All posts tagged Dave Hancock

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.

Albertans want election-spending-limit law but are unlikely to get one from Redford PCs

by David Climenhaga on May 10, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Dave Hancock, Election Financing, Parkland Institute with 1 Comment

Generous corporate donor drops off cash at Tory headquarters. Actual donors, who may not be exactly as illustrated, will be determined later. Below: Parkland Institute researcher Trevor Harrison and Tory Human Services Minister Dave Hancock.

It’s a conundrum!

What should Alberta’s Tories do? A study by the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute released yesterday demonstrates something almost everyone already knew anyway – that most Albertans strongly support limits on election spending.

So not setting limits on donations from corporations and unions, or enforcing the rules about how donations are made – Hey, Daryl Katz, c’mon down! – potentially spells big trouble for the Progressive Conservative Party of Premier Alison Redford.

At the same time, pretty much everybody in Alberta is starting to sense that Ms. Redford and the members of her government couldn’t get elected dog catcher without loads o’ dough from corporations with deep pockets and unending schemes for laundering cash through friends, spouses, relatives, employees, subsidiaries, pet border collies and a tank full of goldfish, plus numbered companies registered by any or all of the above.

Choices … choices … although it’s not too hard to guess which choice the Redford government is going to make.

As Social Services Minister Dave Hancock put it recently about Mr. Katz’s controversial seemingly-illegal-yet-not-illegal-for-Tories $430,000 donation to Ms. Redford’s PC party – which was later divided up among the drugstore and hockey billionaire’s friends and relations for bookkeeping convenience and legal compliance – “people should be able to organize their lives the way they want to, and if it’s more convenient for them to contribute through their company than personally, I don’t have a problem with that.”

Mr. Hancock, by the way, was touted in yesterday’s edition of the Edmonton Journal as “the government’s moral compass on social issues,” which actually sounds about right. He also appears to be a leading author of TripAdvisor reviews of coastal B.C. hotels, so one wonders if he too has almost had enough.

The Parkland report, authored by University of Lethbridge Sociology Professor Trevor Harrison and Harvey Krahn, chair of the University of Alberta’s Sociology Department, was based on public opinion polling done by the U of A’s well-regarded if pokey Population Research Lab, which is a smart-aleck blogger way of saying it’s almost certainly right regardless of how Conservatives as a group feel about people who commit sociology.

Of special note, according to the Parkland Institute, especially given the current controversy about the Great Katzby’s donations in the last exciting moments of the 2012 election campaign when everyone thought the Wildrose Party was about to win, “is the fact that fully 84 per cent of Albertans either agree or strongly agree that election spending limits should be introduced in the province.”

Let’s say the key part of that sentence again, just to make sure it registers: “84 per cent.” That’s what you call an unambiguous majority.

Interestingly, this strong level of support spanned all political parties and was seen in all regions of the province.

The Parkland study also indicated that Albertans get it about democracy not being just about voting – 62 per cent of the respondents said they believed that protest generally and protest groups in particular play an important role in the democratic process.

In addition, the survey showed significant levels of support for higher taxes and replacement of Alberta’s unflat-flat tax, which tilts the field in favour of the wealthy, with a progressive tax system

Less surprisingly, the survey indicated deep mistrust and dissatisfaction with the way democracy operates in petro-state Alberta. Voters who identified themselves either as non-partisan or as supporters of political parties other than Ms. Redford’s Progressive Conservatives agreed with her sentiment the government doesn’t care what they think.

Roughly half of the NDP, Wildrose Party and non-partisan voters said they thought the government doesn’t care about their views. Liberals were more trusting, at 33 per cent. Actual Tories who owned up to their political preference, as one might expect, were more trusting still – with only about a quarter who reckoned they weren’t being listened to. Still, that’s a pretty high number for government supporters, it’s said here.

Notwithstanding the intuitive sense Doctors Harrison and Krahn got it basically right, the results were getting a little stale by the time the Parkland Institute put out its news release – the demon-dialler calls to the 1,207 respondents of the push-button survey were made almost a year ago, between June 5 and June 27, 2012.

In Parkland’s defence, the researchers didn’t get numbers to crunch from the PRL until the fall, and then, well, you know how busy the winters can be. Anyway, good research takes time to produce – which may be why the Parkland Institute, unlike the Fraser Institute, doesn’t put out a press release every week and a half.

Also unlike the Fraser Institute, no one in the media seems to have picked up the Parkland press release and reprinted it verbatim with no reaction. Whatever, the data remains informative.

The two sociologists estimated the margin of error for the survey at 2.8 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Indeed, if the poll had been conducted since the Katz Crowd’s contributions were revealed and the Redford Government’s 2013 “Screeching Smuggler’s Turn” (SST) Budget was published, the levels of support for controls on election spending and distrust in the government both might have squirted considerably higher.

Professors Harrison and Krahn speculated that the voter cynicism they identified in this survey might contribute to the spectacularly low voter turnouts habitually recorded in Alberta. This is almost certainly true – although you have to remember that’s a normal part of any conservative government’s reelection strategy in this part of Canada.

The feeling your vote doesn’t mean anything, after all, tends to induce feelings that favour the ruling party – like there’s really no point bothering to vote for whatever flavour of opposition you prefer.

Moreover, since dogcatchers aren’t elected in Canada there’s no way to test the PC Party’s fund-free electability in that regard.

Still, don’t expect any changes to Alberta election laws any time soon. Just sayin’.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

All lawbreakers will be punished … unless they happen to be Alberta Conservatives

by David Climenhaga on May 2, 2013 in 2012 Provincial Election, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Election Financing, Elections Alberta, Labour Relations, Wildcat Strike with 2 Comments

“’Ave you got a leesence for your minkey?” An investigator for Elections Alberta pauses momentarily in his probe of political donations made to the Progressive Conservative Party by seeing-eye monkeys. If you don’t get it, I can’t help you. Actual Elections Alberta investigators by now have likely been transferred back to plain clothes. Below: Justice Minister Jonathan Denis, retired Chief Elections Officer O. Brian Fjeldheim and drugstore billionaire Daryl Katz.

In Alberta, lawbreakers must be punished, and they will be punished – unless, of course, they happen to be supporters of the ruling Progressive Conservative Party.

So, the government announced yesterday, it will be going after the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees for the full cost of the wildcat strike by 2,500 jail guards – a figure the government ministers were somewhat fancifully suggesting yesterday will be about $6 million.

In addition, on top of the $350,000 in fines AUPE has already paid, Justice Minister Jonathan Denis was promising to use Alberta’s primitive labour laws to refuse to collect union dues from thousands of AUPE members who had nothing whatsoever to do with the strike for six months. That could cost AUPE another $8 million or so.

However, also yesterday, the Alberta government was delighted to learn nobody broke any laws when Premier Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservative party accepted a donation of $430,000 on a single cheque from drugstore and pro-hockey bazillionaire Daryl Katz seven days before the April 2012 election.

Now, Alberta election law states that no individual, corporation or union may make a donation larger than $30,000 during an election year, so as a layperson you might have thought a $430,000 cheque from one person was pretty strong prima facie evidence that something wasn’t quite kosher.

But don’t worry about it, said a report by Chief Electoral Officer O. Brian Fjeldheim that was released yesterday, everything was OK because the Katz Group sent along a letter explaining that the donation was really just a convenient way to deliver personal gifts from Mr. Katz and 17 of his friends, relatives and business associates.

Mr. Fjeldheim had hired a retired judge and a couple of private dicks to look into whether the rules were broken or merely bent when Mr. Katz turned up at PC Headquarters in the final desperate hours of the 2012 election campaign, when it looked very much as if the Wildrose Party was about to win.

Based on that investigation, Mr. Fjeldheim – who is a long-time Tory stalwart and Chamber of Commerce president from Vegreville in former premier Ed Stelmach’s riding – said he was satisfied that each of the contributors had made the donations from their own funds. You see, Mr. Fjeldheim explained, each of the contributors repaid Katz Group Properties Inc. some time later.

Premier Redford herself and Mr. Denis were quick to declare the ruling meant the story was over.

“None of the people the Opposition has repeatedly maligned throughout this entire province over the last few months were found in any responsible, they were completely vindicated,” Mr. Denis huffed.

“Mr. Katz has been vindicated,” echoed a spokesperson for the billionaire in a statement. (Or, maybe Mr. Denis was echoing the spokesperson. Whatever!)

Actually, one of the 17 donors was found to have broken the rules. You see, the Katz Group’s chief financial officer lives in Ontario, and non-Albertans aren’t allowed to make donations in this province. A donation from the same fellow’s professional corporation, though, was ruled A-OK.

His penalty? They put a stiff letter on his file!

“I just don’t see how they could have made this finding,” said a bemused Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason. But if Mr. Mason, or anyone else, would like to ask Mr. Fjeldheim any questions about the investigation, well, forget it! You see, Mr. Fjeldheim retired last month, and he’s not taking phone calls.

Speaking of unions, as we were a few minutes ago, can you imagine what would have happened if the $430,000 donation had been made to Mr. Mason’s NDP in the form of a cheque from, oh, say, the AUPE, and that the union has said it was really just a convenient way to deliver donations from a few dozen of its members?

You’d hear the cries of rage and hysteria all the way to Newfoundland! And do you think for an instant Elections Alberta would have ruled everything was just hunky-dory with the donation? Please!

Well, never mind children. Laws can be twisted into the shape of pretzels when it suits our rulers in this province, or ignored altogether for that matter.

As Dave Hancock, Alberta’s de facto labour minister explained the PC government’s thinking last month: “People should be able to organize their lives the way they want to, and if it’s more convenient for them to contribute through their company than personally, I don’t have a problem with that.” As previously noted, this convenience factor is unlikely to apply to union members.

Meanwhile, if you think this means you can break a law that they do find convenient, especially if it concerns something as insignificant as your right to work in a safe place and go home at the end of your shift in one piece, well, guess again.

That said, all the Redford Government’s blustering about what it’s going to do to AUPE may not be as simple as likes of Mr. Denis and Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk make it sound – owing to the fact we still live under the federal constitution bequeathed in part to us by Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

One can understand the government’s wish to make it appear as if it didn’t blink first, especially after all the noise Mr. Lukaszuk made about not negotiating with lawbreakers.

But to proceed with its plans in any way except by unconstitutional legislative fiat, it will have to prove in a court somewhere its unlikely claim the strike cost $1.3 million a day, and that the dues suspension should be applied to workers who did not participate in the strike.

This could take years and cost taxpayers millions with no guarantee of success – although I suppose Premier Redford’s political brain trust may have concluded swaggering about it now and spending our money on it later may pay off in the next election.

But remember, Alberta Health Services and its predecessor organizations never managed to impose on AUPE the dues suspension they demanded for an illegal auxiliary nurses’ strike in May 2000 – and that one was over money, not workplace safety.

If you’re wondering about all these illegal strikes, by the way, I guess that’s what happens in a jurisdiction where most strikes are illegal – and employees’ concerns are treated with disdain.

Regardless, the important lesson from today’s two big stories is quite simple: In PC Alberta, the law must be obeyed, unless you’re a Conservative and you don’t feel like it.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Deputy Premier Tom Lukaszuk: exactly the wrong man to solve Alberta’s jail crisis

by David Climenhaga on April 28, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alison Redford, Labour Relations, Thomas Lukaszuk with 7 Comments

Wildcatting Correctional Officers on the picket line at the Edmonton Remand Centre just before midnight last night, long after the government’s ultimatum ordering them back to work. Below: Trade unionists occupy an Alberta Labour Relations Board boardroom yesterday afternoon in support of the striking guards. Below that: Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk as he appeared during a post-news-conference visit last night to the Edmonton Beerfest.

“You know what a tense, sensitive and dangerous situation like an illegal strike at a prison needs? Thomas Lukaszuk.”

So Tweeted well-known Edmonton New Democrat Lou Arab yesterday, the self-described political geek, Internet junkie, father, husband and smartass sarcastically nailing the problem with the Alberta government’s borderline bizarre response to the wildcat strike by provincial jail guards at eight correctional facilities across the province.

Stompin’ Tom Lukaszuk? The guy the Edmonton Sun once dubbed Mr. T. when he chased a car full of kids he reckoned were breaking the law through the snowy streets of an Edmonton bedroom community? The master of the ill-considered Tweet?

Mr. Lukaszuk is Progressive Conservative Premier Alison Redford’s deputy, the fellow who after last month’s budget was hurriedly assigned the additional job of delivering the nasty financial news to Alberta’s post-secondary institutions. He is undiplomatic at best, not particularly thoughtful and quite capable of pouring gasoline on a blazing fire.

Now the premier’s handed him responsibility for managing a dangerous jail wildcat by members of the 80,000-plus-member Alberta Union of Provincial Employees – and as Mr. Arab points out, he is exactly the wrong man for the job.

Pouring gasoline on a fire is pretty much what Mr. Lukaszuk did when he appeared at an afternoon news conference and all but called the Correctional Officers liars for saying the main reason for their walkout was workplace safety at the just-opened Edmonton Remand Centre, then announced he would have nothing to say to them until they’d surrendered and shuffled back to work.

The $580-million facility that may be Canada’s largest jail is where the wildcat began when two Correctional Officers were disciplined by management earlier this week for complaining about the safety problems at the jail, which only opened two weeks ago.

Excuse me, but if you were the minister facing a wildcat strike by 2,500 tough Correctional Officers, wouldn’t you at least want to keep the door open a crack to finding a solution? This doesn’t mean saying there will be no consequences for illegal actions, but it does mean being prepared to sit down and try to figure out how to negotiate an end to a dangerous dispute.

Not Stompin’ Tom! “We will not be negotiating with a union that chooses to engage in illegal activity,” he kept telling reporters at a hastily called news conference yesterday afternoon.

By late yesterday, the Alberta Labour Relations Board had naturally done the government’s bidding and ordered the approximately 2,500 Correctional Peace Officers, as the guards are technically known, to return to their jobs.

Never mind the fact that the guards have been publicly complaining about the safety implications of the way the Remand Centre was planned and built, literally since they first saw the blueprints, while they were studiously ignored by the Solicitor General’s department and everyone else in the government..

A couple of hundred rambunctious union members attending an Alberta Federation of Labour convention briefly invaded and occupied the hearing room at the Labour Board’s downtown headquarters, chanting their support for the guards and adding to the surreal sense the province is spinning out of control under Premier Redford’s uncertain hand.

By late evening, striking Correctional Officers were receiving threatening emails from the government warning them of dire consequences of staying on strike.

So by midnight last night, the guards remained in a surly mood, with dozens still defiantly blocking all the still-poorly lit entrances to the locked-down Remand Centre.

Inside the monster jail, a skeleton crew of managers and Mounties was trying to control the 1,100 prisoners who had just been moved in last week – many of them technically innocent and awaiting trial – by keeping the place on permanent lockdown. Needless to say, this is not going to improve the mood of the inmates – particularly if they are only fed cold baloney sandwiches today.

For all the power that a government has, the striking jail guards may turn out to be tougher guys than Mr. Lukaszuk, no matter what his Sun News press clippings say.

The guards are certainly tougher than Mr. Lukaszuk’s most-recent targets, a bunch of shell-shocked university administrators and teachers who until March thought the worst they were likely to face was loss of some of their promised stable and predictable funding. And that was before the Mounties’ overtime bills came due!

So where is Dave Hancock, you ask, Alberta’s bright and diplomatic human services minister, a lawyer who just might have the skills to unravel a difficult situation like this one? No sign of him.

Instead, only Jonathan Denis, the province’s Solicitor General, stood meekly at the deputy premier’s side yesterday while Mr. Lukaszuk gave the guards their talking to and claimed the inmates were “trashing” the new facility.

“We live in a law abiding society and we expect people to obey the law,” Mr. Denis said in his minor contribution to the news conference. “Just as our government has to obey the law, we expect the union to obey the law as well,” he added, prompting general hilarity from that rather large contingent of Albertans who share the view this government isn’t really very good at obeying its own rules.

More Mounties are expected to arrive from Saskatchewan today to help inside the jails. Correctional Officers from Saskatchewan are expected to turn up on the picket lines outside.

No matter who visits from Saskatchewan, this latest mishandled crisis adds to the sense the Redford Government is not capable of handing the complex task of running a province as rich and large as Alberta.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Annals of Alberta Labour Relations: Redford Government goes boldly where no Tory’s gone before

by David Climenhaga on August 15, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Labour Relations with 3 Comments

Some of the AUPE members who work at the Revera Riverbend facility in Edmonton, which ended yesterday when the Alberta government imposed a first-contract binding arbitration process and ordered an end to the strike. (AUPE Photo.) Below: Former AUPE President Dan MacLennan hams it up with former premier Ralph Klein.

Premier Alison Redford, Health Minister Fred Horne, Human Services Minister Dave Hancock and Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk yesterday went boldly where no Alberta Conservative has dared to go before! And good for them.

Specifically, yesterday Ms. Redford and the three members of her cabinet went where former premier Ralph Klein, human resources and employment minister Mike Cardinal and infrastructure minister Lyle Oberg hinted they might think about going, then chickened out, back in 2005.

To wit: the 2012 quartet of Progressive Conservative cabinet members finally, justly and quite properly imposed first-contract binding arbitration in a labour dispute that just couldn’t seem to be settled in the normal course of collective bargaining.

What’s more, they seem to have done it over the wishes of an employer, which as far as I know is absolutely without precedent in the annals of Alberta labour relations!

This being Alberta, naturally, they called it something different. Indeed, it could be plausibly argued they had to call it something different.

So, in the government’s news release, which was published at the crack of dawn yesterday, Mr. Horne and Mr. Hancock were quoted as saying the government had declared “a public emergency” to end the labour dispute between Revera Inc., which operates a private, for-profit nursing home in Edmonton, and the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, which represents approximately 80 employees at the facility.

A strike by the AUPE members, mostly women in low-paying heath care support and auxiliary nursing jobs, has dragged on for 70 days, the longest in that union’s history. The workers are trying to get a first collective agreement – which in the few jurisdictions still living in the legislative stone age, like Alberta, is the hardest job in labour relations.

Without a doubt, negotiating first collective agreements with employers who resent the union and don’t think they should have to live with one, even though it’s the law if their employees vote for it, is a leading cause of unnecessary and harmful strikes.

Most jurisdictions recognize just how difficult getting a first contract can be, and so put in place a law that says that binding arbitration may be ordered if the parties simply cannot reach an agreement any other way.

Alberta labour leaders have been pleading with successive governments for a first-contract binding arbitration law for generations. They’ve always been ignored.

Back in 2005, Dan “Buff” MacLennan was the president of AUPE and had a good working relationship with premier Klein. He came pretty close to persuading the premier and his cabinet ministers to impose some first-agreement sanity on Alberta labour relations – and tried to lead them to the water with a little gentle persuasion in the form of a news release, written by Yours Truly.

“Their instinct is the right one,” Mr. MacLennan said in his press release. “The time is right for such legislation to find its way onto the government’s agenda.”

Alas, you can lead a horse … to water, but you can’t make it drink. Fair labour relations practice would have to wait for another day.

That day was yesterday – leastways, an important precedent was set yesterday. At any rate, the government’s declaration of the public emergency sends the strikers back to work and gives the union and the employer 21 days to try to reach a solution through collective bargaining. But if they can’t, an agreement will be imposed by binding arbitration.

That means an arbitrator appointed by the government will look at the employer’s arguments and those of the union members, consider what other people are paid for doing the same work, examine the circumstances of the company, and impose a settlement that is binding on both parties.

In this case, the government may have referred the dispute to a “Public Emergency Tribunal,” or a PET, “with the PET authorized to hear the dispute and impose a binding award on the two parties involved.” The union quickly agreed to comply with the order.

But call it what you will, it is what it is. And what it is is a clear case of first-contract compulsory arbitration.

Why the government chose this moment to impose an agreement is not perfectly clear.

“While there has been a contingency plan in place to ensure the health and safety of residents, it is no longer working. The situation inside the Revera facility has deteriorated,” Mr. Horne said in the government news release. Regular audits by Alberta Health Services and the Health Ministry “found evidence of conditions that pose an unacceptable level of risk to residents,” he said.

Undoubtedly, this is true. But there is also little doubt there were other factors at play.

The government generally and Mr. Horne in particular have been under pressure from other health care related issues in the news right now – the scandalous misuse of expense accounts by at least one executive of a former health region and the mishandled plans to close a dementia care centre in the village of Carmangay, which with a little help from their Wildrose Party MLA and a couple of unions has fought a surprisingly effective campaign to keep the facility open.

Tragically, on Monday an elderly resident of the strikebound Revera facility in Edmonton died after replacement employees are reported to have ignored her request for an ambulance to take her to hospital. The current AUPE president, Guy Smith, generated more news coverage calling for an investigation of the death.

Mr. Lukaszuk told the CBC the resident’s death was not the reason for the government’s decision to impose the PET, but surely the impact of these other circumstances, and the weight of the woman’s death in particular, influenced the government’s thinking – as indeed is proper.

Whatever the reason, the government did the right thing, given the particular circumstances in this case.

Now they need to put a first-contract arbitration mechanism in the Alberta Labour Code, the relevant piece of legislation, and finally impose a little sanity and maturity on labour relations in this province.

I’m not sure if I’m quite ready start thinking of the Redford Conservatives as truly Progressive just yet, but yesterday’s imposition of first-agreement binding arbitration in the Revera strike was a step in the right direction.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta’s Expensesgate scandal: Just saying it’s over doesn’t mean it’s over

by David Climenhaga on August 9, 2012 in Alberta Health Services, Alberta Politics, Health Care with No comments

Transparency, Alberta style, with Gloria Stuart as Alison Redford, William Harrigan as Dr. Chris Eagle and Claude Rains as Fred Horne. Below: Don Scott, yesterday’s Invisible Man.

Alberta’s mainstream media finally got around yesterday to acknowledging the obvious, that Alberta Health Services may have left itself (and the rest of us who pay its bills) wide open to a costly lawsuit by tossing former CFO Allaudin Merali under the bus and then denying him severance without so much as a tip of the hat to due process.

In other words, to summarize the message from a law professor consulted by the Calgary Herald and an employment lawyer interviewed by the CBC, just saying the Expensesgate Scandal is over doesn’t mean it’s over.

Quoth the Herald: “Taxpayers could be left on the hook for legal costs on top of the original severance payout, warned University of Alberta faculty of law professor James Muir.”

One would like to think that AHS hasn’t just been making it up as it goes along and actually has some foundation for believing that there’s a legal way to deny Mr. Merali his severance where there’s no evidence he ever broke the rules, as ridiculous as the rules seem to have been, either when he was employed by Capital Health back in the mid-Zeros, or more recently when he worked for Alberta Health Services.

But there is no evidence of this. If you ask Alberta Health Services’ available spokespeople, they will tell you they have no idea of why the AHS Board concluded it could do what it is doing, why the government is going along with it, or what they think Mr. Merali is likely to do.

Since the Alberta government and AHS keep insisting we’re about to embark on a new era of transparency, this would seem to be an excellent first topic to be transparent about.

Indeed, just today Fort McMurray-Conklin MLA Don Scott, who is Premier Alison Redford’s “associate minister of accountability, transparency and transformation,” announced that he has been asked to lead “an initiative that will result in greater transparency on travel and expenses.” It wasn’t necessarily a promising sign – although it had a familiar Alberta ring to it – that Mr. Scott immediately made like the Invisible Man and refused to talk to the media about his new transparency plans!

Speaking of transparency, another excellent topic for some degree of translucency at least would be a clear explanation of what Health Minister Fred Horne’s work involved when he was being paid as a consultant to Capital Health in 2005.

At his news conference a week ago, the day after this embarrassing story about Mr. Merali’s expenses broke, Mr. Horne said he couldn’t recall what he and the Capital Health chief financial officer had been talking about on the occasion of their $220 dinner at Jack’s Grill in May 2005.

Fair enough, I guess, since there’s been a lot of Pouilly-Fuissé under the bridge since then. But surely Mr. Horne, who is now the MLA for Edmonton-Rutherford, can remember the general nature of the work he was doing for Capital Health, which for obvious reasons is relevant to Alberta voters in light of this month’s events.

Oddly enough, such a disclosure might well make the government and AHS both look better. Mr. Horne was, after all, legitimately employed to do something that someone thought was needed and important. Under the circumstances, a working dinner makes sense and the one he had with Mr. Merali was clearly well within the rather loosy-goosey expense account rules in place at Capital Health at the time.

While we’re still on this transparency bit, though, a related question worth asking might be the time frame when Mr. Horne worked as executive assistant to Edmonton-Whitemud MLA Dave Hancock, then the minister of advanced education and later the minister of health, and when he did his consulting work for AHS. It’s hard to imagine he did both at the same time, but the time frames set out in recent news coverage and Mr. Horne’s Wikipedia entry are confusing on this count.

Interestingly, if Mr. Merali and Mr. Horne were in the same employment relationship today as they were in 2005, they could still have dinner, but it would be a rather more Spartan affair thanks to the considerably tighter rules put in place by the frequently maligned Stephen Duckett during his tenure as supremo of Alberta Health Services.

Say what you will about Dr. Duckett, the controversial Australian PhD economist who headed AHS from the spring of 2009 until the Notorious Cookie Incident in November 2010 (when the government had realized he had become a lightning rod for public discontent with its handling of the health care system and gave him the bum’s rush), his record is not universally bad. His revised expenses policy, which is worth reading, is an example.

The system that was in place at Capital Health during Mr. Merali’s tenure there essentially allowed C-level executives to approve their own and each other’s expenses. This was the policy Sheila Weatherill, who had been the CEO of Capital Health at the time, defended as “consistent with other public sector organizations” in her resignation letter from the AHS Board a week ago, after she’d gone down as collateral damage to l’affaire Merali. The rules put in place by Dr. Duckett are much more stringent.

For example, Dr. Duckett’s exhaustive policy banned the practice of health system employees buying each other meals when they had all day in their offices to talk business – a loophole in the Capital Health rules Mr. Merali (and no doubt many others) seems to have exploited.

As for bottles of fine wine, apparently so beloved of Mr. Merali, once Dr. Duckett was at the helm … fuggetaboudit! Alcohol could not be expensed – unless, presumably, it was to be used in a ward as a disinfectant.

The worst thing about this continuing fiasco is the way it plays directly into the hands of public health care’s most determined foes, who are often members of the same group of people who contributed to the problem.

It is ironic in the extreme that the behaviour of privatization-friendly senior executives, consultants they hired and right-wing politicians that supported them – often the very same people playing a variety of different roles at different times – is now being used to make a spurious case for the replacement public health care by private, for-profit medicine.

Depend on it, if more privatization comes our way as a result of this scandal, only one thing will be better – the same executives, politicians and consultants will be able to toast their privatization successes with alcohol again.

But we taxpayers – who will still be paying for it, and paying more, plus waiting longer for care – will no longer be the wiser.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Everything new is old again in Alison Redford’s first post-election cabinet

by David Climenhaga on May 9, 2012 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Where’s Waldo? Yesterday’s official cabinet swearing-in photo. Who is missing?

With roughly 40 per cent of its members new to a cabinet role – and 15 per cent of them brand new to Alberta’s 87-seat Legislature – Premier Alison Redford’s new cabinet announced yesterday should have given the impression of more change than it did.

Despite the story the crunched numbers tell, though, this cabinet sure feels like the same old, same old.

The reason: so many of the key posts are still filled by the same key insiders. Just to name a few, Premier Redford herself, Doug Horner back at Finance, Dave Hancock back at Human Services, Fred Horne back at Health, Doug Griffiths back at Municipal Affairs, the ambitious Thomas Lukaszuk, now deputy premier, and even Energy Minister Ken Hughes, new to the Legislature but around forever in a string of influential jobs, most recently as chair of Alberta Health Services.

In other words, notwithstanding the way Ms. Redford announced the appointments yesterday afternoon – Holy Cow! By Twitter! Hold Page One! – nothing much of substance really changed in the makeup of the cabinet.

Still, you have to give her credit on a number of fronts.

No one is likely to be all that upset by her choices – certainly not anyone who was in her cabinet before and who was still an MLA after the unexpectedly mild carnage of election night, seeing as every single one of them is back in cabinet again.

Indeed, election night provided the premier with an opportunity – four old warhorses conveniently eliminated by the Wildrose Party, plus one who retired, requiring her to deliver no real bad news. Since there were no outright demotions from cabinet, and there were plenty of promotions, Ms. Redford is unlikely to have much problem with her own caucus.

But even her party’s opponents mostly won’t be too concerned by this reassuringly familiar feeling lineup. As suggested here yesterday, many progressively minded strategic voters may feel let down, but with this group most of them will reckon it’s still better than a wild-eyed Wildrose government under “Premier Danielle Smith” wielding the scissors.

Ms. Redford has also done a pretty good job of traditional cabinet balancing – unlike poor old Ed Stelmach, who muffed his first cabinet by forgetting about Calgary and thereby sparked a temper tantrum that got his government off on the wrong foot, where it pretty well remained until he left office.

In addition to the numbers crunched above, the A-Team cabinet has six members each from Calgary and metropolitan Edmonton. Over the total cabinet, it’s 9-6 in favour of Calgary, but many of the most important spots are occupied by Edmonton-area MLAs, so it all comes out in the wash.

The makeup of cabinet is about 70 per cent urban – which is about what it should be in a province like Alberta, past practice here notwithstanding. This suggests, as blogger Dave Cournoyer observed, that under Redford the Tories are finally going to grow up and start developing an honest-to-gosh urban agenda – and a strategy of confining the Wildrose Party to a rural rump.

Speaking of which, if the cabinet seems a little light on representation south of Alberta’s Mason-Dixon line, which runs east and west a little south of Calgary, well, one suspects Ms. Redford is saying, “Cry me a river!” They mostly voted Wildrose down that way, if you didn’t happen to notice.

Testosterone levels remain relatively high: 21 men to five women. But while there’s not much diversity in her caucus, Ms. Redford nevertheless made the effort to include three visible minority faces in her cabinet lineup.

Moreover, through a clever slight of hand, she has made it appear she is making her cabinet a little bit smaller while in fact making it quite a lot bigger. The mainstream media appears to have taken the bait along with the hook, line and sinker, and is reporting it just the way Ms. Redford’s press release would have them.

Her last cabinet had 21 ministers, which despite the campaign whinging by the far-right Wildrose Party, seems like a reasonable lineup for a province with a population of 3.5 million people and an economy the size and complexity of Alberta’s.

According to the government, this cabinet has 19 members. But it also has seven “associate ministers,” some with their own portfolio responsibilities, bringing the total to 26.

Sorry, but the distinction between Ms. Redford’s 19-member A-Team and the seven member B-Team is almost meaningless. These are not Parliamentary Secretaries as of old. They have responsibilities of their own, presumably they sit at the cabinet table and get extra pay for their efforts. This is a 26-member cabinet.

You have to admire Ms. Redford for finding a way to have her cake and eat it too on the issue of cabinet size. Members of the Opposition will yell at her about the bigger cabinet, but most Albertans won’t care.

Interestingly, Ms. Redford has eliminated the government caucus standing policy committees – a lame idea Ralph Klein transplanted from Calgary City Council and tried to graft onto the Parliamentary system. They cost a lot and did little. No one will miss them.

Summary? The deck chairs on the Titanic have been successfully rearranged. No icebergs are in sight.

The Redford Cabinet, Mark II

The A-Team

Alison Redford, Premier
Thomas Lukaszuk, Deputy Premier, Chair, Operations Committee
Doug Horner, Treasury Board, Finance
David Hancock, Human Services
Cal Dallas, International and Intergovernmental Relations
Diana McQueen, Environment and Sustainable Resource Development
Fred Horne, Health
Ken Hughes, Energy
Jeff Johnson, Education
Verlyn Olson, Agriculture
Jonathan Denis, Justice & Solicitor General
Doug Griffiths, Municipal Affairs
Robin Campbell, Aboriginal Relations
Heather Klimchuk, Culture
Manmeet Bhullar, Service Alberta
Wayne Drysdale, Infrastructure
Stephen Khan, Advanced Education
Ric McIver, Transportation
Christine Cusanelli, Tourism, Parks and Recreation

The B-Team

George VanderBurg, Seniors
Frank Oberle, Persons with Disabilities
Kyle Fawcett, Finance
Teresa Woo-Paw, International & Intergovernmental Relations
Greg Weadick, Municipal Affairs
Don Scott, Accountability, Transparency & Transformation
Dave Rodney, Wellness

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Today’s cabinet appointments likely to disappoint Alberta’s ‘strategic’ voters

by David Climenhaga on May 8, 2012 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
“What was I thinking?” A progressive Alberta elector contemplates what he’s wrought by voting “strategically” for the Redford Conservatives. Alberta voters may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Premier Redford.

Later today, Alberta Premier Alison Redford will announce whom she has picked to fill her cabinet.

As a consequence, today is almost certain to be the start of a disappointment for the thousands of Alberta teachers, health care workers, union members, soccer moms and other progressive citizens who cast their ballots strategically, some might say foolishly, for the premier’s Progressive Conservative Party on April 23.

They did it, of course, largely to keep the far-right Wildrose Party out of power, and in that they succeeded. But many also acted in the naïve hope Ms. Redford really offered a genuinely progressive alternative.

Anything’s possible, and at the moment only Ms. Redford and a few advisors truly know her mind. Since they only need to play it close to the vest for a few more hours, we’ll find out for sure soon enough.

Until today, there was surprisingly little speculation in the media or the blogosphere about which PC MLAs are going to fill which cabinet portfolios – suggesting pretty strongly that Ms. Redford and her advisors have been effective at keeping a lid on their plans.

But the smart money is on there not being very much that’s “progressive” at all about this Conservative cabinet.

That means tomorrow will also likely be a disappointment for the 17-member Wildrose caucus, the official Opposition party, at least if they hope to be able to contrast themselves with Ms. Redford’s government as the even-further-right alternative.

There’s not going to be much there for them to oppose, with or without a capital O, if the marginally smaller PC cabinet announced tomorrow is filled with the likely mix of the usual suspects from cabinets of yore and their untested ideological doppelgangers from the latest class of freshman Tory MLAs.

There was some speculation in a local tabloid that Ms. Redford would choose a former oil company executive to be the energy minister, Calgary-Varsity MLA Donna Kennedy-Glans. And more that she’d pick a hard-ass neo-Con neophyte who was rejected in favour of a more liberal candidate when he ran for mayor of Calgary as her finance minister, Calgary-Hays MLA Ric McIver.

Well, we’ll see about that. Neither of these would be particularly good choices from a progressive perspective, but pretty much par for the course in eternally Tory Alberta.

Interestingly, up to now there seems to have been very little excogitation about who is likely to be the next health minister, so, reading between the lines, one is tempted to conclude that means it’ll be the old privatizer Fred Horne, MLA for Edmonton Rutherford, back again. If this speculation is right, I guess we’ll see if the government’s pre-election conversion to the idea of all-public health care all the time was less a real Road-to-Damascus experience than merely a foxhole promise to the God of Elections to start behaving themselves if tomorrow ever dawned.

Ms. Redford is also said to trust Calgary-West MLA Ken Hughes, the former chair of Alberta Health Services – heaven knows, she tried hard enough to ensure he got the nomination so he could get elected – so it’s probably a given he’ll surface in an important cabinet post. I’m looking for Thomas Lukaszuk, Edmonton-Castle Down, who was promoted to education minister by Ms. Redford, to be back too – the Edmonton Journal says he’ll replace Spruce Grove MLA Doug Horner as deputy premier.

And there was an intriguing buzz just today that the new legislative dean, veteran Edmonton-Whitemud MLA Dave Hancock – who was put in charge of the Social Services super ministry, which included responsibility for labour, in the pre-election cabinet – would be allowed nowhere near the labour portfolio because he’s too sympathetic to the idea of fair collective bargaining.

It will also be interesting to see what the premier does with Mr. Horner, who is both highly capable and pretty much a Red Tory by Alberta standards. The Journal predicts he’ll retain the role of President of Treasury Board.

At this juncture, Ms. Redford is short a few members of the old Tory crowd, having pushed out some cabinet veterans before the election and seen a few others conveniently fall to the Wildrose Wave, which turned out not to be nearly as wild as we had all been led to expect. This no doubt suits her because it’s important she demonstrate “change,” and it naturally encourages speculation there are bound to be new faces in cabinet.

When you get right down to it, Ms. Redford can do pretty well whatever she pleases because she hardly owes anyone any favours – absolutely no one from her last caucus who is still in her current one supported her leadership bid.

So I’m not going to trot out every name that’s been mentioned over the past few weeks because the probably of getting it wrong is quite high and we’ll all know later today anyway.

The important thing to take note of is that the disappointment among progressive voters who thought they were being strategic by voting Tory is likely to be palpable when they see just how unprogressive a crowd they have contributed to electing. If they don’t fully get it tomorrow, they will soon enough as the new cabinet settles in and gets down to work.

The level of disappointment is not likely to be much different among the die-hard supporters of the Wildrose Party, who must know their party cannot live long and prosper if it offers the identical far-right bromides to the right-wing party that has the advantage of being in power. The probability is that this will push the Wildrose even farther to the right – and farther from the electoral mainstream that briefly considered them last month, gulped, and returned to the comfortable old Tories.

Indeed, the only people in the Legislature who don’t need to feel particularly broken-hearted are the five Alberta Liberals and four New Democrats. They will have the opportunity of saying, nicely of course, “I told you so” to many of their own supporters, and to the rest of Alberta, “What did you expect?”

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire: Danielle Smith and Big Tobacco

by David Climenhaga on April 21, 2012 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
What is it with right-wing politicians and tobacco, anyway? Below: Don’t worry, she won’t have to pay higher taxes for her tobacco.

The leaders of all Alberta parties but one seem committed to ending smoking by young Albertans. The sole holdout? It’s the Wildrose Party, led by former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith, of course.

This much was reported by the Calgary Herald last Tuesday, although readers are forgiven if they missed it since the story ended up on page 18.

“Only Smith said she wouldn’t support the majority of the measures,” wrote the Herald’s reporter in her coverage of a survey of party leaders by the Campaign for a Smoke-Free Alberta, adding in explanation: “The Wildrose Party has vowed not to raise taxes, including taxes on tobacco products.”

Most readers presumably simply assumed that this was just another pre-election pledge not to raise taxes by the right-wing party committed to reviving the low-tax “Alberta Advantage” of Ralph Klein, one of the gods in the Wildrosers’ Tea Party pantheon.

So it’s unlikely many readers were troubled by the lack of any reference to the cozy relationships among Ms. Smith, various far-right Astroturf and propaganda organizations and the tobacco industry.

Nor would many have noticed that the Wildrose Party indicated in its response to the survey that it would not agree to consider taking action on such measures as banning candy-flavoured tobacco, reducing sales to minors or suing tobacco companies to recover health care costs resulting from disease tied to negligence by the industry. If Wildrose MLAs wanted to do something about those things, they could introduce a private-member bill, the party’s response said.

Ms. Smith has worked for three well-known far-right organizations that have all shilled for the tobacco industry, helping their fight against legislation to control tobacco and smoking: the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute. At least two of them, the Fraser Institute and the CPRRI, received direct funding from the tobacco industry.

Not so surprisingly, then, Ms. Smith and the Fraser Institute have both bloviated time and again on the topic of how Canada should eliminate all taxes on tobacco as a way to reduce the illegal trade in contraband cigarettes.

Back in 2003, for example, Ms. Smith informed her Calgary Herald column readers that “tobacco companies are not to blame for the trade in contraband cigarettes. Unless governments realize high taxes are the real cause, the smuggling business will thrive.” (Emphasis added.) This would be a theme that resonated through the right-wing echo chamber.

Last year, for example, the Fraser Institute argued that Canada should eliminate all taxes on tobacco as a way to reduce the illegal trade in contraband cigarettes. “The imposition of excessively high taxes on tobacco is likely the main factor encouraging the contraband trade. Eliminating taxes on all tobacco products would be expected to significantly reduce the contraband tobacco trade.”

Also in 2011, Ms. Smith told the Wetaskiwin and District Chamber of Commerce that the seizure by authorities of 75,000 cartons of cigarettes on the Montana First Nation in the nearby Hobbema was the result of “overtaxing by the provincial government,” in the words of a March 23, 2011, Wetaskiwin Times story that is not longer available on line.

And so it goes. Back on Dec. 2, 2002, Ms. Smith used her Herald column to argue against regulation of second-hand smoke. On May 25, 2003, she marked the death of anti-tobacco activist Barb Tarbox by quoting a tobacco-industry-funded researcher to argue that second-hand smoke poses no risk. She went on, and I’m not making this up, “the evidence shows moderate cigarette consumption can reduce traditional risks of disease by 75 per cent or more.” (Yes, you need to read that twice. No idea what a traditional risk is. Obviously it’s not just climate change!)

On June 1, 2007, as Director of Provincial Affairs for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, an Astroturf group that purports to represent the interests of independent businesses while working against them, Ms. Smith wrote then Health and Wellness Minister Dave Hancock to argue against the then-proposed restrictions on the retail display of tobacco products.

“We are unaware of any research that shows that eliminating these retail displays will have any impact on the decision whether to smoke or not,” she told Mr. Hancock, complaining that while placing screens over tobacco products would have no impact on sales, they would be “a significant financial hardship” for business anyway because of the cost of the screens.

Instead of allowing tobacco companies to advertise to impressionable young people through colourful displays, she suggested that “the government should be more aggressive in prosecuting the underage possession of cigarettes.” So here we had this great foe of tax increases suggesting that the taxpayer fund expensive prosecutions to save retailers the cost of the equivalent of a window blind. Did I get that right?

Can we conclude from this that a Wildrose government would eliminate those restrictions, now in place? Would it roll back tobacco taxes?

And would Ms. Smith argue that her beloved “property rights” do not allow non-smokers to be protected from second-hand smoke? After all, the CPRRI, for which she once worked, has argued at another time in the past that municipal politicians need to be informed about “the grave consequences for private property rights entailed in banning smoking in all indoor, publicly accessible places.”

Whatever happens, it’s a safe bet we won’t be seeing anything more that the tobacco industry doesn’t want during the life of any government presided over by Ms. Smith.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Fixed election periods? Take your pick: hypocritical, cynical, impractical or all of the above

by David Climenhaga on November 28, 2011 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments
An Alberta monogamist with his many wives and children. Alberta’s “fixed election dates will be flexible.” Do we speak English here any more? Almost anything in Alberta may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Government House Leader Dave Hancock.

Premier Alison Redford’s unfixed-fixed election dates bill is touted as a way to make Alberta’s elections just a little bit more fair to everyone.

As the Calgary Herald blandly stated in a story on a related topic, as if it were an undisputed fact, the Conservative government’s legislative scheme of having a three-month fixed-election period has the goal of putting “all political parties on equal footing in campaign planning.”

In fact, Bill 21, a.k.a. the Election Amendment Act, 2011, does nothing of the sort, and it’s hard to believe levelling the proverbial playing field was the intention of its drafters.

Indeed, combined with the vagaries of buying advertising and former premier Ed Stelmach’s election-speech muzzle law, the vague and confusing third-party advertising provisions of the Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act of 2010, it has the opposite effect.

Whatever the Conservatives’ goal may actually be, one can plausibly argue that the election period bill is a cynical effort to tilt the playing field even further in favour of the governing party.

Conservative propaganda touts the bill as a sensible compromise between the benefits of a fixed election date (what benefits? – ed.) and vagaries of weather and happenstance that know no date.

“There needed to be some flexibility that any future premier needed to have,” extemporized Government House Leader Dave Hancock in the St. Albert Gazette, presumably while keeping a straight face. “If you are in a particularly bad winter, you might want to have a later election date.”

Oooh! Alberta’s not like Saskatchewan and Manitoba, both of which have fixed election date laws that actually fix the election date, insofar as that is possible in Canada. But then, there’s never any bad weather in Saskatchewan in November, or in B.C. in May. Right?

Actually, whatever reason the Alberta government finds to move some future election date, it’s unlikely to be bad weather. There’s nothing Conservative parties in Canada like better than plenty of snow on election day, and this Alberta political party is no exception. Inclement weather suppresses the vote and gives the party with the most corporate bucks the best chance of moving its supporters to the polls.

However, Bill 21 introduced an interesting new wrinkle to the art of election manipulation – especially when combined with the Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act, the unconstitutional but as-yet-unchallenged provincial law that suppresses the right of third parties to use advertising to criticize the government during the election campaign. (All we need to do now is ban criticizing the government after the election and we’ll have the place in a full neo-Con “free-speech” lockdown.)

This limits criticism of the government during the election period, leaving the field to cash-poor opposition parties and the deep-pocketed governing party.

Meanwhile, Ms. Redford’s new rules let the government pretend to have imposed a fixed-election date while retaining the entire advantage of being able to pick the precise moment of the election and spring it on the opposition.

This is the way our system works, warts and all, and has been argued in this space before, it is essentially impossible to change it because Westminster-model Parliamentary democracy is enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.

To repeat the civics lesson: Our system of government is called “responsible government.” This phrase means that the ministry (that is, the cabinet) is responsible to the Legislature (that is, in Alberta, the Legislative Assembly). If the Legislature votes no confidence in the ministry, the government must fall and either an election must be held or the Crown’s representative (the Lieutenant Governor) must ask the Opposition if it can form a government.

So fixed election dates – or for that matter, three-month fixed election periods – are simply impossible to legislate or otherwise guarantee in the responsible government system. Anyone who is paying attention, and that obviously includes Premier Redford and the other advocates of this legislation in her party, knows it.

What is irritating about the Redford “fixed-period” law, however, is not the fact it’s a meaningless gesture that the government can ignore with ease whenever it suits it, but the sheer hypocrisy of pretending to change the system while doing nothing of the sort.

Also annoying is the way it illustrates how no one in the paid media seems to understand the English language any more. Examples of this are legion. My local community rag, for example, announced in a headline: “Fixed election dates will be flexible.” This is a good one, akin to saying “Monogamists may now take multiple spouses.” But that’s a current event to write about another day…

In addition to retaining the traditional surprise factor in favour of the government, Bill 21 tilts the playing field even further against opposition parties – especially those on the progressive side of Alberta’s political equation that rely on donations from ordinary citizens not huge corporations to finance their campaigns.

It’s hard to believe this is not intentional. Examples:

  • Advertising: Now political parties need to book billboards, TV time and newspaper space for a full three months – because if you don’t book you don’t get the space, simple as that. This is expensive and impractical, especially for small parties with limited budgets. Of course, it’s no problem for the government, they know when the gun’s going to go bang, so they can tie up available ad space, just like before. Plus, of course, they have sufficient money to buy it all if need be.
  • Campaign space rental: Same problem. Now opposition parties have to rent campaign space for the full three months. At up to $4,000 a month for appropriate office space, times 87 ridings, this can burn through a limited campaign budget pretty quickly.
  • Candidate leaves of absence: Parties that rely on working people for quality candidates now have another problem – the need created by Bill 21 to arrange very long leaves of absence for their candidates. Employers will resist the longer periods, and many candidates will feel they can’t afford to go without pay that long.
  • Volunteers: Bill 21 also makes it harder to get volunteers – no problem for corporate-financed parties like the Conservatives and the Wildrose Party that can buy the help they need, but a major issue for everyone else.

In other words, Bill 21 is either the all-time exemplar of unintended consequences, or it’s a manipulative and cynical attempt to do one thing while trying to fool voters into thinking the government is doing the opposite. I know what I think.

Either way, it’s another broken promise by the Redford Government, a list that is growing rather long these days.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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