never be truly creative or edgy.

But never mind that, surely that can’t be Daveberta.ca author Dave Cournoyer pictured on the Shine FM advertising handout?

What’s more, Shine advises Alberta politicians – presumably mostly pretty conservative ones – that it offers a way to reach voters, like the guy illustrated there, “who will vote for you.”

So does that mean Daveberta has secret conservative leanings?

Because you can take it from me on very good authority, and this may be Alberta Diary’s biggest scoop of the year, that this is in fact Mr. Cournoyer.

An even more startling thought, as noted above, springs to mind: does this mean Daveberta has a secret evangelical agenda?

And if so, how the heck can an agenda be a secret and evangelical at the same time?

All I can say is, I hope profoundly that I have this wrong!

Alberta Diary is closed, please come again soon

by David Climenhaga on February 16, 2012 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
Closed for vacation. Come back soon.

Bad timing, I realize, what with a provincial election looming and all kinds of political havoc likely to break out at any moment, but Alberta Diary is taking a break.

Or, more to the point, I am, for about two weeks, maybe a few days more.

A couple of months ago, my Uechi-ryu karate teacher, Sensei Manuel deSa, extended an invitation to me to spend two weeks with a small group of his senior students at the Okinawa dojo of Sensei Kiyohide Shinjo, who is shown instructing a large class in this video.

I’m no spring chicken, and I figured this might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so despite the fact I am a nervous traveler I said yes. Sensei Shinjo is one of the masters of this style of karate, so to say I’m a little jittery about all this would be understating things considerably.

With a little luck and an Okinawan Wi-Fi connection, I may be able to upload some photos here, or an emergency column by my friend Olav Rokne in the event of really stupendous developments in Alberta. But there are no guarantees, especially since I’ll be working solely from an iPad. Anyway, my arms may hurt too much.

In my absence, I recommend Dave Cournoyer’s excellent Daveberta.ca blog as the best way to stay au courant with Alberta politics.

I look forward to he opportunity to returning to blogging about Alberta politics very soon.

Till then, domo arigato gozaimashita for reading this blog.

Lloyd Snelgrove’s Dinner with Danielle: far-right desperation or another Wildrose exodus?

by David Climenhaga on January 28, 2012 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments
Phone camera photo? Former Stelmach right-hand man Lloyd Snelgrove spotted with Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith in Calgary brewpub! Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below, the real Mr. Snelgrove (caught without his trademark goatee) and the real Ms. Smith.

With election fever gripping the province and the far-right Wildrose Party facing the bleak prospect of a do-or-die election campaign from a weaker position than it has faced since soon after its generously financed and publicized creation, a real rift on Alberta’s historically unified conservative right is opening up.

Whether the divide grows bitter and deep enough to become a meaningful advantage to more progressive Alberta political parties remains to be seen. Ironically, for that to happen, centrist parties like the New Democrats and the Alberta Liberals need to wish the Wildrose Party a modest degree of success in 2012.

At any rate, such an outcome must at least be considered a possibility as the reaction to today’s decision by Ed Stelmach’s former Man Friday to sit out his last months in the Legislature as an Independent illustrates.

Tout le monde political Alberta was abuzz this afternoon with reports Lloyd Snelgrove, Treasury Board President and right-hand man to his friend Mr. Stelmach, had not merely brusquely resigned from the Progressive Conservative caucus but had earlier dined with Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith at a Calgary Brewster’s restaurant.

Some of the further right corners of the blogosphere were soon Twitterifically a-chirp with suggestions Mr. Snelgrove’s atypically ungracious resignation was the start of another great exodus of Tory MLAs disgruntled with Premier Alison Redford for the Wildrose benches.

Needless to say, with Premier Redford and her version of the PCs apparently riding high in public opinion, this seems extremely unlikely. Even Ms. Smith, who needs to manage a pretty serious problem with her own supporters’ expectations, was quick to scotch the suggestion.

In the event, Mr. Snelgrove – who anyway seemed like an unlikely fit for the Wildrose caucus – apparently declined the invitation and a doubtless disappointed Ms. Smith informed the Herald “he told me that he was going to sit as an Independent and that he is looking forward to finally being able to stand up and speak for his constituents, and I respect that.”

Mr. Snelgrove always seemed one of the more sensible and better-grounded members of Mr. Stelmach’s cabinet, so in fairness to those excitedly Twittering, it was very hard not to speculate about what his resignation from caucus might mean. Inevitably, this made one wonder what was most significant about his Dinner With Danielle – the fact it took more than two hours, had a brew-pub for a venue or happened in Calgary, hours from the Vermilion-Lloydminster MLA’s redoubt in east-central Alberta?

It seems most likely that Mr. Snelgrove was simply disillusioned by Ms. Redford’s come-from-behind victory in the Tory leadership race last fall over candidate Gary Mar, the front-runner he had bet on. He announced his decision not to run again on Nov. 28 and has been sharply critical of Ms. Redford on more than one occasion since.

Though he is only 55, Mr. Snelgrove also quite likely strongly disapproved of the 46-year-old premier’s decision to enforce generational change in her caucus and move some of its more geriatric members along while they were still ambulatory without the assistance of a walker.

Regardless, the leak to the media about Mr. Snelgrove’s Dinner With Danielle was convenient for the struggling Wildrose Party, which faces an existential crisis if it can’t regain its former momentum in the face of the onslaught by Ms. Redford, a candidate who appears to have been genetically engineered to defeat Ms. Smith.

As Daveberta.ca blogger Dave Cournoyer recently pointed out, Ms. Smith has not tackled the tough job of managing her core supporters’ soaring aspirations, encouraged in the heady days of 2010 when right-wing journalists journeyed from afar to worship at the feet of Ms. Smith.

“Not properly managing expectations can be a politically deadly mistake,” Mr. Cournoyer observed, pointing to the experience of the late Alberta Liberal leader Laurence Decore who in 1993 “pumped expectations of forming government so high that when his party only formed Official Opposition, he faced open revolt from his caucus and defections to the Tories.”

Moreover, despite its clear No. 2 position in public support, it is not guaranteed the Wildrose Party can emerge from a general election as the Official Opposition party because its support is concentrated in regions of Southern Alberta where the Redford Tories are even stronger.

Facing such a desperate prospect, it seems probably Wildrose campaign manager Tom Flanagan, who can be fairly described as a radical far-right ideologue, will spare no effort to blacken the reputation of the Redford Tories.

If Dr. Flanagan’s efforts manage to snatch the Wildrose irons out of the fire, his success is likely to leave the Alberta right bitterly and deeply divided.

However, if the Redford Tories roll to an overwhelming victory, which at this moment in the campaign seems more likely, the conservative far right personified by Dr. Flanagan will likely quickly return to the Redford fold and resume their perpetual insider schemes to push the Natural Governing Party even further to the right.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

← Older Entries