All posts tagged Wildrose Party

Wildrose deftly defuses robo-call crisis while federal Cons suffer Scotch verdict

by David Climenhaga on May 24, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Canadian Politics, Electoral Fraud, Robo Calls with No comments

Members of the Wildrose Party try out their new robo-calling technology, which should avoid future problems with the CRTC. Right-wing Alberta politicians may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Wildrose Party Executive Committee President David Yager.

You don’t have to agree with Alberta’s right-wing Wildrose Party to admire the skill with which it stick-handled yesterday’s revelation it had been fined $90,000 by the federal broadcast regulator for a series of improperly identified robo-calls made to voters during the 2012 election campaign.

Compared to the federal Conservative Party’s blundering response to its various recent troubles, it seems mildly astonishing the two parties are essentially the provincial and federal branches of the same organization.

Slapped with the significant fine by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Wildrose Party officials responded deftly.

When the CRTC decision was reported by Global TV, party officials fessed up immediately, then followed with an immediate, contrite and seemingly sincere admission they were wrong and a promise never to do it again. They’d already paid their fine by the time the matter was in the news and that was the end of it. There will be no appeal.

Party leaders left the embarrassing admission to David Yager, president of the party’s executive committee, instead of Opposition Leader Danielle Smith.

The tone and speed with which the matter was handled was pitch perfect. Under the circumstances, the party’s claim it didn’t realize it was breaking the rules will sound quite believable to voters. As a consequence, the whole potentially embarrassing business will likely fall off the radar within 48 hours.

Given the size of the fine and the Canadian right’s issues with regulators like the CRTC, the temptation must have been strong in Wildrose circles to make a fight out of the dispute – but someone obviously made a cool-headed assessment of the facts and realized that would only prolong and magnify the agony.

This contrasts dramatically with the federal Cons’ ham-handed handling of the continuing Duffygate Senate expense scandal and the coincidental court ruling yesterday in the election fraud case stemming from the last federal vote in May 2011 – a case less that coincidentally involved Rack 9, the same Edmonton robo-call company that made the Wildrose calls.

In fairness, there’s a significant difference in gravity between the Wildrose Party’s failure to identify itself as the source of partisan robo calls and the outright electoral fraud in which targeted Liberal supporters were misdirected to incorrect or imaginary polling stations by callers pretending to be from Elections Canada.

Still, if the federal Conservatives had adopted a similar strategy, contritely admitted they had done wrong, paid the party’s debt to society and perhaps tossed in a few extra “overenthusiastic” low-level flunkies to accompany party operative Michael Sona under the bus, the whole affair could have been forgotten by now.

But Prime Minister Harper is almost pathologically incapable of admitting error. His party tried to block the proper investigation at every turn.

Now, in a classic “Scotch Verdict,” the judge in the federal case appears to have let the Conservatives off the hook because, despite powerful circumstantial evidence, the facts were well enough hidden to make it difficult to tie the well-established fraudulent activities to the only party in a position to benefit from them.

According to the Globe and Mail, this result clears Mr. Harper’s Conservatives, Tory candidates and two telemarketing companies of wrongdoing. However, the political reality is quite different. The case is merely “not proven,” while the odour of corruption will stick to Mr. Harper’s party like a miasma.

Moreover, federal Tory pain is bound continue, since the Council of Canadians will now likely take its demand for election results in six ridings to be overturned to the Supreme Court of Canada. Win or lose before the Supremes, the Council’s case will continue to bedevil the Harperites.

Given the ways they dealt with these superficially similar cases, you’d almost think the Harper Conservatives in Ottawa were the farm team, and the Wildrose Party in backcountry Alberta were the pros!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Negotiating with Alberta’s PC government? Better bring witnesses!

by David Climenhaga on May 11, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Labour Relations, Thomas Lukaszuk with 10 Comments

Wildcat strike scene, grabbed from AUPE’s website during the strike. Below: AUPE President Guy Smith, Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk.

Advice to anyone who tries to negotiate a deal with Alison Redford, Thomas Lukaszuk or any member or official of their government: take witnesses with you, and make sure you also bring a tape recorder.

You might want to bring a piece of paper, a pen, a Bible and a notary public as well. One-on-one meetings ending in “handshake deals” with these people? I don’t think so!

In what surely is one of the most outrageous Alberta news stories of the year to date, the Edmonton Journal reported yesterday evening that “Alberta Union of Provincial Employees president Guy Smith ‘misled’ union members when he claimed he had negotiated a full amnesty for striking workers, the province alleged in legal documents filed this week.”

As is to be expected, AUPE and the government are now slugging it out before the Alberta Labour Relations Board over the wildcat strike by about 2,500 provincial Correctional Peace Officers that began mid-morning on April 27 when a long-simmering dispute over occupational health and safety boiled over at the just-opened Edmonton Remand Centre.

The fight over what punishments the government can mete out to the union, including seeking compensation for the cost of the strike and a six-month dues suspension, can be expected to drag on for months or years.

As is most emphatically not to be expected, the government came right out in a statement of claim to the Alberta Labour Relations Board and called Mr. Smith a liar: “He then chose to falsely claim that he had the agreement that he desperately tried to get and never obtained,” the statement says.

The strike ended on May 1, when the jail guards went back to work, assured by Mr. Smith he had had negotiated an amnesty for them.

The deal looked like a climb-down by Deputy Premier “Stompin’ Tom” Lukaszuk, Ms. Redford’s designated tough guy and court jester, who just hours before had vowed he would never even talk to Mr. Smith or any other official of AUPE while the strike continued.

Just the same, as Journal political columnist Graham Thomson reported yesterday evening in an excellent column, Mr. Lukaszuk nevertheless met Mr. Smith on April 29 in an Edmonton restaurant where they discussed the illegal strike, and presumably how to end it.

When the meeting was over, notwithstanding the things now said in the government’s statement of claim, Mr. Smith appears to sincerely have believed he had a deal – a belief he used (at considerable political risk to himself within AUPE, it should be noted) to get the guards back to work.

Pretty quickly, though, various government spokespeople started backing away from the deal that Mr. Lukaszuk either made or didn’t make with Mr. Smith. When they began to do so, AUPE filed an unfair labour practice complaint with the Labour Relations Board.

The union complaint said in part that AUPE members “feel betrayed by the government and AUPE and take the position that they were tricked into returning to work.”

It is the government’s response to that complaint in which Mr. Smith is accused of intentionally misleading his members.

The government’s and AUPE’s filings to the ALRB were leaked to the Journal by some person or persons unknown for some reason, about which we can only speculate. But the government statement of claim, Mr. Thomson accurately reports, “reads like a political speech, using inflammatory language that would be at home on the floor of the legislative assembly.”

It is hard to say with any confidence what the principal actors on the government side of this story truly believe, or who came up with this particular strategy, but it is a fair observation that the government’s response is not a particularly astute one.

Now, to those of you who are grumbling, “Yeah, but Dave’s a union guy, and he used to work for Guy Smith,” all that is true. Full disclosure: I know Mr. Smith, I used to work for him and I hold him in high regard.

Beyond my personal confidence, however, there’s not much sense to the government’s story – which, as they say, has not been proved before the ALRB, let alone in a court of law. The most obvious flaw, of course, is that doing what the government now claims he did would amount to political suicide for Mr. Smith within AUPE. For that reason alone, it seems highly unlikely.

Then there is the matter of the documents on which the story is based. They were supposed to be held in confidence by the ALRB. It is interesting to speculate on who did the leaking and for whose benefit.

Whatever the answers to those questions are, it is said here the government’s response was foolish because there is no way the union is going to roll over on its unfair labour complaint – and now they’re bound to go before the labour board and try to prove the government did make the commitment that is now in dispute.

If they don’t succeed before the labour board – which, after all, is a tame and employer-friendly body – expect this fight to move on to the courts.

And so at every step of the way, in a public forum, the honesty and trustworthiness of a government that growing numbers of Albertans mistrust on those very grounds will be disputed in a public forum.

As good an idea as it may have seemed at the time to whoever came up with the idea of leaking the government’s statement of claim and AUPE’s documents, it’s hard to see how this will do this government much good. Some of the potential consequences include:

Other groups going into negotiations with the government – and not just unions – will now to be extremely wary and distrustful, with good reason. Can it be trusted? Likely not.

The credibility of the ALRB has also suffered another blow, even if the documents were not leaked from its offices.

Jail guards represented by AUPE will be so furious another illegal walkout must be considered a possibility.

Chances are also good this is another nail in the coffin of the 11th Hour progressive coalition Ms. Redford’s government cobbled together to save her government from the Wildrose Wave in the April 2012 election.

Next time, it is said here, many progressive voters will be prepared to take a chance on another Smith, Wildrose leader Danielle, even if they do it by voting for the Liberals or the NDP.

As for Mr. Smith, I can only say that if I were him, I’d challenge Mr. Lukaszuk or the premier to state the government’s allegations in public, instead of in a privileged document. That way he could respond in an appropriate manner to the government’s claim he lied to his own members.

It might have been momentarily less satisfying, but surely it would have paid dividends in the long term for the government to argue Mr. Smith must have merely been mistaken, and for the documents to be kept confidential until they were presented to the ALRB panel.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Ironies abound in Alberta’s agitated politics as Alison Redford cranks up the postage meter

by David Climenhaga on May 8, 2013 in Alberta Economy, Alberta Politics with 1 Comment

How Albertans should see Progressive Conservative and Wildrose policies and procedures. Below: The clever Wildrose Facebook attack on PC Premier Alison Redford’s faintly unsavoury taxpayer-funded mail out, which makes it look a little worse than it really is.

Am I the only one who sees irony in the leader of Alberta’s ultra-conservative Wildrose Party working up a full head of steam because the merely very conservative government of Premier Alison Redford plans to mail a colourful budget brochure to every household in the province – at taxpayer expense, of course?

After all, the Wildrose Party of Danielle Smith is effectively the Alberta provincial branch of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada – the one mailing out those federal Tory flyers attacking Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s substance as well as his masculinity.

The federal Tory ads are being mailed to voters across the country at taxpayer expense as well, of course, but there’s no word about how Ms. Smith feels about that – nor is there ever likely to be.

She was also silent on the provincial government’s new policy of referring to the Alberta Government as the Redford Government in news releases drafted up by civil service public relations flacks – another bad habit copied from the Harper Government.

But on the topic of the Redford Conservatives – the 61 supposedly Progressive MLAs so spooked by Ms. Smith’s 17-member caucus they’ve forgotten who got them elected and offer destructive policies nearly identical to those of the Wildrose Party – the Opposition leader was in fine fettle.

“We have a premier who is desperately afraid of losing confidence from her party in her leadership vote in the fall, and she’s pulling out all the stops, including using taxpayer money to send out political propaganda,” Ms. Smith huffed in an interview with the always reliable Canadian Press, which you can only read in out-of-town newspapers nowadays because the moribund Alberta rags don’t use the news service any more.

Ms. Smith raised an important and fairly non-partisan point – which was echoed from the other side of the political spectrum by NDP Leader Brian Mason – and that is that this mail-out likely has as much to do with internal PC Party politics as with any desire to inform the populace of the government’s plans.

“This has got a lot to do with the premier’s campaign, which is now in full swing, to win her leadership review in November,” Mr. Mason told the CP, most certainly an accurate assessment of the premier’s motivation.

If the mail-out can help her improve her polling numbers with voters, it will most certainly help her win her party’s endorsement to carry on – which, as has been stated here before, she likely will anyway.

Still, with their characteristic ineptitude, Ms. Redford’s strategic brain trust made it easy for the opposition by printing the $350,000 brochure in the same orange and turquoise colour scheme the premier used in her 2012 election campaign.

A clever commercial artist in Ms. Smith’s party’s employ worked up a witty Facebook graphic that drew attention to this fact, managing to make the leaflet look just a little sleazier than it in reality is.

The contents of the eight-page mail-out add up to the usual baloney we’d expect from any premier who found herself in Ms. Redford’s shoes – plenty of excuses for the party’s screeching turn back to instinctive austerity from its promised sustainable funding for social programs, blamed on the already evanescing “Bitumen Bubble,” plus anodyne bromides about the province’s glowing future.

Well, call me cynical, but I reckon that to the winner goes the spoils – and in a democracy that usually means the keys to the room with the postage meter.

The brochure is faintly unsavoury, but I just can’t get my knickers in a twist about a sin this small compared with things like the Tories’ determination to ship bitumen and jobs out of the province and the country as quickly as they can – a policy they share with the Wildrose Party, except that Ms. Smith’s crew is standing on the sidelines yelling, “more, more, faster, faster!”

Nor do I believe for a moment that the Wildrose Party – the would-be, erm, Smith Government – would behave any differently in office on this particular count.

That’s not cynicism designed to discourage citizens from voting, yet another Tory bad habit, merely an evidence-based assessment of the likely behaviour of so-called conservative parties of almost all stripes whenever they manage to glom onto power.

The government, meanwhile, defended sending us all the factoids contained in its cheerful “Report to Taxpayers” – “we don’t apologize for communicating to Albertans the information that Albertans want to know,” sniffed Finance Minister Doug Horner.

Well, not all the information that taxpayers want to know. The government won’t be releasing the contents of a report on pipeline safety to taxpayers any time soon, Energy Minister Ken Hughes explained yesterday.

Mr. Hughes promised: “We’ll release it in the fullness of time” – the dispensation of which will happen, as lots of people in Alberta of all places understand instinctively, whenever…

In other words, don’t hold your breath waiting for environmental pie in the sky.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Premier explains Alberta politics to children: ‘Opposition Leader, what big teeth you have!’

by David Climenhaga on May 3, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Alison Redford, Fairy Tales with 5 Comments

Alberta Premier Alison Redford, right, meets Opposition Leader Danielle Smith, left, while on her way to announcing a new school opening. Actual Alberta politicians may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Premier Redford, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Guy Smith.

Once upon a time, while Alberta’s premier was telling fairy tales to impressionable children, some of her senior officials were spinning fairy stories of their own.

Actually, this all happened yesterday.

The premier told a group of Grade 1 students at an Edmonton school library a story about a good princess named Alison, who built schools for children just like them, and a very bad princess named Danielle, who wouldn’t build any schools at all!

The Alison in question, of course, is Premier Alison Redford herself, the one telling the story. The Danielle is Danielle Smith, leader of the Opposition Wildrose Party. And maybe Ms. Redford didn’t use exactly those words, but you get the general idea.

If you think I’m just making this up to be mean, well, forget it! You can’t make up stuff like this! Anyway, you can read all about it yourself courtesy of the Canadian Press, which is usually pretty dependable.

“Alberta Premier Alison Redford is warning young schoolchildren to beware of the Opposition Wildrose party because, she says, it is committed to not building anything,” the anonymous CP reporter managed to write without breaking into hysterical giggles. “Redford told the children – and the parents and dignitaries seated behind them – that while her government is committed to building things, her opponents are not.”

The CP report didn’t say if anyone’s jaw actually hit the floor when the premier started saying stuff like this to little children, but it did mention that she said the same thing to another group of kids in Calgary the day before – so apparently this is part of an actual plan cooked up by the communications braniacs in her office, not just a horrible error in judgment.

She also announced that her government will be building seven new schools in the Edmonton region.

Meanwhile, across town at the Edmonton Remand Centre, where bad children who don’t attend to their lessons will find themselves when they grow up, either as inmates or guards, Deputy Solicitor General Tim Grant was said to be taunting guards who illegally walked off the job for five days last week in a dispute over safety issues in the recently opened jail.

According to the leader of the guards’ union, Mr. Grant “was telling members there was no blanket amnesty for the Correctional Peace Officers, contrary to the agreement I reached with the government to end the strike.”

“He has been inflaming raw emotions and threatening labour peace with his actions,” said Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Guy Smith. AUPE has made a complaint to the Alberta Labour Relations Board, not that that’s likely to do much good, given the Board’s transparent pro-employer bias.

Well, you can only hope AUPE thought to get their strike-ending deal with the government in writing, preferably notarized and signed by witnesses. And you can only wonder if the Redford Government is now trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest broken promise in history.

The guards, meanwhile, are so furious that it wouldn’t be a complete surprise if they walked off the job again. If that happens, and you thought last week was a gong show, just wait!

Well, there’s one thing you can believe Ms. Redford about, and that’s her commitment to not changing Alberta’s election financing law – which alert readers will recall has now been shown to permit billionaires to write humungous cheques and then decide later who among their employees, friends and relatives were actually making $30,000 maximum donations.

“We’re comfortable that we have a system that Albertans can have confidence in — that is transparent — and we’re going to move forward,” the premier told reporters at the school-building announcement after nearly five days in virtual hiding during the jail guards’ wildcat strike. (I threw in the italics myself.)

This is actually part of her communications team’s plan, by the way. Ms. Redford will only be around to make happy announcements, plus tell scary stories to toddlers. The rest is left to Deputy Premier Tom Lukaszuk.

To those who suggest banning huge donations from unions and corporations, this government says: “Never!”

The explanation for that position is probably pretty simple. As NDP Leader Brian Mason explained it last week, without huge corporate donations, the Redford Government wouldn’t stand a chance of re-election.

Speaking of which, Ms. Redford closed the day yesterday with a “campaign-style” (not Gangnam style) speech at a $500 a plate dinner to 1,400 or so supporters, each of whom presumably wrote their own cheque.

Even though there’s not supposed to be an election in Alberta until 2016, Ms. Redford needs to campaign hard because she’s facing a Progressive Conservative Party leadership review in November and elements of her own party are growing antsy, thinking things may be slipping out of control under her leadership.

So you can count on hearing many more fantastic tales from Mr. Redford and her retinue in the next few weeks. If this keeps up, even school kids won’t believe what she’s peddling, just like a lot of their parents.

The End.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Has Alberta pioneered an unlegislated ban on collective bargaining?

by David Climenhaga on April 24, 2013 in Alberta Politics, Collective Bargaining, Labour Relations with 1 Comment

“Post-secondary collective bargaining,” Alberta style. Advanced Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk and a post-secondary employer negotiator rig the deck, foreground, while a faculty association negotiators ponder what’s just happened. Actual Alberta bargaining teams may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: The real Mr. Lukaszuk, former advanced ed minister Steve Khan.

As is well known, Advanced Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk has sent a letter to the boards of all of Alberta post-secondary institutions instructing them on what their bargaining position and final wage offer must be in negotiations with their faculty associations and staff unions.

The position can be summed up in the phrase, now frequently heard on college and university campuses throughout the province, “Zero, zero, zero.”

Oh, wait – and I mean that literally – after three years of nothing you can ask nicely for a 2-per-cent raise. If you’re lucky, and unlike Athabasca University your institution’s administration hasn’t spent its reserves into oblivion, you might get something.

This leads us to a new axiom in the Annals of Labour Relations in Alberta.

Alert readers will recall that it is an opinion expressed frequently on this blog that strikes are not permitted in Alberta unless the union is so weak that the workers cannot possibly win. This practice is already well established.

This is not mere hyperbole. It is literally true, since Alberta’s labour relations legislation, anticipating the Republican “reforms” in Wisconsin by decades, outlaws strikes by essentially all public employees – civil servants, health care workers and post-secondary education employees.

Where such blanket bans aren’t in place and a strike threatens to be effective from the perspective of working people – in the private sector as well as the public – the government directly or through the tame and toothless Alberta Labour Relations Board is willing to step in immediately to postpone or outlaw any strike the union has a chance of winning.

Strikes are only allowed to proceed when there is a strong chance the effort will fail.

Now, though, it would appear that in the matter of public sector negotiations, Mr. Lukaszuk is going for the “Full Wisconsin” and banning collective bargaining by public sector unions altogether – only without the American-style bother of actually passing legislation.

Why waste the time passing laws? This is, after all, Alberta!

So the new axiom is simply this: collective bargaining is illegal in Alberta, unless it can be shown in advance to be ineffective.

What else can we make of Mr. Lukaszuk’s statement – which is no request at all, but an instruction – in his letter that “limits on compensation and improvements in productivity are necessary everywhere in the public sector, including post-secondary education.”

“In this regard,” he suggests, it would be in the public interest for any and all future collective bargaining to result in agreements with the following parameters:

“Annual percentage wage changes over four years of not more than 0/0/0/2; and…

“Negotiated deals which include methods to achieve productivity gains by remedying any inefficiency in current agreements.”

The former point is code for a government ban on wage increases; the latter for wholesale gutting of collective agreements in the name of “productivity.” Certainly, under this formula, negotiating contract improvements that benefit working people is impossible.

This is not, of course, collective bargaining and Mr. Lukaszuk, who is a reasonably bright man, surely knows this.

But the government can confidently proceed with this program in the knowledge it would take more than four years for any challenge to reach the Supreme Court, by which time the government’s inevitable loss would be legally and politically moot.

So, let it be said here, this is an example of bargaining in bad faith on an epic scale.

Indeed, what if universities, colleges, technical institutions and their employees should come up with ways to be more productive? Well, why bother, since Mr. Lukaszuk’s diktat means there is no incentive for their productivity improvements to act as an incentive, collectively or individually.

Mr. Lukaszuk is also Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s deputy premier. Readers will recall that he was only recently slipped into the Advanced Education portfolio after the government brewed up its Bitumen Bubble misdirection. The previous minister, St. Albert MLA Steve Khan, was unceremoniously skidded, presumably for being too nice and honourable a guy. So Mr. Lukaszuk is most certainly aware that government budgets are passed on a one-year cycle – an inconvenient and unchangeable aspect of the Canadian Constitution.

So why is the Redford (un-)Progressive Conservative Government dictating collective bargaining over a four-year cycle? The answer, of course, may be summed up in a single word: politics. The four years will get them through the next election, the government obviously hopes, closing in on a half century of Tory rule.

This is what passes for “labour peace” in Alberta.

It’s said here that Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi – a Mount Royal University professor in a previous life – got it right when he said this government’s attacks on post-secondary education are a disgrace and wrote a letter to the MRU Board urging them to stand up to this government on the question of program and budget cuts.

Indeed, every post-secondary board in this province should do that – though it’s doubtful any of them will have the courage.

Speaking of courage, if this government had any real courage, they’d brush the boards aside and “negotiate” these contracts themselves – it’s what they’re doing anyway. Of course, if they did that, they’d have to take responsibility for whatever happened next.

Count on it, though, when that time comes, this government will be back knocking on the doors of public sector unions, social program supporters and progressive voters, respectfully asking for their sympathy and assistance and trying to scare the bejeepers out of them with tales of what a Wildrose government might do.

Oh, please!

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Never mind the pundits: Alberta Premier Alison Redford has plenty to celebrate today

by David Climenhaga on April 23, 2013 in 2012 Provincial Election, Alberta Politics, Alison Redford with No comments

Alberta Premier Alison Redford, second from right, with Environment Minister Diana McQueen and Culture Minister Health Klimchuk, watch as Deputy Premier Tom Lukaszuk celebrates the Progressive Conservative Party’s victory on this day last year with a sip of champagne. Actual PC cabinet members may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: the real Premier Redford, swearing the oath of office.

Today is the first anniversary of Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s unexpected but comfortable election victory.

If you follow Alberta politics, you’re bound to have been reading a lot of stuff lately about how unpopular Ms. Redford is just now and how she really has no reason to celebrate.

“There is no cause to party,” the Edmonton Journal’s political columnist wrote gloomily, recommending against her drinking anything more expensive than Baby Duck.

He, like everyone else at the moribund local rag and its similarly declining Postmedia counterpart in Calgary, has been touting a self-confessedly iffy Leger Marketing on-line-panel survey that suggests Ms. Redford has no friends.

Well, it’s true, I guess. The popularity of Alberta’s premier does seem to have rather slumped of late – although probably not as badly as the doubtless politically charged members of Leger’s panel indicated – and her Progressive Conservative government likewise seems to have a penchant for making many more enemies than friends.

If there’s anything to this Leger poll – which the Calgary Herald cautiously noted in its story on the survey is “a non-random Internet survey” that “does not report a margin of error” – the news wasn’t particularly good for anyone else either, at least anyone else the Journal or the Herald is likely to advise readers is a credible and serious candidate.

So if, as the poll suggests, 60 per cent of Albertans disapprove of the job Ms. Redford is doing, nearly 40 per cent disapprove of the work of Opposition Leader Danielle Smith as well. Ms. Smith is doing better with her own supporters, the poll suggests, with 39 per cent who approve, versus 26 per cent who approve of Ms. Redford. But … yadda-yadda … Feel free to read it for yourself if you care all that much.

In reality, the situation Ms. Redford and her government find themselves in is akin to that experienced by all of us who have discovered to our astonishment we’re not as young as we used to be. To wit: Growing old is for the birds, but the alternative is worse.

And the alternative for Ms. Redford last year, it could be argued, was a fate almost worse than death, that is, political death!

A year and a couple of weeks ago, tout le monde political Alberta had written off Ms. Redford and her Tories and were already typing up the obituaries, not to mention the longer one for the four-decade-plus PC regime started by Peter Lougheed.

The really important reporters, of course, were writing up glowing tributes to Danielle Smith, Tom Flanagan and the other Great Minds behind the Wildrose Party, which we were all persuaded was about to win a huge majority.

So let us not forget the reason the Alberta political punditocracy was writing off Ms. Redford and the PCs last year in almost exactly the same words they’re writing them off now was public opinion polls that looked an awful lot like this latest survey.

Instead, as we all know now, Ms. Redford posted a respectable 61-seat majority government and got the last laugh, or at least the next-to-last one.

Since political life is better than political death, I’d say Ms. Redford has something to celebrate right there.

What’s more, plenty of Progressive Conservative MLAs who expected to lose their seats are still safely ensconced in their Legislative sinecures. So, no matter how worried they are about where Ms. Redford is taking them next, neither they nor any others in the party, are very likely to take the chance of skidding the premier at her mandatory PC Party review next November.

So there’s a second reason for her to celebrate – she’s probably safe at least through to the next general election in 2016, or whenever.

Of course, she may lose then, as everyone seems to think now that she will, with voters complaining about the shards of broken promises that litter the streets of Alberta’s cities and towns.

But are you really certain that, three years hence, Alberta voters will even notice, let alone care?

The truth is, it could happen, and the Opposition will try mightily to ensure it does, but Alberta voters have a long and undistinguished history of ignoring broken promises, incompetent government and bonehead mistakes before returning Progressive Conservative governments to power by comfortable majorities.

Is anyone who doesn’t have a partisan point to make really confident enough to predict the same thing won’t happen again in 2016?

We should also be careful what we wish for. Ms. Redford still has three years to keep those promises, and, what’s more, some of them aren’t worth keeping. Do you still want – as Ms. Redford promised on page 29 of her 2012 policy platform – to “recruit foreign temporary workers”?

The fact is, Ms. Redford and her government have plenty to celebrate today. So why wouldn’t they say, “what the hell,” and pop the corks on some champagne?

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Is Chuck Strahl’s dual role on the Manning Centre and security committee appropriate?

by David Climenhaga on April 22, 2013 in Canadian Politics, Conservative Party of Canada, Manning Centre, Security & Intelligence, SIRC with 7 Comments

Chuck Strahl listens to a participant in the Manning Centre conference in Ottawa in March. Below: Manning Centre founder and figurehead, Preston Manning.

Should Chuck Strahl be able to serve simultaneously on the board of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, a partisan political organization tied to the ruling Conservative Party of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other provincial conservative parties, and on the apolitical Security Intelligence Review Committee?

The SIRC is supposed to be, in the words of its website, “an independent, external review body which reports to the Parliament of Canada on the operations of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.”

“Parliament has given CSIS extraordinary powers to intrude on the privacy of individuals,” the website explains. “SIRC ensures that these powers are used legally and appropriately, in order to protect Canadians’ rights and freedoms.”

Mr. Strahl is a former Reform Party, Canadian Alliance and Conservative Member of Parliament from the British Columbia Interior who served as Deputy Speaker and held several cabinet portfolios during his political career. He retired from politics after the 2011 election and was appointed to a five-year term on the SIRC in June 2012. His biography on the committee’s site is open about his dual role, stating clearly that in 2011 he was appointed as a director of the Calgary-based Manning Centre.

As readers of this blog know, according to an email the group sent to its supporters, Mr. Strahl has now been appointed chair of the board of the Manning Centre, the organization founded and led by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning that works openly to keep the Harper Government in power and is now trying to extend the reach of neoliberal politicians into Canadian municipal governments.

Well, it’s still a relatively a free country, so the Manning Centre can call itself whatever it likes and work for the political outcomes it supports, but the question of whether the chair of this partisan organization’s board should serve in a sensitive and apolitical Parliamentary security review position is another matter entirely.

A claim by B.C. Premier Christy Clark last Wednesday that Mr. Strahl has been campaigning for her Liberal Party in the current election in that province has proved highly controversial and prompted swift backtracking by Ms. Clark.

The B.C. Conservative Party issued a press release Thursday stating Mr. Strahl was barred from campaigning in the election because of his membership on SIRC and demanding Ms. Clark apologize for saying he was doing so.

The Globe and Mail reported Ms. Clark quickly “clarified her statements,” explaining, “he has been active for the last two years and when he took on his non-partisan role just very recently, he stepped back from that.”

No doubt spokespeople for the Manning Centre will try to claim that organization is non-partisan too, but, really, how can they?

“The Manning Centre is dedicated to building Canada’s conservative movement,” the group’s website states. At the federal level, there is only one Conservative party. As the statements, speeches and participants at last March’s Manning Centre “Big Ideas” conference in Ottawa made perfectly clear, time and again, the “conservative movement” means Mr. Harper’s Conservative Party and, here in Alberta, the Wildrose Party of Danielle Smith. “Us” and “the Conservatives” meant the same thing for most participants in the conference.

For example, Mr. Manning staked out a partisan position in Alberta politics in one of his principal speeches, stating, “in Alberta an aging Progressive Conservative administration has lost its way ethically and fiscally and needs to be overhauled or replaced.”

Mr. Strahl, naturally given his position, attended the conference.

As for the Manning Centre’s foray into municipal politics, its so-called “Municipal Governance Project” is also a directly partisan activity whether or not the group is actually backing a slate or trying to unseat Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi. It is most certainly backing individual candidates, one or more of whom, presumably, may challenge Mr. Nenshi directly.

If it is inappropriate for Mr. Strahl to serve SIRC and work for the B.C. Liberals’ at the same time, surely it is equally inappropriate for him to have a similar dual role with the Manning Centre and SIRC.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Redford Government just can’t seem to stop fumbling health care expenses frenzy

by David Climenhaga on April 19, 2013 in Alberta Health Services, Alberta Politics, Alison Redford with 2 Comments

Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne, right, helps Premier Alison Redford get ready to face Opposition questions about Alberta Health Services expense accounts. Alberta politicians may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Health executives Michele Lahey, Sheila Weatherill, Alison Tonge. 

The clueless ineptitude of the Redford Government dealing with Alberta’s continuing health system expense account brouhaha is matched only by the belligerence of the Opposition in portraying the situation as an outrage and a scandal.

Since mainstream media now routinely refer to the matter that way – “Redford, opposition trade barbs over Alberta Health Services expense scandal,” is how the Edmonton Journal headlined the story yesterday – it’s fair to say the opposition strategy is working.

Whether it’s in answers to questions in the Legislature, management of issues by Premier Alison Redford’s newly hired phalanx of former Ontario spin doctors, the juvenile quality of a stream of mean-spirited Tweets from the deputy premier’s BlackBerry, or just the Progressive Conservatives’ apparent inability to predict when the next embarrassing story is about to break, her government seems to be operating without a clue in a cartload!

Rudimentary issues-management skills should have allowed Ms. Redford to step out of the way with aplomb when the two latest loads of stuff hit the proverbial fan. Instead, she got splattered!

The first one was this week’s revelation that in 2008 a senior Capital Health Region executive had a trip to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for cancer tests, which by the sound of it weren’t needed, approved by her boss as a legitimate expense to be paid by the public.

“I was instructed to go for a further consultation at the Mayo Clinic by my boss to ensure that I was clear of the condition. As it was not my decision, it was funded by my employer,” former CHR vice-president Michele Lahey told a local newspaper after she was tracked down at the private hospital where she now works in the United Kingdom.

“I do not believe I have done anything wrong,” she added. So no, she wouldn’t be repaying the money – and, as Health Minister Fred Horne admitted, the government concluded it didn’t have a leg to stand on when it pondered trying to collect the $7,800 from her.

Ms. Redford wasn’t even thought of as a potential premier at the time this happened, let alone the occupant of the office. Mr. Horne wasn’t the minister either. And, for heaven’s sake, Alberta Health Services hadn’t even been created – and when it was it was supposedly in part to fix just such problems.

Yet Ms. Redford and her advisors let that ball just sail by. Even the fact it originated with a Freedom of Information filing apparently failed to alert the government the story was about to break.

Still, since it also looked as much like a case of line jumping as one of expense account shenanigans, the government could plausibly have pleaded it was looking into that through the Health Care Preferential Treatment Inquiry led by retired judge John Vertes.

Alas for them, they’d already closed that affair down – apparently over the wishes of Judge Vertes – managing to make the whole thing look like a cover-up on top of everything else.

You have to admit, it takes real talent to bungle things this badly! And we’re still less than halfway through the story!

The second punch in the one-two combination came in the form of the next revelation, that another former senior health executive – this one hired for Alberta Health Services by former CEO Stephen Duckett, the fellow fired in November 2011 for misusing an oatmeal-raisin cookie – had been allowed to expense $1,200 in medical tests needed to get permission to move to Canada.

Surely the government could have blown that one off with the excuse it’s standard practice to do such things when recruiting top executives from abroad?

But, no, perhaps from bad luck, perhaps by bad management, they seem to have managed to drop that ball too. Maybe they forgot because, barely three years after she was hired as strategy and performance VP, Alison Tonge had also packed up and moved back to the U.K.

Now it’s been revealed by the Calgary Herald AHS paid Ms. Tonge at least $426,576 to go away!

This too happened before Ms. Redford’s watch began, but no matter. You’d think the government would have figured out by now the FOI requests just aren’t going to stop until journalists have pumped that well dry, so they might as well release everything and make a virtue of necessity. Don’t count on it, though, because strategic thinking doesn’t seem to be part of the Redford Government’s repertoire.

Yesterday afternoon, former Capital Health CEO Sheila Weatherill threw up her hands at this and said she shouldn’t have authorized Ms. Lahey’s trip to Minnesota, so she’d personally pay back the $7,800 – the cost plus inflation. Maybe she’s just nostalgic for the days the local media used to treat her with adulation.

A gleeful Mr. Horne – who may or may not have come up with the idea himself – told the media he had Ms. Weatherill’s cheque in hand.

Not that this is likely to end the feeding frenzy any time soon. Somebody’s bound to do so anyway, so it might as well be me that points out this still leaves Ms. Weatherill with $1,492,200 of her controversial 2008 buyout – and that’s not counting her $1.7-million executive retirement plan and her pension!

Since all three opposition parties have got their teeth into a good thing with this stuff, we can’t reasonably expect any of them to stop as long as the headlines keep coming.

And as we get closer to the next election in 2015, it’s safe to predict the Opposition will up the ante.

In particular, the Official Opposition, the far-right Wildrose Party under former Fraser Institute intern Danielle Smith, which has no more use for public health care than most of Ms. Redford’s caucus and cabinet, is joined at the hip with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party. As is well known, Mr. Harper’s Robocall Party has negative campaigning implanted deep in its political DNA.

If in the run-up to the next election in 2016 the Wildrosers don’t stoop to the kind of advertising we just saw welcome Justin Trudeau to his new role as federal Liberal leader, it will be an astonishing development.

So if Ms. Redford and her insiders can’t up their game, we are led inevitably to two conclusions:

First, the next three years will see politics in Alberta descend to a whole new low of American-style viciousness – the fear of which made former Premier Ed Stelmach throw up his hands and quit in 2011.

Second, if the premier can’t get her act together, the possibility of a Wildrose government – which seemed laughably unlikely a year ago as Ms. Redford’s PCs celebrated their comfortable election victory – every day seems more like a probability.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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.

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