All posts tagged Doug Griffiths

Blame Ralph Klein for Redford Government’s messy regional planning crisis

by David Climenhaga on April 17, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Municipal Government, Regional Planning with 3 Comments

Representatives of Edmonton region municipalities discuss regional planning issues at a recent meeting. Actual municipal reps may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths; Ralph Klein with Steve West.

The foundations of the regional planning crisis that prompted a frustrated Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths to threaten Edmonton-area municipalities with forced amalgamation were laid by the destructive policies announced by premier Ralph Klein’s sidekick Steve West back in 1993.

On Oct. 7 of that year, Dr. West, the Vermilion veterinarian and MLA who acted in a variety of portfolios as Mr. Klein’s minister of dismantling public services, marched to the front of a meeting of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association and proclaimed that the government would be pulling the plug on the province’s internationally respected system of regional planning.

The great minds of the Klein government didn’t like it because they’d decided it was an extra layer of bureaucracy, and there’s nothing neoconservatives like more than smashing public services – especially, in Alberta, regulatory services that get in the way of the wishes of big businesses and small rural municipalities.

It is fair to say that if Mr. Klein and Dr. West had kept their neoconservative paws off Alberta’s 1977 Planning Act – which was a model for the world of how to reduce and solve conflicts like those that now bedevil the Capital Region – the government of Premier Alison Redford wouldn’t have to resort to potentially politically radioactive threats to get the Edmonton region’s municipal officials to behave themselves.

It is mildly ironic that the Progressive Conservative Party cluelessly trying to unravel the mess is the same one that created it 20 years ago. Then again, the Redford Government is also in full crisis mode dealing with such other direct impacts of Alberta’s “Kleintastrophe” as the ongoing mess in health care, so perhaps there’s a pattern here.

The Planning Act, which was still in force when Dr. West gave the shocked mayors and councillors their marching orders in 1993, required regional planning commissions around the province’s larger centres to draft binding regional plans.

The process – which was hated by rural municipalities that wanted a free hand to do what they felt like to attract business and despised by neoconservative ideologues like Dr. West who put the rights of business above all else – forced municipalities in a region to give up some power so they could work in concert, if not in harmony.

The result of this planning system in Alberta was high-quality regional planning from which, in many ways, we continue to benefit today.

By 1995, the Planning Act was history, replaced by Dr. West’s Municipal Government Act, from which all mention of legislatively mandated regional planning had been purged.

One result of this act of vandalism by the Klein Government is the chaotic and acrimonious situation we now face in the Edmonton region – in other words, what happens when the there’s no supervision fording the children to play nice in the sandbox.

Former premier Ed Stelmach made some tentative changes to try to encourage co-operation, but without a mandatory process for planning they were doomed to failure.

According to the Edmonton Journal, Mr. Griffiths gave Edmonton area municipalities six months to stop scrapping or face forced amalgamations and redrawn boundaries. “Infighting like this, I don’t know. It’s quite absurd, really,” Mr. Griffiths told a local newspaper.

That’s the thing, though. It’s not absurd. It’s the logical outcome of not having a mandatory planning process and fair regional distribution of tax revenues.

“Come September, if we haven’t turned the tide on this and it’s just getting worse, it can’t be allowed to continue,” Mr. Griffiths said, imagining that he was putting his foot down.

Alas for him, the kind of arbitrary redrawing of boundaries he seems to imagine would solve the region’s problems would likely drive voters in several well-off Edmonton suburbs and rural fringe areas with independent municipal governments into the arms of the Wildrose Party. This is especially true in low-tax Sherwood Park, which as part of Strathcona County is the Capital Region’s second-largest city and also legally the world’s largest hamlet.

A gentler solution to the regional planning disaster that might actually make sense would be to reintroduce the mandatory regional planning process contained in the 1977 act.

But that would require admitting that the now sainted Mr. Klein got it wrong, and moreover that the market fundamentalist verities of his and this era are not the economic gospel.

One thing that is increasingly clear about the Redford Government is that it has a knack for making enemies. So don’t expect whatever solution Mr. Griffiths comes up with to make it any friends!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta still needs a “city party” – a role the New Democratic Party could fill

by David Climenhaga on March 14, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta New Democrats, Alberta Politics with 8 Comments

Typical Alberta Progressive Conservative Party members. Or, wait, are those Wildrose members? Alberta’s rural elite may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel. Where’s the NDP when we need them?

Here it is 2013, the Earth is about to become an urban planet, and the Progressive Conservative Government of Alberta and the Opposition Wildrose Party are locked in a titanic battle to win the hearts and minds of conservative rural voters.

What’s wrong with this picture?

City folks? As far as both parties are concerned, we’re just effete, latte-swilling, soft-handed condo dwellers who get along by mooching off the hard work of our horny-handed rural betters.

Worse, we’re dangerously inclined to go out and vote for politicians like Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who – quelle horreur! – has squishy liberal values. The same could be said of Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel, although I’ll bet he thinks of himself as a small-c conservative.

A week ago, Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths – who would be as comfortably at home in one of our two rural right-wing parties as the other – spoke for both parties when he accused the millions of Alberta city dwellers of spending all their time thinking up ways to purloin the wealth of the rural Albertans who toiled so hard to store all that currently undervalued oil and gas beneath their North 40.

“You could be asked by rural Albertans why 17 per cent of the population that lives in rural Alberta that has all the oil and gas revenue, does all the work, all the farms, all the agriculture and everything associated with it goes to support urban Albertans, who sit in high-rise condos and don’t necessarily contribute to the grassroots of this economy,” Mr. Griffiths told the Legislature.

Later, he said that wasn’t what he thought, it was just the opinion of a couple of friends of his. But you get his general drift. Even having a big-city premier never seems to make much difference.

Alberta today is dominated by low-population rural ridings whose residents are going to vote for their beloved tax-and-spend conservatives, in one guise or another, as long as sufficient loot from city taxpayers and hydrocarbons keeps flowing their direction.And it’s pretty clear that out there amid the barley fields and pump-jacks of rural Alberta, Mr. Griffiths’ remarkable slander of Alberta’s beleaguered city folks isn’t going to cost him many votes.

Meanwhile, here in the cities, we are undergoing yet another brutal course of the austerity treatment regularly prescribed by these two hayseed parties while we try to navigate our way through the potholed streets of the former Richest Places on Earth.

And what are our two supposedly progressive political parties, the NDP and the Alberta Liberals, doing about this? Oh, they’ll take a gentle poke or two at Mr. Griffiths for his mean-spirited ignorance, but neither of them seem to be able to get out of the rut of imagining they can somehow, someday win a majority in this rural-dominated, rural-favouring province.

Fat chance! 

I’ve said for years that this is a lost opportunity for the Alberta NDP in particular, which could recast itself as the party of Alberta’s cities and thereby play a genuinely influential role in shaping policy in this province in a way that can benefit all its citizens.

It’s a continuing tragedy that our four Alberta New Democrats – every one in an Edmonton area city seat – sacrifice the ability to build the party and have meaningful influence in order to play homage to the pipedream that some day, when the planets are all magically in alignment, enough old CCF voters are going to crawl out of the rural woodpile to finally swing things the way that God and Tommy Douglas intended.

So let’s say it one more time, with vigour, that the Alberta NDP should recast itself as the City Party of Alberta and speak up plainly and forcefully Alberta’s urban voters and demand that we and our tax contributions be treated with a little respect.

What kind of issues would work for the NDP in this context? Here are five, dragged back from the crypt one more hopeless time:

Public Transit and public works. Everyone knows how Alberta tax dollars flow to rural areas for irrigation projects, first-class highways, health facilities, Cadillac schools and a host of other costly benefits. Meanwhile, we need decent, efficient, safe, fast public transit in our cities, and roads we can drive on in a family car. But while transit helps the environment and saves a bundle down the line, it costs a fortune up front. The NDP should fight for it, not just half-heartedly pay it lip service. And while we’re at it, how about a little help filling those potholes?

Social Services. When Tories cut social services, as they’re doing once again, who pays? Urban taxpayers, that’s who! We pay more for policing, health care, basic services required just to keep our fellow humans from freezing to death. We pay in crime, run-down neighbourhoods, foregone business opportunities and illness, physical and mental. Plus ever-higher municipal taxes, of course. Rural-based, rural-focused parties don’t really give a hoot.

Child Care. Can we afford childcare at a time like this? We can’t afford not to have it at a time like this! This is an urban issue if ever there was one. It’s also a prosperity issue – as a method of stimulating the economy, childcare dollars are worth about five times infrastructure spending. All the other parties will say, “stimulating the economy? What’s that?”  But they’re the parties that stand for rock-bottom hydrocarbon royalties, carbon storage boondoggles, endless contributions to the upkeep of rural electoral districts, and a flat tax that favours the rich.

Public Health Care. Decent hospitals and enough health professionals are an urban issue. Mental health facilities that work, where they’re needed. Public health and emergency treatment facilities belong in every part of our urban communities. So do publicly run seniors’ residences. So what are our rural parties doing again? One of them is kicking the crap out of health care and the other is demanding that it kick harder. All in the name of winning rural votes.

Public Education. Investment in public education obviously benefits the province. It pays dividends in terms of quality of life in our communities – even the ones in the sticks. It eases the impact of unemployment, especially for young people. It helps urban working families. What a concept – create vast long-term advantages for society by helping young people now! Caps on tuition, adequate funding for institutions, and schools where we need them add up to a terrific urban issue. If we can pay billions for carbon capture and drilling “incentives,” surely we can afford to fund our schools and universities. What have we got? Bigger cuts in education than anywhere else!

The NDP could speak to these issues, and it could speak to them in a way that said specifically it supported urban areas and their citizens. The NDP could paint itself as what it is anyway, whether it likes it or not: the only political party in Alberta that looks out for, or cares about, issues and values that matter to city people, rich and poor alike.

The party wouldn’t actually need to have to badmouth rural areas. But seeing as the folks out there aren’t going to vote NDP anyway, they would hardly need to put a heck of a lot of effort into developing a platform for them either!

Alberta’s city taxpayers get screwed. Street crime, sky-high municipal taxes, potholes, poor health facilities, doctor shortages, unplowed winter streets and pathetic public transit are all glaring examples. No Alberta party likely to form a government soon – least of all the two rural parties that run this place – will sacrifice rural votes to serve the people who really provide the energy, enterprise and creativity that make this province worth living in.

The NDP can speak for those of us who live in Alberta’s cities, and improve its electoral chances too. Or it can wait for someone else to do it. Because – trust me on this – one of these days, someone will figure this out!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Who leaked Alberta’s budget details? And who plugged the leak?

by David Climenhaga on February 11, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Legislature, Alberta Politics, Media with 1 Comment

Some of the members of Alberta’s Treasury Board are pictured above. While not exactly as illustrated, they are all suspects in the leakage of budget details, in the office, with an email to the Calgary Herald. Below: Columnist Don Braid, detective Sherlock Holmes and Treasury Board President Doug Horner.

It’s a whodunit, a little like the one about the dog that didn’t bark.

Why didn’t the Calgary Herald create a huge front-page brouhaha when its columnist Don Braid ferreted out some pretty startling facts about Alberta’s March 7 budget?

Certainly, that’s what most newspapers would have done if their trusted political columnist had sufficient confidence to publish a story stating the government of Premier Alison Redford was about to bring down a budget with an “operating deficit” of about $300 million. Alert readers will recall that just months ago the very same government had vowed no such thing would ever happen on its watch.

In fact, I could go farther. That’s what the Calgary Herald would have done back in the day when the premier’s office didn’t necessarily have its publisher on speed dial.

In the event, Mr. Braid’s oddly subdued column ran on Saturday morning as the so-called Alberta Economic Summit was about to kick off, but with no accompanying news story on the Herald’s front page and no follows or commentary in any other media on the significant discoveries the story outlined.

The information, Mr. Braid’s column indicated, came from within the Treasury Board, the powerful government committee headed by Finance Minister Doug Horner that oversees the civil service and most of the operations of the government.

But at least the column ran, which indicates that the Herald couldn’t question Mr. Braid’s reporting – even if the phone lines running from the premier’s communications staff to the editor’s and publisher’s offices were burning up Friday afternoon and evening.

It certainly would have been fun to have been a fly on the wall when the Herald’s august editors and managers met to decide what to do about Mr. Braid’s column and the no doubt clearly expressed wishes of the premier’s communicators that it not see the light of the next morning.

There may not have been sufficient details in Mr. Braid’s column to let the Opposition credibly call for the resignation of Mr. Horner as finance minister and president of Treasury Board, but there were certainly enough there to have the government launch a full-scale effort to relentlessly track down the leaker. Count on it that Mr. Horner was furious.

You may be sure the other 12 members of Treasury Board are none too happy to find themselves on their boss’s list of suspects, and officials in the board’s offices should brace themselves for a full-blown witch-hunt commencing this morning.

This must be an especially unhappy turn of events if your name, like that of Treasury Board Vice-Chair Kyle “Leaky” Fawcett, so obviously lends itself to a mean nickname!

The premier ended the summit with a news conference in which she tried to blow off Mr. Braid’s revelations, calling out the columnist by name and telling the passive gathering of reporters that the numbers were not from the budget and that was all she had to say about that.

Your blogger was not there, alas, not being paid to attend these things, but can report that no one else in the gathered press corps seems to have followed up with a pointed question.

I have known Mr. Braid for years, he is an excellent reporter and I have confidence in his facts. If his numbers are not from the budget, it’s only because the government has four weeks to recalibrate sufficiently.

As to the motive of the leaker, that remains a mystery. As has been previously reported here, Ms. Redford is sufficiently unpopular with elements of her own caucus to offer a possible explanation.

Meanwhile, a partial list of suspects – at least those who are members of Treasury Board – is reproduced below.

And the dog that didn’t bark? Readers will recall that Sherlock Holmes solved that mystery with the following observation: “Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well.”

Never mind the meaning of the curried mutton.

List of Alberta Treasury Board Members

Doug Horner, Spruce Grove-St. Albert – President
Kyle Fawcett, Calgary-Klein – Vice-Chair
Mike Allen, Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo
Wayne Drysdale, Grande Prairie-Wapiti
Doug Griffiths, Battle River-Wainwright
David Dorward, Edmonton-Gold Bar
Ric McIver, Calgary-Hays
Robin Campbell, West Yellowhead
Len Webber, Calgary-Foothills
Jeff Johnson, Athabasca-Sturgeon-Redwater
Cal Dallas, Red Deer-South
Donna Kennedy-Glans, Calgary-Varsity
Jonathan Denis, Calgary-Acadia

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.

Will any of this stuff ever stick to Alberta’s Teflon-coated premier?

by David Climenhaga on March 12, 2012 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments
Finance Minister Ron Liepert, centre, lets a couple of oil drilling contractors know what he thinks of their political judgment. Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated and may not always come in threes. Below: Gary Mar, Doug Griffiths and Alison Redford; Don Herring of the CAODC.

So far in her short career as Alberta Premier, Alison Redford seems to have been coated with a layer of Teflon deep enough to have been donated by Ralph Klein!

Surely, one would think, one of these days some of the stuff that has been flying around the rather inept operations of her government these past few weeks would stick to her. So far, virtually none of it has.

Here’s poor Gary Mar, pilloried and now unpaid because the invitations to a fund-raiser to help pay off his quarter-million-dollar-plus Progressive Conservative leadership campaign debt made mention of his current job as Alberta’s chief oilsands pitchman in Asia.

And how, asks a friend of mine who keeps track of such things, is this any different from Ms. Redford – who beat Mr. Mar on Oct. 2 in the race for Alberta’s top political job – inviting her supporters to her swearing-in ceremony, her office Christmas party or the Speech from the Throne?

Well, presumably there’s a proper way to offer access for cash (by implication) and a way not to (by stating it directly). Obviously, someone associated with Mr. Mar wasn’t paying attention and accidentally connected the dots with sufficient clarity to tip off of someone else who complained to the premier. She, in turn, saw political merit in publicly spanking Mr. Mar at a time much stinkier issues are swirling around her leadership.

After all, we know it doesn’t take many anonymous complaints to goad Ms. Redford into action – leastways, it doesn’t when they’ve been made on behalf of a candidate you want in your cabinet who has just inconveniently lost a nomination vote to someone you don’t.

At any rate, when former Alberta Health Services Chair Ken Hughes fumbled the ball and lost the Calgary West nomination to sometime backbench MLA Shiraz Shariff, it didn’t take Ms. Redford very long at all to ensure the vote was “disallowed” for unspecified voting irregularities. When a new vote was held, it conveniently produced the desired result. Mr. Hughes will now presumably ascend unhindered to the cabinet as God and the premier intended.

Likewise, when Tory cabinet ministers write letters threatening a school board that it might lose funding for schools if it doesn’t stop complaining about lack of funds, or to oil drilling contractors reaming them out for inviting opposition politicians to a luncheon, well, that’s just situation normal in bullyboy Alberta.

Here’s Dunvegan-Central Peace MLA Hector Goudreau advising a local Catholic school district official to watch her step: “I advise you to be cautious as to how you approach future communications as your comments could be upsetting to some individuals. This could delay the decision on a new school.”

Here’s Finance Minister Ron Liepert chewing out the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors for inviting someone to lunch who wasn’t a PC: “Since this personal invitation is under your signature I would ask if this is a joke or is your political judgment that lacking? Either way I’m not impressed….”

It seems likely CAODC President Don Herring wasn’t impressed either when he received that missive from the seldom questioned and never disciplined Mr. Liepert – at least, someone made certain Mr. Liepert’s letter found its way to the Wildrose Party.

And here’s Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths setting Alberta Urban Municipalities Association President Linda Sloan straight on what happens when someone has the cheek to suggest that the government hands out municipal grants on the basis of how locals vote.

“Your comments are deliberately inflammatory and erroneous, and are not a sound way to build a strong relationship between governments whose ultimate purpose and focus is to build stronger communities. Please be advised that as a result of your comments in the media, neither I, nor any of my Cabinet or Caucus colleagues, will be attending the AUMA breakfast on Feb. 16, 2012.”

Well, in fairness, that one got smoothed over when the media got wind of it. And when the premier’s then chief of staff, Stephen Carter, undiplomatically Tweeted that Ms. Sloan was a liar, and a malicious one at that, he soon had to recant, plus temporarily step aside to run the party’s election campaign.

Finally, of course, there’s the renowned Money for Nothing Scandal, in which 21 MLAs from all parties (including, for a spell, the premier) have been receiving $1,000 a month for literally doing nothing – seeing as the committee hasn’t met for more than three years and nobody thought to mention it.

Tory backbencher Genia Leskiw even made the eye-popping observation that she’d never so much as noticed she was being paid for being a member of the committee – “to tell you the truth, I don’t even look at my paycheque.”

Can you imagine what would have happened if, instead of being MLAs, the members of this committee had been recipients of Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped overpaid because they’d received other income in addition to their AISH payments?

If you can’t imagine it, I’ll tell you: they’d have been ordered to repay, or face the possibility of fraud charges.

Perhaps the MLAs in question should do the same as an AISH or Employment Insurance recipient who had received an overpayment, and, as Liberal Leader Raj Sherman now promises to do, write a cheque to the Provincial Treasury for the sum of the overpayment.

The good news from the government’s perspective is that none of the Opposition parties are likely to make too much of this one since every one of them has had members on the committee getting money for nothing.

But the great news from Premier Redford’s point of view is that, just as when Mr. Klein was premier, nothing seems to stick to her anyway. In that regard, poor old fumbling Ed Stelmach was the anomaly – everything stuck to him, even the stuff he did right.

Let’s be frank, people. The fact that this kind of stuff seems to be Situation Normal in the PC government of Alison Redford and voters apparently aren’t even interested, let alone annoyed, hardly speaks well of the Alberta electorate!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

No breakfast for Conservative champions? Alberta’s Tories as churlish as ever

by David Climenhaga on February 16, 2012 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Doug Griffiths, apparently still wearing black, has sent a message on behalf of his premier to Alberta politicos: resistance is futile, and will not be tolerated. Below: Edmonton City Councillor and AUMA President Linda Sloan; Chief of the premier’s staff, Stephen Carter.

As Ken Kowalski, the venerable and soon-to-retire Speaker of the Alberta Legislative Assembly might have put it: “Well! That didn’t take long!”

No sooner had the mainstream media proclaimed the Progressive Conservatives under Premier Alison Redford on their way to yet another huge victory than the word was all over the Interwebs that the Tories themselves were returning to their traditionally prickly ways.

A wise old Alberta political hand told me many years ago that this province’s Conservatives don’t really like being challenged by anyone, and even being so bold as to chat with an MLA from an Opposition party in public can be enough to get you and your cause into hot water.

So you can imagine the kind of trouble you could get in for saying something like, oh, the Tories had out municipal grants on the basis of how well a municipality’s voters behave come election time!

But for the last year or so, as Alberta’s Natural Governing Party for the first time in a generation has been contemplating the possibility that things might not go quite as would normally be assumed, so its visage has not been as stern toward those miscreants who toed the line with insufficient enthusiasm.

But the same day the mainstream media was penning predictions that the Redford Tories would return by another massive majority – maybe the most massive majority ever – Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths was pounding out a letter of his own, excoriating the president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association for her naughty suggestion and setting out her punishment for the world to see.

Linda Sloan, you see, had had the temerity to say to a journalist that the government hands out the municipal moolah based on political performance. Ms. Sloan, who is also an Edmonton city councillor who can be prickly herself on occasion, told the Edmonton Journal that “I don’t think it’s fair to pick communities one way or the other based on what their provincial voting record has been.”

Fair enough, except that the Redford Regime denied it all, with the premier’s Chief of Staff, Stephen Carter, Twittering hotly that Ms. Sloan was a lair, and a malicious one at that.

For his part, Mr. Griffiths’ sharp letter advised Ms. Sloan that unless she came to the throne on bended knee, tugging her forelock, the Conservative caucus and cabinet would boycott the AUMA’s breakfast tomorrow morning.

“Your comments are deliberately inflammatory and erroneous, and are not a sound way to build a strong relationship between governments whose ultimate purpose and focus is to build stronger communities,” Mr. Griffiths, or his executive assistant anyway, huffed. “Please be advised that as a result of your comments in the media, neither I, nor any of my Cabinet or Caucus colleagues, will be attending the AUMA breakfast on Feb. 16, 2012.”

What’s more, he went on, “you have chosen to make false accusations in the newspaper while claiming you want to work together. The situation can be remedied if you apologize and retract your erroneous statement.” (Emphasis added.) Click here to read the entire letter.

Now, to those of us in the hoi polloi, this may sound plain silly, but it would have been a major humiliation to any leader of the municipal politicians’ league.

As a consequence, apparently, Ms. Sloan grovelled sufficiently to satisfy the government, denying that she ever said any such thing as was reported in the Journal. For its part, the Journal, which is standing by its story, reports that peace reigns again in the Tory valley.

As a result, presumably, the breakfast is on again and the PC Party’s Legislative stalwarts will be able to sit down peaceably to their eggs and bacon as most of you are reading this.

As a gesture of good will, Ms. Redford lightly tapped Mr. Carter’s wrist for his overly enthusiastic Tweeting.

Meantime, though, we are all on notice again. Don’t cross an Alberta Tory government not matter how big its majority is. It can be meaner than a snake!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Sure, Gary Mar’s $264,576 Asian sinecure is sweet, but does it come with severance?

by David Climenhaga on October 17, 2011 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments
Gary Mar stands in Hong Kong and gazes back toward Alberta. Albertan politicians-in-exile may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Mr. Mar as others see him; Rick Orman aboard business jet with plate of fruit.

Word that Gary Mar is about to be sent into a comfortable voluntary exile in Asia by Premier Alison Redford prompted an instant and harsh reaction among many members of the Alberta public.

The Provincial Gag Reflex Index ™ moved sharply upward immediately upon publication Friday of the government’s news release announcing the appointment – which with apparently unintended hilarity didn’t bother to mention that until just days ago, Mr. Mar was Premier Redford’s chief rival for the job she had just won.

The salary, a nice neat $264,576 – how did they come up with that number? – seemed to irritate folks like sand on a sunburn. There was at least one moment Friday – albeit at a gathering not particularly sympathetic to the government – when the crowd broke into spontaneously heartfelt jeers at a mention of Mr. Mar’s soft landing.

Moreover, Albertans will probably be even more annoyed when the penny drops that, unlike you or me, the disappointed Progressive Conservative leadership front-runner won’t have to pay his own rent in hyper-expensive Hong Kong, and will probably have a decent enough living allowance to cover all the pork, barbecued or otherwise, that he wants. There’s sure to be a nice car provided, with a driver to boot.

Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason told the Calgary Herald Mr. Mar should “get a real job.” Liberal MLA Hugh MacDonald – who himself knows a thing or two about the sting of not being chosen in a party leadership contest – complained that Mr. Mar didn’t do particularly well the last time he had essentially the same position, as Alberta’s “envoy” in Washington, D.C., from September 2007 until last March when he threw his hat in the Tory leadership ring.

But obviously the political strategists in the premier’s office – who so far have called the public’s likely opinions pretty accurately – were of the opinion the outrage would be short-lived, and the benefits more substantial.

Reading between the lines, Mr. Mar’s manufactured comment in the official Public Affairs Bureau news release was interesting: “Premier Redford and I had discussions on what my future would entail which included potentially running for office and serving in Cabinet.”

I’ll bet! Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall at that meeting? One can just imagine the conversation: “Just forget it, Gary! Here, how about this…”

Usually, of course, the best advice to a politician in a situation like this is to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

And Ms. Redford has done just that with those of her former fellow PC leadership candidates who had seats in the Legislature. Doug Horner, Ted Morton and even Doug Griffiths have all been rewarded with important cabinet portfolios – notwithstanding the fact Dr. Morton and Mr. Griffiths continued to back the wrong horse, Mr. Mar that is, after they washed out of the leadership race.

But keeping them in cabinet allows Ms. Redford to keep an eye on them – and their ambitions or any bright ideas they might get about advancing them.

Ms. Redford may be alleged to have a have a manner with her underlings as blunt as that of Margaret Thatcher, but, by golly, she is not about to suffer Lady Thatcher’s fate at the hands of her Legislative caucus if she can help it!

As for Rick Orman, the premier’s advisors obviously concluded they could safely ignore him – after all, he seems just to be a rich old guy who ran for the position to ride his hobbyhorse. If he really makes a nuisance of himself, though, they could always put him in charge of a commission looking into the rules governing the service of fresh fruit aboard business jets in Alberta’s skies or something equally compelling.

Mr. Mar, however, presented a special case. He came so close, and obviously appealed to so many Conservative Party members – indeed, more than Ms. Redford if you go by ballot first choices alone – that he was bound to be an embarrassing “what if” if he hung around and things didn’t go swimmingly for the premier.

What’s more, he could have been a millstone in cabinet – and he really would have had to have been put in cabinet if he’d run and won.

Even if he’d just lingered in Alberta and not run for anything, he would still have presented a potential “what if” scenario – as former Tory front-runner Jim Dinning did after the accident-prone premiership of Ed Stelmach started to take turn for the worse after turn for the worse.

So from the premier’s perspective, what if a few taxpayers are unhappy at Mr. Mar’s new sinecure? The risks of that, someone obviously concluded, are less severe than the risk of keeping the guy around.

From Mr. Mar’s point of view, the calculus must have been similar. Going to Asia saves him from the horrible fate of having to keep his promise and run for an office he obviously doesn’t want – whether or not Ms. Redford saw fit to put him in cabinet.

And in a funny way, his appointment even gives Ms. Redford’s government an opportunity to fire a subtle shot across the bow of the Obama Administration in the United States, and to make Mr. Mar’s lack of success south of the Medicine Line work for him while she’s at it. “You didn’t like the message that Gary Mar was giving you about our oil from the tar sands? Well, if you don’t want it, maybe China does…”

All this said, there is a reason the premier’s office released this terse little message on a Friday afternoon – the traditional dumping-ground moment for news that is bound to be a pain in the Parliamentary rump.

This is because, once they’ve had a chance to think about it, Albertans are going to be asking questions about more than Mr. Mar’s living expenses and the credit limit on his Government of Alberta Visa card. They’ll be wondering, for example, what kind of a severance payout comes with this job should he ever decide, say, to return to run for public office again.

They may also wonder if he got a similar payout when he left his position in Washington, and if so, what it was.

Alert readers will recall that Mr. Mar’s severance was a matter for controversy once before – when he left the Legislature for Washington and said he wouldn’t take his MLA severance while he toiled in the vineyards of the public service, then changed his mind and took it after all. During the leadership race, famously, he wondered what the big deal was, since everybody does it.

That’s the problem, of course. Everybody doesn’t – if only because most of us don’t get such sweet deals when we leave a job, for whatever reason.

For once, the probability is that this won’t just be a topic of chatter in the blogosphere. Opposition politicians of all stripes are certain to develop a healthy interest in the details of Mr. Mar’s excellent new job as the next election approaches.

Later this week: Some thoughts on what the future may hold for Gary Mar.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

The Top Ten reasons to worry about Premier Gary Mar

by David Climenhaga on September 22, 2011 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments
Gary Mar exactly as he appeared at a recent Conservative leadership forum, as some guy looks on. Your blogger is on the road, has limited Internet access and needs to keep it short…. so, perhaps we can explore this theme in greater detail soon. Photo by Dave Cournoyer.


CALGARY

10) He’s supported by Doug Griffiths

9) He’s supported by Rick Orman

8) He’s supported by Ted Morton

7) He’s Danielle Smith’s greatest hope

6) Boy is he ever supported by Kelley Charlebois

5) He’s a big advocate of the Keystone XL Pipeline

4) He did a lousy job of advocating the Keystone XL pipeline

3) He’s supported by Ron Liepert

2) He wants to introduce private two-tier health care

and…

(drumroll….)

1) He’s Ralph Klein’s favourite candidate!

This short post also appears on Rabble.ca.

You can vote today to promote and legitimize Tory domination of Alberta – or you can Just Say No!

by David Climenhaga on September 17, 2011 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments
Leadership voting day in Alberta. Warning: Alberta political scenes may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Ted Morton and Alison Redford, doing deals?

“The danger,” some Calgary political scientist solemnly intoned in last night’s on-line edition of the Edmonton Journal, is that many “Two-Minute Tories” who bought party memberships to take part in today’s vote for the new leader will fail to cast ballots.

Some danger!

If you’re a Two-Minute Tory who slapped down $5 for an Alberta Progressive Conservative membership so that you could help pick Alberta’s premier – a vote portrayed by the media and the government as the province’s only meaningful expression of democracy – just remember that it’s still not too late to do the right thing and not vote.

Do like Big Business and write off the five bucks as a sunk cost on an activity that will never be profitable. Then get on with your life. If you don’t, not only are you legitimizing the policies and domination of the Conservative Party, you’re in for a world of disappointment.

The reason: these guys aren’t really being candid with Albertans like you who are thinking about voting for them.

The media, with its love of simple stories and dark lines within which to colour, has portrayed this race as a contest between three “conservatives” and three “liberals.” The ultra-right-wing Wildrose Party has tried to cast the vote in the same stark light, along with the preposterous claim no “true conservative” can ever win the Tory leadership.

The “conservatives,” according to this media take on the race, are Ted Morton, who wants to welcome the Wildrosers back to a happy Tory home; Rick Orman, who just wants to emulate the Wildrosers; and Doug Griffiths, who apparently only wants the excuse to wear that nice black suit again.

The “liberals,” meanwhile, are said to be Gary Mar, Alison Redford and Doug Horner.

But these lines have become blurred among the candidates themselves. All three of the so-called “liberals” have indicated they are prepared to look at creeping privatization of health care, attacks on the rights on unionized working people, further kowtowing to the oil industry and, in the case of Ms. Redford, deals with Dr. Morton! And what, pray, is liberal or left-wing about any of that?

For his part, meanwhile, Dr. Morton has been assiduously painting himself practically a “wet,” and with his putative ally Ms. Redford a great friend of public health care. Quoth the Edmonton Journal on this: “Alison Redford and Ted Morton both emphatically ruled out privately paid health care in Alberta. … ‘There will be no private pay for private health care,’ Morton said. ‘We would have to find more efficient ways to deliver publicly paid health care.’ One possibility includes contracting out publicly paid services to private clinics, he said.”

Are you reassured by this? Ted Morton as the enemy of two-tiered health care? You ought not to be.

Never mind that contracting out public services to private clinics is no way to save money, a case that has been irrefutably made time and again. The truth is that it’s extremely hard to believe even for a minute that this committed, dedicated, life-long foe of public services has any use at all for public health care.

As the Bible asks and answers: “Can a leopard take away its spots? Neither can you start doing good, for you have always done evil.”

Here’s what Dr. Morton, who made an academic career as a market fundamentalist ideologue attacking public services, really thinks:

“If your dog needs a new hip, your dog can get a new hip in one week. But if you need a new hip, you have to wait one year. Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t make any sense to me. … Get the government out of the way between someone who wants to buy a new hip and the doctor or clinic who wants to provide it. … Let’s get the government out of the way!”

This is what Dr. Morton believed in the 2006 leadership campaign and, I say to you, it’s what he believes today. If Ms. Redford is doing deals with this person, it’s reasonable to assume that all her rhetoric notwithstanding, it’s quite acceptable to her too.

The political polarities in this province have been skewed far to the right for a long time, and all six of the Conservative candidates are nicely in tune with the market fundamentalist ethos of the age. The fact that poll after poll shows Albertans strongly support true public health care – provided by public employees in public venues – affects the candidates’ rhetoric, but not their core beliefs.

Those core beliefs include the notion that we’d be better off if human health care ran like veterinary medicine. Think about that the next time you take your wallet out to pay to de-worm your dog!

Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives don’t have a “Progressive” bone in their bodies! They ought to be reported to the Better Business Bureau for false advertising when they call themselves “Progressive.”

So when you vote for one of them in their private party election – free of limits on spending and donations, without legitimate oversight and rife with questionable voting practices – you are endorsing the outcome.

Yeah, a lot of people do – 97,000 in 2006, if we believe the party’s propaganda. Well, positive change comes one step at a time. And a good first step for you is not to be one of them.

That way, you won’t be even the tiniest bit responsible for the catastrophe a market fundamentalist like Dr. Morton would try to sow if he became premier. And you won’t have to feel the bitter disappointment that’s inevitable when a politician you thought shared some of your beliefs turns out to be another destructive ideologue claiming There Is No Alternative to undermining the best features of our society.

You have a duty to vote – in a real election.

But today, you can Just Say No!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Tomorrow’s episode of Alberta’s Next Top Premier will see someone voted off the island!

by David Climenhaga on September 16, 2011 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments
A crowd of Albertans solemnly awaits word of the outcome of the first ballot in the Tory leadership race. Typical Albertans may not always appear as illustrated. Then again, maybe they will… Below: Ted Morton, Doug Horner and Alison Redford. Where’s Gary Mar’s hat?

After the voting ends at 7 p.m. tomorrow, Tory party brass should quickly count the first-round ballots in the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race – which may be why things feel around here like a surround-sound version of a TV reality show nowadays.

Only now, instead of America’s Next Top Model or whatever, it’s Alberta’s Next Top Premier, and everybody’s wondering which one of the contestants will have to pack up his (or her) stuff and leave the show forever Sunday morning – presumably after a round of tearful hugs and promises to really, really, really work on that modelling (political) career back in Wichita (Calgary).

Only one, you say! What’s this guy talking about? There’s three of them headed for oblivion!

Not really. Two of the candidates have already reached that destination – they just don’t know it yet. Face it, people, there’s no suspense about the fates of Rick Orman and Doug Griffiths. At best, they were never more than long shots and by the wee hours of Sunday at the latest, that assessment should have been confirmed.

There were always only four serious candidates – in alphabetical order by last name, Doug Horner, Gary Mar, Ted Morton and Alison Redford – and tomorrow one of them is going to be voted off the island. (The possibility of any one of them getting more than 50 per cent of the votes on the first ballot is almost as slim as Mr. Orman or Mr. Griffiths making it to the second.) Those are the rules as set by the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta.

And notwithstanding the continual left-right chatter of the pundits throughout the campaign, not much really separates any of these four – at least if you believe what they’ve been saying these past few weeks.

So, any bets? Not this blogger. Among those four, I call it too close to call.

And don’t even think about using the only available opinion poll of party members as a tipsheet – it turns out the whole thing’s a load of hooey that’s left egg on the faces of the pollster, the media and the Conservative Party nomenklatura.

Well, at least we get to see Postmedia’s true colours. Faced with a scandal of their own making for trying to engineer an advantage for their favourite candidate and a good horserace story at the same time, they have nothing to say “for journalistic reasons.” Good one! The next premier can keep that in mind the next time the pot starts calling the kettle black! It got so bad that even the normally sleazy Calgary Sun called them out on it!

Just hold on another day, they’re no doubt mumbling at the Calgary Herald’s morning news meeting as you read this, and after tomorrow they’ll forget all about where that bloody list came from! About that, unfortunately, they’re probably right.

After the first ballot, of course, there’s only one more week of suspense before Alberta’s Idol is picked and we move swiftly to an election before Alberta’s electorate cottons on to what’s happening.

And after that, in turn, Alberta’s most exciting political season in a generation will be all but over as the winner cruises to an easy and not very engaging 12th straight Tory majority and is swiftly and safely ensconced back in the Legislative Building that overlooks the mighty North Saskatchewan River.

Indeed, at the point, about the only suspense will be which of the two largest Opposition parties – the Alberta Liberals under the erratic Raj Sherman or the Wildrose Party under Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith – will implode first!

The speed of these two parties’ collapse will depend a little, of course, on whether either of them manages to elect anybody to the Legislature. If they do, they could linger for a little while, before they are absorbed into other parties or simply drop to the ground like the autumn leaves outside.

My money is on the Wildrosers falling first. These right-wing Tories, naturally enough, will swiftly gravitate back to their natural home with the Alberta Conservatives, with or without the provincial Tories’ current “Progressive” moniker.

Alberta conservatives of any stripe will find the Opposition benches uncongenial, and – as the publicly paid right-wing bloviator and estranged prime ministerial pal Tom Flanagan pointed out on the radio just this morning – they’ve already served their purpose by getting rid of Premier Ed Stelmach, who dared to try to raise petroleum royalties.

As for the Liberals, any who remain with seats in the House, one imagines, will swiftly separate themselves from their leader, then tear themselves apart in meaningless internal squabbles. All the while, they will be invoking the name of Laurence Decore and vowing to be back, bigger and better than ever. Those who lose their seats will quietly retire.

Then there are Alberta’s other opposition parties, the Alberta Party and the New Democrats.

According to one recent poll, the former is polling three percentage points above the Communist Party – within the margin of error!

It seems safe to conclude that the Alberta Party will soon officially concede that it is this province’s answer to the Theosophical Society and get back to doing what it does really well – organizing after-church coffee parties.

As for the NDP, well, pardon me, but someone has to be in opposition, even in Alberta!

Notwithstanding the inevitably furious yowls of the enRajed Shermanites that I’m just a Knee-Dipper willing to curtsey to any perfidy to benefit my party – that’s the role the Alberta New Democrats may be doomed to play starting in the 41st year of the Tory dynasty.

Well, as Tommy Douglas is reputed to have said, the first thing we have to do is get rid of the Liberals. After that, as Tommy didn’t say – but would have, had he stuck around long enough to see them – the Wildrosers need to go too.

These are rare sentiments on which good Tories and New Democrats can agree as we sit down to contemplate whether that orange glow in the eastern sky will stick around after the morning mist clears.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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