Fildebrandt latest to tax public’s trust

MLA’s expense scandal the ‘kind of thing that drives people crazy and rightly so’

Alberta politics is back on the merry-go-round of MLA expense controversies.

It’s a ride the province seems to clamber on at least once a decade, this time after Postmedia News revealed United Conservative Party MLA Derek Fildebrandt was subletting his taxpayer-subsidized apartment on Airbnb. Let us take you back to 1992. That year, expenses caused outrage after taxpayers ponied up more than $1.3 million to finance living allowances for MLAs, including some who lived less than a 30-minute drive from the legislative building.

A handful of cabinet ministers in the then-Progressive Conservative government used the money to make mortgage payments on houses and condos in Edmonton, sold for large profits when they retired.

Then, as now, no receipts were required from MLAs to justify their living allowances.

Fast-forward to 2007, when the auditor general of the day, Fred Dunn, exposed lavish bonuses and gifts funded on the taxpayer dime and MLAs who routinely exceeded living allowances.

In March 2012, there was the No-Meet Committee debacle, in which the public purse paid MLAs thousands of dollars for sitting on a committee that hadn’t met in more than three years.

Later that year, then-tourism minister Christine Cusanelli landed in hot water after billing thousands of dollars of personal charges on her government credit card — an appetizer for the all-youcan eat buffet of 2013 and 2014 spending scandals under thenpremier Alison Redford.

Redford’s expense controversies ranged from a $45,000 taxpayerfunded trip to South Africa to attend Nelson Mandela’s funeral to an $11,000 overspend on a trip to India, a $330,000 “trip scout” and the infamous $2.7-million “skypalace.”

The consequences for Fildebrandt took around 24 hours.

He took a leave of absence from his position as UCP finance critic Thursday and left the province on a family vacation — nowhere near the fate that befell Redford, who was forced to resign.

Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt said marked changes to Alberta expense rules and practices tend to come from the fear of being thrown out of office.

Take the 1993 controversy, he said, when newly elected premier Ralph Klein scrapped gold-plated MLA pensions lickety-split when power was in danger of slipping from his grasp or when Jim Prentice got rid of government airplanes in the run-up to the 2015 election.

“This is the first scandal since the (2015) election, so we’ll have to see if there is a change in the political culture,” Bratt said.

But there are only so many rules that can be made, he said.

“We’ll have to see the impact this is going to have not on rule changes, but on Fildebrandt’s career,” Bratt said.

“If he can rebound and ends up finance minister under Jason Kenney, then maybe things don’t matter and things don’t change.”

Expense scandals only serve to cement in the public’s mind the image of politicians as moneygrabbing, selfish egotists if letters to the editor, online comments and social media are anything to go by.

Those implications irk Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark.

“It’s the kind of thing that drives people crazy and rightly so,” he said after the news broke.

Clark seemed frustrated about the Fildebrandt controversy, but like a tut-tutting mom, he was more disappointed than anything else — “profoundly disappointed” in fact.

“It feeds the perception that MLAs — and federal, local, all politicians — are only in it for their own personal gain,” Clark said.

“I think the vast, vast majority of them are highly ethical and do the right things for the right reasons. When you have a situation where they’re not, it erodes public confidence ... and there should be a penalty.”

But Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi thinks Albertans know the vast majority of politicians are decent human beings.

“They’re not doing this to enrich themselves with power or fame — it ain’t worth the Twitter,” Nenshi said.

“They’re doing it because they really believe in public service and I think citizens understand that.”

Finance Minister Joe Ceci said Fildebrandt owes all Albertans an apology.

“The public puts a lot of faith in their elected officials and when people act like that, I think they destroy that faith,” he said.

It feeds the perception that MLAs — and federal, local, all politicians — are only in it for their own personal gain.