Politics and Partisanship - Why Alberta Has Only One Real Option

 I have not generally regarded myself as particularly 'partisan'. I'm not one to stand up and defend the indefensible from a politician I otherwise like, nor to attack something utterly benign from a politician I dislike. (I may give the benefit of the doubt to a politician I respect, but that's not the same thing.) I've certainly never claimed to be 'apolitical', but I've seldom worn any party colour.

I've voted, from time to time, for three different Federal parties. I've occasionally maintained membership in some parties; when I do, it's not necessarily the same party; and I've even had simultaneous Provincial and Federal memberships in non-aligned parties.

But when I reflect on the first several Provincial and Federal elections in my lifetime, what strikes me is how MOST of them were contests between two parties largely viable governing options, if with platforms, leaders, and ideologies that one may or may not find objectionable.

Most Federal leaders have been intelligent and competent, professional political leaders who have understood how governments are supposed to operate. I've supported some politicians, and opposed many others, but I've never really had occasion to question the basic competence of a major Canadian party's leadership to operate a functional government. (For example, I may have called Harper many things, but 'stupid' was never one of them.)

Until the UCP came around.

Their term has been an absolute disaster of ineptitude, even with a seasoned political leader like Kenney at the helm. With Danielle Smith now running things...trusting her with a full term would be a catastrophe.

The Train Wreck That Keeps On Wrecking

The UCP government has consistently been a circus, a dumpster fire, a train wreck, a calamitous goat rodeo that tours from one fiasco to the next.

Danielle Smith's "Bill 1", her flagship legislation operationalizing a central promise of her leadership campaign, was so defective that, when experts across the Province (and beyond) objected to the scope of powers it conferred upon the executive, her Cabinet spent days wrongly trying to convince us, "It doesn't do that!", before they finally introduced an amendment to water it down. Were they deliberately trying to gaslight us, or had they legitimately not read or understood their own flagship legislation? Either way, that's unlike anything I've ever seen.

Her ongoing list of other flip-flops are similar. She has a growing list of transparent falsehoods - like claiming to be Indigenous or that Calgary never asked for support, and it's a running joke that she ought to appoint a Minister of Clarifications to her already record-sized Cabinet, because she so frequently has to 'clarify' previous statements - like claiming to have spoken to prosecutors about public health charges, then denying it; or calling the unvaccinated the most discriminated-against group; or arguing that cancer patients should do more to fight their disease; etc. (The prosecutorial interference scandal is just amazing. Yes, the CBC published a story about it relying on anonymous sources, but the anonymous sources were essentially verifying what Smith herself had repeatedly claimed. So this ongoing scandal turns out to be a credibility battle between Danielle Smith and herself. If she did interfere with prosecutions, that's a huge problem for her and she obviously now realizes that. If she didn't interfere with prosecutions, then claiming to have done so is a whale of an unforced error.)

The party's handling of the pandemic was a farce. Pandering to their anti-restriction base with predictably reckless and excessive relaxation of measures (Best summer ever!), only to watch ICU cases skyrocket to the point of needing to reimplement measures harsher than what should have been necessary - and then, making a show of flouting their own restrictions!

This is a point I made REPEATEDLY from the second wave onwards: The longer you delay responding to increasing case numbers, the more extreme the interventions necessary to respond to them. Seems like it should have been obvious, even in fall 2020. But this government wanted to make a bold display of aggressive reopenings, yelling LEEROY JENKINS while charging into the unknown, then hesitating to back away from them lest they lose face. And so Alberta's COVID policy became a really wild roller coaster of unnecessary death AND economic damage.

Burning $1.3 billion on Keystone; the Inquiry into Anti-Albertan Activities which spent loads of tax dollars on an inquiry into their own nonsensical propaganda talking points; AIMCo mismanagement; the failed COVID tracing app and decision to block the objectively better Federal app; their initial rollout of vaccine passports (while denying that they were vaccine passports) in an unsecured editable pdf file; the 'War Room', which was a ridiculous waste of money even in concept, made a mockery of itself by plagiarizing its logo and holding its staff out as reporters; MLA Dan Williams chugging a can of beer in the Legislature...these are all massive departures from what we would expect from any marginally competent government.

A more recent illustration is the ill-advised decision for Alberta to requisition its own massive oversupply of children's medicine to solve a winter crisis by purchasing off-label unapproved medications at premium prices from a Turkish company owned by Dr. Oz's mother: Quite predictably, it took three months to actually import them due to approvals and packaging issues; they turn out to be a lower dosage than most equivalent medications, which means that pharmacists have to keep them behind the counter to ensure that consumers get dosage guidance; and the government paid $16/bottle for these off-label diluted medications, when the 'standard cost' of such a medication (according to Jason Copping) is maybe half that. And we bought five million of them! In a Province with about 770,000 kids under 14, we bought six and a half bottles of this medication per child in the Province. (The government says they'll try to defray the cost by selling to other Provinces. Maybe, but you'll have to sell them at a big loss, because it's ridiculous to pay $16/bottle for these.)

You can understand the desire to acquire children's medicine, under the circumstances. But when the rodeo clowns do it, this is pretty much what you'd expect. (I predicted, when the plan was announced in early December, that they wouldn't hit shelves until April. Turns out...late March, so I was close, but they'll never actually be on the shelves.)

So these issues aren't just about bad policy decisions, but about implementing their policy - whether you agree with their goals or not - with all the grace and poise of the Marx Brothers. This isn't simply a bad government, but a satirical sketch comedy show about a bad government.

The list is long, even over a single term of less than four years - and that's without even getting into the substantive mismanagement of various government departments (like imposing an austerity budget on healthcare staff during a pandemic leading to wildcat strikes and staffing shortages) or unconstitutional legislation and mounting legal challenges against the Federal government that are little more than tilting at windmills.

Leadership Clowning Around

Then there's the Cabinet misconduct. Devin "MAGA Hat" Dreeshen resigned from Cabinet after it came out that his office was a binge-drinking frathouse. The list of questionable decisions as Health Minister that had Tyler Shandro brought before the Law Society's disciplinary panel. Justice Minister Madu responding to a traffic ticket by calling the police chief, in a move that, following an investigation, Justice Kent found was an attempt to interfere with the administration of justice.

And beyond that misconduct, there's the government's response to the misconduct. Madu was removed as Minister of Justice...and made Minister of Labour and Immigration instead. When Premier Smith took the reins, she rewarded Madu's extraordinary judgment by making him Deputy Premier.

Shandro, shortly after the disciplinary charges were made public, was moved into a different role as Minister of Justice - the Minister overseeing the statute under which the Law Society draws its authority. Smith kept him in that role. As far as I know, this is the first time a sitting Minister of Justice has EVER been a respondent in a law society disciplinary proceeding, anywhere in Canada.

The UCP leadership makes a SHOW of flouting the norms and standards that we normally expect of Ministers of the Crown. But hey, at least they drink budget whiskey, right?

There's also a list of problematic interventions into offices that are supposed to be non-partisan: Firing the Election Commissioner after he started investigating electoral misconduct by the UCP; dismantling the AHS leadership; Shandro making a dubious and underqualified appointment to the role of Chief of the Human Rights Commission, only to fire him immediately after a scandal broke, drawing a multi-million dollar lawsuit. (I haven't seen the pleadings, and shouldn't be taken as expressing an opinion as to the merits of that action here.)

Never mind the issues within the party administration, like the fact that Kenney's rise to power was always tainted by the 'kamikaze' investigation, or last-minute format changes for leadership/confidence votes.

Not the Party of Peter Lougheed

It bears remembering that the UCP is a new party. They have yet to even exist for an entire term, start to finish, though the entity is effectively a merger of the former PCs and Wildrose - the latter of which never governed, and the former of which had a...tough couple decades. Smith, of course, was formerly a leader of the Wildrose Party, and her election as leader of the UCP marks a transition in the party's identity away from its hybrid origin, and toward domination by the Wildrose side of the movement. Resignations by various of their moderate Ministers and former Ministers - like Schweitzer, Savage, Toews, Sawhney, etc. - cement that transition.

Aside from Rachel Notley, the last Premier to win an election and serve through to the next one...was Ralph Klein.

That's right, of the last 5 elections, four of them have been won by leaders under a blue banner (Klein, Stelmach, Redford, Kenney), and ALL FOUR of those Premiers resigned by the end of the term. It's been over 22 years since Alberta conservatives voted in a Premier who held the post to the next election.

As a result, Smith is the seventh Premier since Klein stepped down in 2006. (The previous seven Premiers, including Klein, covered a combined span of 72 years.)

All of which is to say that Albertan conservatives have found themselves in a bit of a collective identity crisis, but this new party's governing record is very limited, and the only thing impressive about it is just how much of a disaster it has been.

Furthermore, in any traditional Albertan sense of the word, the UCP isn't particularly 'conservative', either. It's a high-spending party, engaging in hefty corporate welfare programs that effectively pick winners and losers - despite Smith herself attacking Redford for doing just that in 2012. And they place ideology (and a particularly whacky ideology, at that) over evidence-based decision-making.

It's not just that they're dismantling and weakening public programs, but that they're replacing them with subsidized private services - still spending lots of tax money on education, for example, but instead of strengthening our public schools, they're funneling money into private hands via the Charter school system, which lacks the oversight, service standards, and universal access of the public system.

It Will Only Get Worse

Smith has taken relatively radical postures on various issues, and given a full term to implement her agenda...it'll be bad.

I've already written about how solemnly terrifying her devotion to the insurrectionist "Free Alberta Strategy" is. I won't rehash that here. (To be honest, if anything, her utter ineptitude is a comfort in that regard: Is she competent enough to successfully stage a coup?)

But part of the plan, which she has strongly indicated she will pursue, is to bring Albertans' CPP into Alberta instead, and to create an Alberta Provincial Police Service. (The UCP has gone very quiet on these subjects in the run-up to the election, but no UCP insider will deny that they're part of the plan if they secure a fresh mandate.) These are the few ostensibly constitutional facets of the FAS, but they aren't good policy, and if poorly implemented they will be disastrous for Albertans.

The Canada Pension Plan is the gold standard for the responsible and accountable management of a public pension fund. It's arm's-length from the Federal government, and there is Provincial input into its administration. It's well-structured; it's safe from corruption and irresponsible practices; and - most importantly of all - it's been a very effective structure for Canadians, including Albertans.

So pulling out of the CPP and creating an Albertan version, in some kind of virtue-signalling middle finger to Ottawa, has no compelling policy rationale, and instead means asking us to trust the Alberta government with it - and this government in particular, which doesn't like the idea of 'independent' institutions and has already significantly weakened them.

Raising what should be a defining question of this election: Who trusts Danielle Smith with their pension???

Then there's the 'Alberta police' issue. In the abstract, I don't hate the idea of a Provincial police service (the OPP, for example, is...okay), and the RCMP hasn't exactly done a splendid job of everything, but there's absolutely no reason to expect the Alberta government to do anything better or more cheaply.

The cost issue is straightforward: Transitioning from RCMP contracts to a Provincial police service will be expensive: It will cost $366 million in initial startup costs, an additional $235 million per year ($735M instead of $500M annually), and lose a $170M/year Federal contribution. So unless there's a compelling policy reason to do it, why would we?

But even more importantly, for all its flaws, the RCMP has a well-established accountability structure and insulation from government which is important in policing. There's every reason to expect that the UCP, tasked with crafting its own policing statutes from scratch, will give themselves - that is, the politicians - more direct oversight over police action. (Why should we think that? Well, Madu calling up the police chief is a sign. The Sovereignty Act is another. But most importantly, their whole basis for wanting an Alberta Provincial Police is that the UCP wants more direct control over law enforcement than what they currently have. They've told us this.)

Politicians are not supposed to be able to tell police "Arrest that person" or "Don't arrest that person". They are empowered to set broad enforcement priorities, but direct control by politicians over front-line law enforcement activities is dangerous, inviting corruption and tyranny. It's the dividing line between a genuine civil police service and a political paramilitary arm.

So when they create their own police service - again, basically a big virtue-signalling middle finger to Ottawa - don't expect them to conform to the traditional norms and practices surrounding the establishment of such a service to operate at arm's length from anything political. Even if that weren't the whole point of creating a Provincial police service, they're simply not competent enough to design that service the way a police service ought to be designed.

And without those structures, when suddenly it's okay for the Minister of Justice to call up a police chief and say "I don't want to be charged for anything"...why would we expect them not to exploit that? Not just to get out of traffic tickets, either: if the police are literally under your direct control, what else do you figure you can get away with?

High on the list of ridiculous things about this government is that, when they clearly don't have their own house in order on squarely-Provincial issues like education and health care, their focus is consistently on Federal policy.

No matter how much she seems to think otherwise, Danielle Smith is not running against Justin Trudeau.

The Alternative: The Alberta NDP

Despite the circus, the UCP still gets a lot of automatic support from Albertans who have long voted Conservative, so they still might win the next election. It's not at all controversial to say that there's only one party with a chance at beating the UCP in the upcoming election - the NDP.

And, truthfully, it's a pretty good option. I voted in four Ontario elections while I lived there, and none of those were for the Ontario NDP...but if it had been this party? Have to say: I'd have preferred Notley and her team over the McGuinty/Wynne team. (Or Eves, Tory, or Hudak, just to be clear.) As far as how far 'left' Notley is...I practiced labour and employment law under both Wynne and Notley, and at least from the standpoint of their L&E reforms, I can say that the Notley NDP objectively stands further right than the Wynne Liberals. The Alberta NDP is, on any reasonable estimation, a moderate progressive party.

But the simple reality is this: Even if you're not all that enthused about Notley, her policies, or the colour orange, there's only one viable governing option in Alberta right now. If you want a government that's credible and serious about getting stuff done, at this particular moment in Alberta, that makes you an NDP supporter. Notley, at least, understands how government is supposed to operate.

It's not necessarily a good thing that the NDP is the only credible choice. Democracy only really works well when there's more than one real choice. I'd like Notley to win, yes, but there's something else I want beyond that: If and when Notley becomes Premier again, I'd like there to be a coherent and credible opposition party with reasonable policy options to offer in the event that the government fails to perform - if only to raise the bar.

So even conservative-minded folks would be well-advised to vote NDP in this election - and then get active at the party level to try to ensure a viable governing conservative option - whether that's trying to rein in the ridiculousness of the UCP, or re-establishing a PC party, or building the ABP into something it currently isn't.

There's a cost to apathy and complacency, and sorry to break it to you, Alberta conservatives, but your movement has been hijacked by rodeo clowns.

*****

The views in this post represent my views alone, and should not be taken as representative of my employer or any of my clients.