All posts tagged Ron Liepert

The way the cookie crumbled: Fred Horne fires Stephen Lockwood, entire AHS board

by David Climenhaga on June 13, 2013 in Alberta Health Services, Alberta Politics with 6 Comments

The former Alberta Health Services Board, fired yesterday by Health Minister Fred Horne, as seen by the 99 top executives of the provincial health care agency. Actual AHS board members may not appear exactly as portrayed by the health minister. Below: Former AHS CEO Stephen Duckett, former AHS board chair Stephen Lockwood, Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne.

As Stephen Duckett, once the CEO of Alberta Health Services, might have said to Stephen Lockwood, who until yesterday morning was the chair of the AHS Board: “Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

Dr. Duckett and Mr. Lockwood both met sudden ends as senior officials of the Alberta health care system when Alberta’s often-arbitrary Progressive Conservative government began to view them as more of an impediment than an aide to its plans.

As alert readers will recall, the putative cause for Dr. Duckett’s dismissal in November 2010 was the fact he was rude to a reporter while eating an oatmeal-raisin cookie. The real reason, of course, was that the Australian PhD economist had become a lightning rod for public dissatisfaction with the massive provincial health board the government of then-premier Ed Stelmach had created two years before.

In fairness to the PCs, Premier Alison Redford’s health minister, Fred Horne, had a marginally better case for firing Mr. Lockwood, who was openly defiant in his refusal to do the government’s bidding and halt the embarrassing payments of bonuses to 99 top AHS executives.

Mr. Lockwood was obviously operating under the illusion the government meant what it said when it told him the board of AHS was independent. Well, now he knows how things really work in Alberta!

Mr. Horne certainly seemed to act decisively, canning not only the rebellious board chair, a hard-ass trucking executive from Calgary who wasn’t used to back chat from mere ministers of the Crown, but the entire 10-member AHS board.

He did it within five minutes of the start of his 9:30 press conference called for the purpose, and less than 12 hours after Mr. Lockwood’s defiance became clear to everyone in the province.

Mr. Horne immediately appointed Janet Davidson, a former deputy minister unknown to the public, as Official Administrator of the board’s affairs – and there’s a strong whiff in the air of the possibility the government will never again appoint a board to run the affairs of AHS.

However, it seems likely the act was more thoroughly and carefully premeditated than yesterday’s political choreography suggests.

Just for starters, Ms. Davidson didn’t just happen to stroll through Mr. Horne’s office door Monday afternoon and say, well, sure, she’d be prepared to take over by the end of the week.

Plus, there were those five mysterious – and mysteriously unspecified – acts of defiance by Mr. Lockwood that were noted in the minister’s press release. More than one of us, I suspect, would love to know just what commands Mr. Lockwood chose to disobey.

So, no, this wasn’t quite as spontaneous a development as we have been led to believe.

Regardless, as was argued in this blog yesterday, there is no way Mr. Horne is going to escape this imbroglio without a certain amount of egg on his face.

He looks like a flip-flopper of dubious judgment, having appointed Mr. Lockwood with high praise less than 10 months before and made public statements in March suggesting that while he didn’t like the board’s plan to pay $3.2 million in bonuses to the execs, he would go along with it.

But he won’t look weak to the public – which, in the world of conservative politics is an even graver sin than flip-floppery. And who knows, this may very well play in Ponoka, the Albertan equivalent of Peoria.

Anyway, given Mr. Lockwood’s persistent defiance, once Mr. Horne had publicly given him his marching orders, the government really had no choice but to make him walk the plank when he declined to obey them.

Presumably Mr. Lockwood understood this and reckoned that outcome worked for him – his determination to stand up to the government certainly won’t harm his reputation in Alberta’s business and legal communities.

Mr. Horne and the government will now just have to live with the embarrassment of having fired a guy who is claimed to have just saved AHS $100 million and who less than a year ago they were touting as the best thing ever to happen to health care in Alberta since they hired … erm, Stephen Duckett.

Moreover, the minister will also have to get used to the fact there’s now nothing at all standing between his government and what happens in the health care system, which is bound to be controversial and unpopular with many voters no matter what he does next.

Case in point, in an attempt to reassure the public all is well despite the drama, Mr. Horne stated that “nothing about today’s decision changes the normal delivery of health care in Alberta.”

Indeed, he went on, “hospitals and other care facilities continue with normal operations. The changes we announce today are unlikely to be noticed by most people.”

AHS management, meanwhile, presumably backed by the former board, which included nary a representative of the public interest, has been pushing “workforce transformation” that to date has involved the elimination of well over 200 Registered Nurse and Licensed Practical Nurse positions and their replacement by unskilled health care aides.

This is not likely to reassure Albertans worried about the quality of health care they might receive if they require it, unless Mr. Horne means to say that the cuts to skilled nursing staff are about to stop.

The last time the situation in heath care seemed this chaotic and confusing here in Alberta, premier Stelmach shuffled Ron Liepert, the bull-in-a-china-shop health minister of the day, to another portfolio and replaced him with Gene Zwozdesky, the velvet-voiced old crooner of the PC caucus.

Mr. Horne played a key role in this calming effort, promoted by the premier to Parliamentary Assistant for Health, which turned out to be a stepping stone to his current position.

Alas, Mr. Horne is now on the hot seat and Mr. Zwozdesky is no longer available, having been rewarded for his good service last time by being made the Speaker of the House.

No one in the Redford Government caucus springs to mind with natural diplomatic skills to match Mr. Zwozdesky’s.

So for the time being AHS will likely shuffle along from disaster to catastrophe, erratically led, its problems exacerbated by the dysfunctional corporate model imposed on public health care back when Ralph Klein was premier of Alberta.

It’s hard to imagine how this can end well for Ms. Redford, Mr. Horne and the PC Party. Or, for that matter, for most of the rest of us!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

AHS Chair Stephen Lockwood to Health Minister Horne on executive bonuses: ‘Drop dead, Fred!’

by David Climenhaga on June 12, 2013 in Alberta Health Services, Alberta Politics with 7 Comments

Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne: it’s hard to imagine how he can come out of this fight with Alberta Health Services Chair Stephen Lockwood not looking foolish or weak. Below: Mr. Lockwood in a screen grab from his first news conference as AHS chair.

Whatever happens next, it seems certain Alberta Health Minster Fred Horne is going to end up with egg on his face.

Indeed, when the dust has settled from the current contretemps at Alberta Health Services, the entire government of Alison Redford is likely to look foolish.

Challenged yesterday by Alberta Health Services Chair Stephen Lockwood over the question of bonuses for the health system’s top 99 executives, Mr. Horne has no way to respond that won’t make him look either foolish or weak, possibly both.

Yesterday morning, Mr. Horne ordered Mr. Lockwood in no uncertain terms not to pay $3.2 million in budgeted bonuses in the current fiscal year to the senior executives of AHS, the massive province-wide health agency that was created in 2008 by former Premier Ed Stelmach and then-health-minister Ron Liepert.

“Later this afternoon, the AHS board will announce that it has made a decision to award bonuses to its employees,” Mr. Horne prophesied in a statement issued after a news conference in Lethbridge.

“However, at a time when we’ve asked our front-line providers – including doctors and teachers – to take freezes in pay, we cannot and will not accept AHS’s decision,” he said. “It is completely out of step with the times. As a result, today, I have issued a directive that instructs the AHS board to reconsider its decision to pay executive bonuses.” (Emphasis added by me.)

Never mind that back in March, Mr. Horne said in response to questions about exactly the same situation: “It’s a decision for the AHS board.” But that was then and this is now – a time frame during which it appears to have dawned on the government that generous bonuses for senior public-sector executives are both sure to be unpopular with voters and bad optics for a government demanding big concessions from public service unions.

The independent-minded AHS chair, however, obviously had other ideas.

Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Lockwood, a lawyer and trucking company executive from Calgary who is plainly used to not being challenged by anyone about anything, called a special meeting of the board, where the members promptly voted to defy Mr. Horne and pay the bonuses.

One has to feel a certain sympathy for Mr. Lockwood’s position, which is that a deal’s a deal, the executives were promised bonuses this year and AHS will keep its word. Next year, there will be no bonuses, Mr. Lockwood has already said.

“This is about doing something once you have said it and not backtracking on it,” he told a local newspaper yesterday.

His challenge to the health minister leaves Mr. Horne and the Redford Government with only two choices, neither of them particularly palatable:

Mr. Horne can fire the entire board, or at least Mr. Lockwood.

This will make the health minister look like a fool.

After all, it was Mr. Horne who appointed Mr. Lockwood as chair less than a year ago in September 2012, praising his “tremendous business experience” and touting him as the right man to lead the health system into the future. (Mr. Lockwood was the permanent replacement for Ken Hughes, who quit to run for Ms. Redford’s Progressive Conservative Party, for which he is now the energy minister.)

And imagine what would happen if it were then revealed that AHS was doing much better than expected financially under Mr. Lockwood’s leadership – even after the bonuses!

On the other hand, Mr. Horne could not fire Mr. Lockwood.

This will make the minister appear powerless, or at least weak.

Firing any member of the board over voting to do its duty as it sees fit will also raise serious and potentially complicated questions about who actually runs AHS.

The board exists, after all, to insulate the government from unpopular decisions about the administration of the provincial health system. If any member of the board is fired because for not doing the government’s bidding over an item of business well within the purview of the board, the whole edifice is exposed as a fraud and the health system as little more than a government department.

If anything goes wrong – and, count on it, there are going to be big health care controversies facing this government in the next few months – Mr. Horne and the rest of the Redford Government will have nothing to hide behind and no one to blame.

It would also raise the question of just what we taxpayers are paying Dr. Chris Eagle, the CEO of AHS, his $585,000-per-year salary (plus his controversial bonus, cutely termed “pay at risk” by AHS) to do if Mr. Horne is now running the show himself.

But if Mr. Horne doesn’t fire the board, he will be tolerating an open rebellion – surely not an example this increasingly shaky-seeming government wants to offer when there may be other rebellions brewing, even within Ms. Redford’s own Tory caucus.

Probably the best option for Mr. Horne is to keep Mr. Lockwood and the rest of the board on, but somehow persuade them to change their minds. It doesn’t sound, though, very much as if Mr. Lockwood will give him that chance.

Perhaps Mr. Horne should have paid attention to what Mr. Lockwood had to say for himself when he hired him.

“I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge,” Mr. Lockwood said at his first news conference as chair. Apparently he meant it.

Well, this is what happens when the government appoints people who turn out to have minds of their own – something that doesn’t happen very often here in PC Alberta.

Stand by for developments.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Are Alberta’s cannily incompetent Conservatives quietly awaiting a ‘Bitumen Gusher’?

by David Climenhaga on March 4, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics with 5 Comments

Everybody should be as happy about Alberta’s “Bitumen Gusher” as these two guys, your blogger and former Finance Minister Ron Liepert. Below: AUPE’s chart of the price differential between Alberta bitumen and West Texas Intermediate crude. Below that: The Alberta government’s chart showing its natural resource revenue projections to 2022, prepared for last month’s Economic Summit. Obviously there’s no cause for panic.

Have things really changed all that much for Alberta since then-energy minister Ron Liepert predicted in early 2012 that the province was on the verge of a “Bitumen Gusher” of unprecedented magnitude?

One just hates to endorse the financial predictions of any Alberta Tory cabinet minister, but it is said here they likely haven’t.

If Mr. Liepert got it basically right in February 2012, understanding that fact helpfully illuminates the re-election strategy of Premier Alison Redford and her Progressive Conservative government for 2016.

At the very least, Mr. Liepert’s one-year-old forecast is extremely helpful in analyzing the real meaning of Ms. Redford’s “Bitumen Bubble” claims that are being used to justify a range of cutbacks in government services as befits her government’s true privatization agenda, which appears to differ only in insignificant detail from the Wildrose Party’s platform.

In a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce the day after he released his spring 2012 budget, Mr. Liepert predicted bitumen royalties were about to soar and as a result Albertans could expect annual surpluses of $10 billion or more.

“I don’t think any of us realize what kind of – I’ll call it a gusher – is coming out of the oil sands,” Mr. Liepert said in his pre-retirement swan song to the Calgary Chamber.

The day before, Mr. Liepert boasted to the Edmonton Journal that one of the reasons for his optimism was that each year more oilsands projects were approaching “payout” – the point at which they have recovered their costs and are subject to a higher royalty rate.

“Nothing is factored into this plan that isn’t already producing or about to produce, because many of these have a 10-year lead time,” Mr. Liepert assured the Journal.

In the same story, a spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers agreed with Mr. Liepert’s analysis, observing, “this seems pretty consistent with our own figures.”

Readers will note the Redford Government has been very quiet lately about when it expects projects now paying royalties based on gross revenues to achieve payout and switch to the more generous rate based on net revenues. But judging from Mr. Liepert’s prediction just a year ago, his government analysts were of the view that happy day is not far away.

For a government with a neoconservative agenda of cutbacks and privatization, or which simply has some competency issues regarding budgeting, the so-called “Bitumen Bubble” was conveniently timed. It provides justification for holding the line on the salaries of public employees. It also offers and excuse for privatizing more services that belong in the public sector and finding new ways to minimize the public reaction to cuts in essential and popular public services.

As the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees – which as the representative of direct government employees, many health care workers and other public-sector employees, obviously has a dog in this fight – noted in a paper released this morning, the differential in the price fetched by Western Canada Select and West Texas Intermediate, the so called Bitumen Bubble, is almost certainly a temporary phenomenon.

Leastways, it is if past behaviour is a good way to predict future behavior – as it generally has been throughout of human history.

Back in October 2007, for example, the difference was about $30 – not seen to be a particular cause for concern at the time. Through most of 2011 it shrank to about $17. By December 2012, it was back to $30. Now it’s a crisis.

Look at the chart provided by AUPE: the price of bitumen as a percentage of WTI has been going up and down like an elevator in an office building since the start of 2005, but the trend has been steadily and happily upward.

Dubious estimates of the value of shale gas and horizontal drilling in Oklahoma have changed all that? Don’t you believe it!

In fact, energy analysts predict the price of the differential will tighten up again soon, just as it always has. Baytex Energy Corp.’s fourth quarter 2012 Heavy Oil Pricing Update and the PIRA Energy Group’s North American Midcontinent Oil Forecast, both in January 2013, for example, predicted the differential will tighten to about $22 by June and $13 by the end of the year.

A year ago this month, a report of the Canadian Energy Research Institute forecast “royalties collected from the oil sands industry are expected to exceed the $10 billion mark by 2016 and the $30 billion mark by 2024.”

In 2024, the number of projects in the post-payout phase, paying the higher rate, will exceed the number not yet paid out. And by 2040, CERI concluded, “oil sands royalties are estimated at around $52 billion. Between 2011 and 2045 a total of over $1.2 trillion are estimated to be collected by the Alberta Government from oil sands operators, a figure just below the equivalent of the current value of Canada’s economy or GDP.” (Emphasis added.)

Oh, and one more thing, with the government’s third-quarter fiscal update still predicting oil sands production 130,000 barrels a day higher than last year, the Bank of Canada is holding the line of interest rates – accounting for the recent decline in the value of the Loonie.

And remember, as the government pointed out in its 2012 budget, every one-cent decrease in the Loonie against the Greenback puts another $247 billion in Alberta’s back pocket – so if the dollar stays at about 95 cents, there’s another billion in the treasury!

This is a financial crisis?

Don’t expect to hear much about this just yet, however, because for ideological and policy reasons, the “Bitumen Bubble” narrative is equally convenient to the Redford Government, the Opposition Wildrose Party and the federal Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper – all of which advocate the same policies on pipelines, privatization and public-sector penury.

It is particularly helpful to the PCs, of course. For now, they can blame their current substantial deficits on unexpected factors outside their control – the Bitumen Bubble – never mind that it’s been understood and predicted for ages.

Going into the next election, they can claim it was good management and a tough line with public employees like teachers and government workers that are behind Alberta’s good fortune.

Corporate donors will be happy, the beneficiaries of continued rightward policies that feather their corporate nests. Suddenly the place will be awash in cash again, enough at least to lull the rest of us back to sleep.

Count on it that the government is confident it can again get progressive voters  worried enough about the Wildrose agenda to once again abandon the Alberta NDP and Alberta Liberals and vote “strategically” for the government.

Obviously, Alberta shouldn’t be making long-term policy changes based on a ginned up panic over revenues that, as Ron Liepert rightly predicted, are only going to go up, way up!

But it sure sounds like that’s exactly what we’re doing.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Scenes from an Inquiry: No fireworks as Ron Liepert and Lynn Redford testify

by David Climenhaga on December 12, 2012 in Alberta Politics, Health Care, Health Services Preferential Access Inquiry with No comments

Lynn Redford, the Alberta Premier’s sister, stars in Scenes from an Inquiry, directed by Ingmar Bergman, or someone with a similarly Nordic directorial touch. Below: Former Alberta health minister Ron Liepert chooses his colour for a game of chess with retired justice John Vertes. Actual inquiry participants may or may not be exactly as illustrated. Below them: The actual Mr. Liepert at the inquiry, in a screen shot taken from the inquiry’s live-stream.

Ron Liepert, Alberta’s outspoken Alberta health minister back in 2008 and 2009, once called the $10-million inquiry called by Premier Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservative government into preferential treatment in health care a waste of money.

And so it is … depending on how you look at it.

When Mr. Liepert was gently questioned for about an hour by the inquiry’s apparently uninquisitive counsel yesterday morning, he was deferential, confident, even friendly.

Like most of the other witnesses before him at the preferential-treatment inquiry that started a week earlier in Edmonton, Mr. Liepert had little memory of any attempts by people connected to the government to jump the line for treatment. And he was positive and direct enough about this to make it extremely hard to doubt the acuity of this particular witness’s memory.

Leastways, if there was a problem with line jumping, it’s said here it was unlikely to have been in the health minister’s office while Mr. Liepert occupied it.

Yup, Mr. Liepert told the inquiry led by retired justice John Vertes, he most certainly was aware that the Calgary Flames hockey team jumped the queue to get flu shots in 2009 when there was a shortage of the vaccine and tout le monde Alberta was in a swivet because the H1N1 Apocalypse was apparently upon us. “I heard it on the radio,” he averred matter-of-factly. “I was shocked.”

Did he ever call to advocate on behalf of a member of the public, he was gently queried? “Nothing that I ever recall,” he responded confidently. “I highly doubt it and I certainly don’t remember doing anything like that.”

There was no need to pick one’s way through Edmonton’s mucky streets to see Mr. Liepert’s brief testimony, which lasted about an hour. Those foolish enough to want to watch could catch it on their computers, live-streamed via the Internet, with a background right out of an Ingmar Berman set. One kept expecting a church clock tower to loom out of the murk behind, or Death himself to walk past with a chessboard under his arm. Alas, no such dramatically Scandinavian moments occurred, notwithstanding the grim weather outside.

Whatever it was, yesterday’s session of the inquiry was no inquisition. The tone and urgency of the questions put to Mr. Liepert and Lynn Redford, Premier Redford’s sister and the day’s other star witness who followed him, was more like what you’d expect from a meditation class. You could almost hear the restful tinkling of water over rocks in the foyer and the gentle distant cry of migrating whales on the endless sound loop!

Ms. Redford, now an Alberta Health Service vice-president and back in the day a senior Calgary Health Region executive, couldn’t remember anything much. Speed up access for MLAs, their friends and relations, anyone? Nope. Sorry. Nothing like that ever happened.

“I’ve not been involved in adjusting wait lists of any sort, nor have I been involved in expediting access for anyone,” she stated emphatically in response to a polite question.

Inquiry counsel were almost weirdly passive, declining opportunities to aggressively follow up, accepting witnesses’ testimony without a peep of protest, asking closed questions that permitted answers like, “No.” Period.

And maybe that’s all there is to this – that is, nothing at all. In which case, Mr. Liepert got it right back in October 2011, didn’t he?

But you’d think counsel would exert themselves a little, if not for the sake of the show or to prove they’re earning their keep, just to be certain no stone was left unturned. Don’t they still teach this stuff in law school? If anyone was expecting fireworks, at any rate, they would have been broken hearted.

Indeed, the only testimony at the inquiry to date that points to a systemic effort to do end runs around the lineups in health care that seemed to be endemic in the late Zeroes came from a public clinic manager who said Monday physicians were the worst offenders, slipping staff, friends and family to the head of the line to try for for quick consults.

And to think it was the docs who demanded an inquiry – into something completely different, of course; that is, intimidation of health care professionals like themselves by health bureaucrats and government officials.

Well, they got an inquiry from this government, didn’t they? The message here may well be, be careful what you wish for, you might just sort of get it!

Which brings us back again to Mr. Liepert’s suggestion last year this narrow, limited and in-no-way independent inquiry was not likely to deliver value for taxpayers’ money. This might not be quite true if you look at it from the government’s perspective.

Given the limits on where it can go, it’s highly unlikely this process will uncover anything embarrassing to the Alberta government. Indeed, at the risk of sounding cynical, if there had been much risk of that, it wouldn’t have been called.

But given the brouhaha about waiting lines seems to have settled down, whatever harmless findings this inquiry turns up may well be quite happily accepted by the public.

In which case, from the government’s perspective, it will have been a very good investment indeed.

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.

What’s up with Calgary West Progressive Conservative nomination? Rematch, appointment or what?

by David Climenhaga on February 12, 2012 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
Surprise winner Shiraz Shariff sends favourite Ken Hughes out of the ring in Round 1 of the Calgary West PC nomination battle on Jan. 21. Alberta political candidates may not appear exactly as illustrated. Now it appears that a rematch may be in the offing. Below: Ken Hughes, Shiraz Shariff and a couple of Mr. Hughes’s Tweets.

What are we to make of the calls by Ken Hughes, defeated front-runner in the now “disallowed” Progressive Conservative nomination race in the Calgary West riding, for a new nomination vote?

With a provincial election soon all but a done deal, wasn’t a candidate – maybe him, maybe someone else – just supposed to be appointed?

Back on Dec. 28, Mr. Hughes stepped down as chairman of Alberta Health Services with the apparent blessing of Alberta Premier Alison Redford to seek the PC nomination in the riding now held by retiring Finance Minister Ron Liepert. Absolutely everyone, including your faithful blogger, assumed Mr. Hughes’s ascension to the candidacy, the Legislature and the Cabinet as Alberta’s Minister of Health and Healthiness was a foregone conclusion.

So it was to everyone’s astonishment – most of all Mr. Hughes’s, presumably – that on Jan. 21 the candidate presumptive was narrowly defeated in the actual vote by Shiraz Shariff, a former Conservative MLA who lost in Calgary McCall in 2008.

Oh dear! As was noted at the time in these pages, that’s not the way things are supposed to happen in Alberta!

Facing this unexpected development, the PC Party convened a hasty investigation led by Kelley Charlebois, a sometimes controversial Alberta Tory operative who has haunted the party’s fringes for many years and is now its interim executive director.

Mr. Charlebois decreed on Feb. 9 that there had been written complaints about irregularities, for which no candidate was explicitly held responsible, and therefore the nomination of Mr. Shariff was disallowed.

Party President Bill Smith immediately issued a terse news release – Lord, how I love that phrase! – asking the Calgary West PC Riding Association to put forward the names of three candidates from whom Ms. Redford would pick a winner. That winner, presumably, was not going to be Mr. Shariff.

Mr. Hughes initially said he’d be willing to serve if asked, but while rumours swirled about who the named candidate would be, a prevailing view among political observers was that it was unlikely to be Mr. Hughes because the optics would appear so horrible, even here in Alberta where the Natural Governing Party can normally do pretty much what it pleases.

For his part, Mr. Shariff bitterly cried foul, sensibly pointed out that if there was no evidence he’d done anything wrong he ought not to be punished, and demanded a new nomination vote. “I’ll be there,” he vowed.

Now it begins to look as if he might get his wish.

On Friday afternoon, a story appeared in the Calgary Sun in which Mr. Hughes urged the party to hold another vote instead of letting the premier handpick a candidate.

“To clear the air, the party needs to allow the membership of Calgary West to select the candidate they want in a process that cannot be questioned,” Mr. Hughes said in the Sun, which is owned by Sun Media, a company that normally operates as the semi-official Conservative Party news agency in both Alberta and Canada.

The Sun, which kindly declared the swift party investigation to have been “thorough,” quoted Mr. Hughes explaining, notwithstanding his previous openness to the idea, that he “could not and would not be prepared to accept an appointment resulting from an undemocratic process.”

This appeared to catch some party officials off guard. At any rate, party spokesman Tom Olsen (a fellow who had a previous life as press secretary to former premier Ed Stelmach) told the Sun that the party executive knew nothing about Mr. Hughes’s thoughts and that unfortunately no one was available to comment just then.

Yesterday, however, Mr. Hughes (or someone with the password to his @KenHughes4MLA Twitter account) set to Tweeting that there should be another vote. “Democracy is only fair way to pick candidate in #YYCWest. 805 voted Jan. 21. Party should re-run the race,” Mr. Hughes Tweeted at five minutes before 3 p.m.

He followed that up with “I will not accept nomination in un-democratic way. Nor should anyone else. Plenty of time, last race was only 2 weeks,” and, more surprisingly, added right after that, “…Process failed everyone #pcaa. Let the 4 re-run.”

Does this all mean that the PC leadership has decided that another nomination vote – this time more intensively managed that the last one – is the only way to get Mr. Hughes in Cabinet where he belongs? Or is Mr. Hughes acting on his own for some reason that is not yet clear?

Regardless, yesterday the PCs held their “campaign college” in Edmonton, at which Premier Redford unveiled her “campaign bus,” an important feature of an upcoming election that now a hardy perennial of election news media coverage here in Alberta.

The local press tried hard to squeeze a nugget of news out of this insider event – noting that some campaign pictures showed Ms. Redford in a parka, and therefore we were likely to have an early election.

They did not think to report, however, on whether the event was attended by Mr. Hughes, Mr. Shariff, neither, or both.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Few oxen gored in Alberta Tories’ exquisitely political budget

by David Climenhaga on February 10, 2012 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments
Your intrepid blogger, with Alberta Finance Minister Ron Liepert. Below: New Democrat MLA Rachel Notley.

Oddly enough, there actually was a lesson that could be learned from the first budget of Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s government.

While the Budget Speech read yesterday by retiring Finance Minister Ron Liepert was self-evidently an election-year creation designed to offend no one who might wield influence, one ox was gored: post-secondary education.

While the media were reporting a 2.7-per-cent increase to post-secondary operating funds, they weren’t saying anything about the effects of inflation, huge population increases and big cuts to maintenance budgets that critics estimated would put the system back $80 to $100 million.

As the NDP’s Rachel Notley, MLA for Edmonton-Strathcona, observed: “Students will pay for that.” (And some of their parents, she forgot to add.)

So what community of voters doesn’t bother to make it into the polling booth in significant numbers? Uh, that would be post-secondary students.

Other than that, well, there’s not much to be said about this budget that hasn’t been said already in someone or other’s one-liner: Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith called it an “Alison in Wonderland budget.” I want readers to know they thought of that one first in the NDP caucus office, but then some fool Tweeted it and 10 minutes later Ms. Smith was repeating it. Either that, or everyone thought the same thing at the same time.

My favourite TV news reporter called it, privately, “the Dire Straits Budget.” Only this time, you know, it was “money for everything.”

But other than that sharp-tongued kind of thing, any observer of the hardball game of politics has to give this budget an A+ for pre-election optics. If it only gets a C- for prognostication – or, for that matter, a D or and F – how much difference is that going to make until after the election?

I mean, really people, you could almost hear Albertans sighing with relief that their particular ox wasn’t about to be gored – for a few weeks, maybe a year, or possibly, they hope, forever.

Whether it’s smoke and mirrors or reality, it’s a sign of how effective the budget was that most opposition politicians chose to attack it for the optimism of the revenue and economic estimates on which its income forecasts were based, not the benefits or lack thereof of the spending it proposes.

From a centre-left perspective, it’s pretty hard to assail things like a $400-per-month increase this spring for recipients of Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped – a sum that will bring this group, if only barely, above Statistics Canada’s poverty line. (And in fairness to Ms. Redford, that was another promise kept that she’s been knocked for not getting around to in these pages in the past.)

Expenditures of $16.5 billion to continue the repair work on the damage to the province’s infrastructure done back in the day by Ralph Klein, premier from 1992 to 2006? An increase of 7.9 per cent in health care spending in 2012-13? It’s hard to complain about those.

There were no significant program cuts, no public-sector job losses. It’s just not that easy to attack the government when they’re doing many of the things you said they should.

And if anyone noticed that all the extra government work was supposed to be done by only 500 new civil servants, and 260 of them will be jail guards, well, it wasn’t the media.

It was only a little easier to attack a budget like this from the right, where the politicians really do believe that all spending except on tax breaks for bazillionaires is bad, and that the Redford Tories, as Ms. Smith put it, “have no discipline.” But there were no tax increases, no new taxes either. Not even sin taxes. It’s hard even for die-hard rightists to work up a swivet about that when their supporters are secretly relieved, as it is said here most Albertans were.

Were the assumptions on which this budget’s deficit-elimination predictions were based too optimistic? The budget assumes, for example, there will be even higher oil prices, more profitable companies, and a much bigger population. Of course they were.

But were they so optimistic, as opposition politicians of both the left and right predicted, that the stuff is really going to hit the fan after the election? Well, that could very well happen, but nobody’s going to lose any sleep over it tonight.

And are Albertans smart enough to see through the exquisitely political artifice of Mr. Liepert’s budget and vote against the Redford Tories anyway, as opposition politicians of both the right and left gamely insisted yesterday they believed. Well, that could happen too. It certainly should happen.

But history suggests that it probably won’t.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Who shot Shariff? More lessons in democracy, Alberta-style

by David Climenhaga on February 9, 2012 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments
Shiraz Shariff works the phone in his Calgary office yesterday afternoon. Below: interim PC Executive Director Kelley Charlebois; former AHS Chair Ken Hughes; outgoing Calgary-West MLA Ron Liepert.

The Alberta Progressive Conservative Party has now given the bum’s rush to Shiraz Shariff, the 30-year party supporter and former MLA who had the unmitigated cheek to defeat Ken Hughes, the premier’s anointed candidate in Calgary West, in the riding’s Jan. 28 nomination vote.

The PC Party “received several written complaints about the eligibility of some of those who voted in the recent nomination for Calgary West,” Party President Bill Smith said in a terse news release late yesterday morning. Nevertheless, according to the release, the party “does not hold any one candidate or campaign responsible for the unfortunate situation.”

Just the same, Mr. Shariff – who wasn’t mentioned by name in the release and who says he was never asked any questions in the investigation conducted by interim party Executive Director Kelley Charlebois – is out, his nomination officially “disallowed.” Someone else will soon be in.

Mr. Smith’s release explained that because of tight timelines, the party has asked “the duly elected PC Board of Calgary West to consider possible candidates and submit three names from which the Leader can choose.” Presumably, Mr. Shariff’s name will be nowhere near that list when the constituency board examines it on Feb. 16.

The “review of memberships” that resulted in Mr. Shariff’s removal was Mr. Charleobois’s first brush with controversy since he took on the executive director job a month after Premier Alison Redford’s victory over front-runner Gary Mar in the party leadership race. He is not, however, a complete stranger to controversy.

Back in 2002 and 2003, the former executive assistant to Mr. Mar became the topic of embarrassing questions in the Legislature when it was revealed he had been paid nearly $400,000 over two years through an untendered contract for “oral advice” to Mr. Mar when he was health minister in 2002 and 2003.

Now, you may be thinking: “Hold it! This isn’t the way a democracy’s supposed to work!”

More than likely, that’s also precisely what they thought in Premier Redford’s office when they received the news of the nomination of Mr. Shariff, who back in 2008 was defeated by a Liberal as the MLA for the Calgary McCall riding.

After all, the successful nomination of someone not favoured by head office is indeed not the way democracy is supposed to work in Alberta. The very idea of an upstart winning a nomination over a favoured candidate is unheard of in these parts! In what passes for polite society hereabouts, that would be considered about as seemly as a general election being won by a party other than the Progressive Conservatives!

Remember, Mr. Hughes, the former chair of Alberta Health Services, had stepped down from his influential position at the head of the $12-billion public agency on Dec. 28 to seek the nomination in the riding. He had the apparent blessing of the premier, to whom he is said to be close, to replace the retiring incumbent MLA, Finance Minister Ron Liepert.

Tout le monde political Alberta simply assumed Mr. Hughes’s success was thus a deadbolt cinch. There was even talk that after his automatic election, he’d march right into Premier Redford’s cabinet and take up the reins of the massive province-wide health care system once again.

And now that Mr. Shariff’s inconvenient selection has been reversed, perhaps the Alberta universe is once again unfolding as God (who was mentioned four times in two lines of the government’s Throne Speech on Tuesday) intended.

Indeed, Mr. Hughes told the Calgary Herald yesterday that if the party desired his name on the ballot, “I’m willing to serve.” He also said it wasn’t his campaign team that made the complaint.

Still, that might be too much even for Alberta voters, who for the past 40 years have been prepared to put up with pretty well anything from the Conservative Party. Maybe that accounts for the buzz yesterday afternoon that Farouk Adatia, CFO of Ms. Redford’s leadership campaign who was defeated in his bid for the Calgary-Hawkwood nomination, might now be the anointed one in Calgary West.

For his part, Mr. Shariff was conceding nothing last night. “The nomination process for Calgary West was credible and set out by the constituency board, comprised of committed and competent volunteers, such as Dr. Ryan Carter, brother of the Premier’s chief of staff,” Stephen Carter, he said in a statement. In it, he noted that he and his volunteers had suspected from the start the party was biased against him.

“My campaign was run fairly,” Mr. Shariff stated. “It was run with integrity and we followed the process. Other candidates … also stated their acceptance of the process, the fairness and the outcome. Most importantly, security on the day of the vote ensured that no one could cast a ballot without first proving residency in Calgary West with two pieces of identification.”

Indeed, Mr. Shariff told your blogger yesterday, none other than Mr. Liepert sat on the credentials desk and reported no irregularities.

Mr. Shariff said he has never been given any indication what irregularities are supposed to have taken place. He challenged the party to tell the public what – and whom – they are complaining about. He asked: “What is there to hide? And if it is somebody else’s fault, why do I have to suffer?”

Mr. Shariff also said he asked the party yesterday for arbitration, as set out in the PC constitution, but that he was told by Mr. Charlebois “that avenue is not available any more.” The ballots have been destroyed.

Since there is to be no arbitration process, Mr. Shariff added, he is challenging the party to hold a new nomination vote. “Let another nomination be held! I’ll be there!”

Despite his anger at the process by which he was deprived of his nomination, Mr. Shariff said he would not consider running in the riding as an Independent. “I’m a Conservative and I’m not going away!” However, he warned that without the redress he is seeking, the party’s reputation as an open and democratic institution is bound to suffer. “The image of our party is at stake.”

“Regardless of the decision taken today by the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, the ultimate decision was made by the constituents of Calgary West on Jan. 21st 2012 where I was democratically elected with a majority vote as their PC representative,” Mr. Shariff’s statement concluded.

Ironically, if the provincial party had responded the same way to the unexpected election of a candidate not favoured by the party establishment in October 2011, Gary Mar would now presumably be premier of Alberta.

One of the many factors that helped derail Mr. Mar’s efforts to become the premier, oddly enough, was his relationship with Mr. Charlebois, who is now cast in the role of party inquisitor in the strange case of Mr. Shariff and the eligibility concerns for which no one is being held responsible.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta’s Electrolux Throne Speech: breathtaking in its vacuity, but quite possibly effective

by David Climenhaga on February 8, 2012 in Uncategorized with 5 Comments
Your blogger with Tory campaign mastermind Stephen Carter. Below, Charles Dickens, who also wrote a good story; Finance Minister Ron Liepert.

It was either the best of Throne Speeches or it was the worst of Throne Speeches. Heck, maybe it was both at the same time.

Yesterday being the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, maybe there’s something powerfully symbolic in that assessment of the first Throne Speech by the Progressive Conservative government of Alison Redford.

If the purpose of a Speech from the Throne, as historically has been agreed, is to set out the broad goals of the government and describe the initiatives it will undertake to accomplish those goals, then yesterday’s speech was a spectacular failure.

Indeed, it was breathtaking in its vacuity. Talk about low-bridging it! This speech was so content-free the Tory barge could slip unnoticed under any bridge, no matter how close the deck was to the water.

To call this speech the Electrolux Speech does it a disservice. It was so unenlightening it made one think of a stellar black hole – dense enough to attract matter, even light, into its dark core!

Oh, the speech haltingly read by Lieutenant Governor Donald Ethell was replete with cheerful sentiments – “your government will make Alberta the best jurisdiction anywhere…,” “your government will treat Albertans’ money with the same care and respect they do, spending wisely on the services Albertans count on for an outstanding quality of life…,” “your government will provide seniors with the supports, services and care they need to remain healthy, happy and productive…,” “patients in need of medical attention will be able to get it.” Yadda-yadda.

There were even a few choice comparisons of the Alison Redford Tories to the Peter Lougheed Tories – though without a whiff of the “bold” and “imaginative” policies that made even Mr. Lougheed’s enemies respect his leadership. As Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan quipped after the speech: “Peter Lougheed said hi to my Grade 8 class when we visited the Legislature! Premier, you’re no Peter Lougheed…”

Between that stuff and the four closing references to God – “May God bless you all; God bless Alberta; God bless Canada; God save the Queen!” – there was barely a hint about how any of this is going to be achieved. No, that’s not quite right. There were no hints at all!

The broad goals of this government are clear enough: heavenly perfection right here on the Great Plains. The initiatives to be undertaken to accomplish it? Insufficient data.

The closest thing to even a hint of a hint in the speech was the suggestion that since the province’s “current fiscal framework relies too heavily on volatile energy revenue as a source of income … it’s fine for foundational change. It won’t be easy, but it is the right way to better manage the annual unpredictably in the budgeting process.”

Say what? Foundational change? That’s it? Oh yeah, and we’ll have zero-based budgeting, except that we’ll call it something else.

The Wildrose Party will say this means new taxes. Possibly some of the other parties will too. Maybe someone will wonder if this means no petroleum royalties. The Redford Tories, one expects, will just smile and say very little at all. And that one’s about the only line in the whole speech anyone is going to be able to get their teeth into!

Look, it’s perfectly clear what’s going on here. The government’s strategy – doubtless devised by Stephen Carter, Premier Redford’s demonstrably clever chief of staff – is to say nothing, nothing at all, that can get the government in trouble.

Their own polls look good, and some of the others do too, although there are dark hints that a Sun poll today may contain some surprises. But the PCs are clearly counting on being able to coast through another election without a major upheaval. Describing an actual policy in detail might give the opposition something to take shots at, so no policies will be described.

“We thought they were going to give us a few piñatas to take a whack at,” a wistful Wildrose advisor commented, a little plaintively. “There’s nothing there.”

That’s almost certainly Mr. Carter’s idea. The only question is whether or not it will work. The jury’s still out on that, of course.

One seasoned political veteran told me with a straight face he couldn’t believe Albertans would fall for it. “It’s insulting!”

But the same strategy in the hands of the late Senator Keith Davey worked for Pierre Trudeau in the 1980 federal campaign, as Trudeau press secretary Patrick Gossage recalls fondly in this 2011 tribute to the Senator. At any rate, it spelled the end of Joe Clark, although it was left to another Conservative named Brian Mulroney to actually dispatch that poor fellow.

Mr. Gossage says of the campaign technique we are witnessing now in the hands of Mr. Carter: “This was and is … the classic strategy for politicians leading in the polls.”

It would be fair, though, to say that Mr. Carter is taking it farther than most political strategists would dare to advise their charges, although one would think there would have to be a few more details in the Budget.

If it works, as it very well may, Mr. Carter will be hailed as a genius. If it doesn’t, well, all we can say for sure is that any failure is bound to be spectacular.

All that remains to be seen is when Mr. Carter will advise his premier to call an election.

Will the Conservatives really wait until after the Legislature has debated and passed the budget that will be introduced by Finance Minister Ron Liepert tomorrow? Third Reading would come in late March, with an election late in April.

Assuming another Conservative victory – as the Conservatives obviously do – that would let them run the province for the better part of the year without the nuisance of having to answer annoying Opposition questions in the Legislature.

Or will they find some excuse to pull the plug sooner, once they see how the public has responded to the budget?

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Ex-MLA Shiraz Shariff gives Redford favourite Ken Hughes the bum’s rush in Tory nomination battle

by David Climenhaga on January 22, 2012 in Uncategorized with 7 Comments
Ken Hughes, back in the day as chair of the Alberta Health Services Board. He’s now Alberta’s newest unemployed person. Below: Shiraz Shariff, Joey Oberhoffner.

As the beloved Scottish poet Rabbie Burns so famously observed, “the best-laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.”

The best-laid plans o’ mice, of course, are usually wrecked by people with traps. But those of men often go awry because of what might be termed an over-exuberance of democracy.

Consider the sad case of Alberta’s newest unemployed person, Ken Hughes, who on Dec. 28 last year announced he was stepping down as the first and only chair of Alberta’s giant public health care board, known nowadays as Alberta Health Services.

He didn’t make the other announcement official until a few days later – but it was so obvious at the time that even the tame stenographers of Alberta’s mainstream media included it in their reports of his resignation: Mr. Hughes was quitting so that he could seek the Progressive Conservative nomination in the riding of Calgary-West.

From there, it was assumed, he would be elected MLA with ease, since the riding has a reputation as one of the most easily winnable in the province for Progressive Conservative candidates. After all, since 2004, it’s been held by Finance Minister Ron Liepert, the perennial bull in Alberta’s political china shop until he announced his plan to resign. The federal riding of the same name, which occupies much of the same real estate, is home to the execrable Rob Anders, best known for calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist.

After that, it seemed likely, Mr. Hughes would take his appointed seat in the Legislature in Edmonton, whence he would be welcomed into Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s cabinet, quite possibly as health minister.

Alas, just as Robert Burns warned us might happen, this afternoon Mr. Hughes’s plans went spectacularly awry and his sure-thing ascent to cabinet became dust in his mouth. After a close fought race, to the utter astonishment of the Alberta political cognoscenti, Mr. Hughes was edged out on the third ballot by former Calgary-McCall MLA Shiraz Shariff, who doesn’t even live in the riding.

Whoopsie-doopsie all ’round! Back in the 2008 election, Mr. Shariff was narrowly defeated in Calgary-McCall by Liberal Darshan Kang, and later unsuccessfully claimed in court there had been election irregularities.

Apparently the PC electors of Calgary West were not nearly as impressed as the premier with Mr. Hughes’s accomplishments as an insurance salesman, as the undistinguished Member of Parliament for Macleod and as chair of the shambolic behemoth that is Alberta Health Services.

Indeed, while the Tory story as told by Health Minister Fred Horne in the official government news release announcing Mr. Hughes’s resignation is that “Ken’s leadership helped AHS to deliver solid results, including over $660 million in administrative savings that has since been reinvested in patient care,” there’s precious little evidence any money has actually been saved.

Moreover, it is simply impossible to claim health care operates more efficiently in Alberta under AHS than it did before the huge agency was created in 2008 to replace nine health regions – a move almost universally believed to have been a politically motivated strategy by the government of former premier Ed Stelmach to curb the burgeoning power of the Calgary Health Region.

Indeed, health care in Alberta seems to the public to have been in an enduring state of crisis almost from the day AHS was created.

No one knows what former AHS CEO Stephen Duckett, the plain-spoken Australian PhD economist hired to run AHS by Mr. Hughes and Mr. Liepert and then publicly sacked by premier Stelmach in November 2010, thinks of today’s development. Presumably, he has returned to the Antipodes, his $736,000 payout in hand. A for-sale sign rocked in the bone-chilling breeze today in front of Dr. Duckett’s residence in a posh Edmonton neighbourhood near the University of Alberta.

After yesterday’s nomination of Mr. Shariff, Mount Royal University communications professor David Taras, a political scientist who is a quotable favourite of the media, told the Calgary Herald the outcome was “shocking” and scrambled for an explanation. “It’s all about the ground game and obviously (Shariff) had a better ground game,” he told the no-doubt equally nonplussed Herald reporter. … Well, yeah!

Actually, the Calgary West nomination was but one of four Tory nomination races in southern Alberta yesterday. However, the only item of interest to come out of the rest of them is that one losing candidate in Calgary-Fish Creek, Joey Oberhoffner, was described by the media as a “political blogger” as if this were a reasonable job description for an aspiring office holder.

I would conclude from this, people, that there is hope for the world. Mr. Oberhoffner is known online as “the Enlightened Savage,” which judging from his political pedigree is at least half right. Calgary-Fish Creek is represented by Heather Forsyth, a Tory MLA since 1993 who crossed the floor to join the Wildrose Party on Jan. 4, 2010.

Getting back to Mr. Hughes and Calgary-West, the surprise nomination outcome served him right, according to the only commentator about the Edmonton Journal’s story by late afternoon. “It takes a lot of arrogance to think you can just resign from a cushy high-profile patronage job and step into a Tory nomination,” said someone identified as Old Grey Badger. “Gee I wonder if Hughes can get his old job back now. … Most likely Redford will appoint him as Alberta’s Trade Ambassador to Moldova or some other ‘really important’ position.”

Actually, much the same thing occurred to many Albertans. Who would bet against Mr. Hughes turning up in an important post-election position advising Premier Redford?

In other political surprises yesterday, south of the Medicine Line, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich served up a can of whoop-ass to former Mormon bishop Mitt Romney, the front-runner, in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary. Why can’t Canadian politicians have names like Newt and Mitt?

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

← Older Entries