Simple questions seem to stymie politicians
This just in: Wildrose Leader Brian Jean thinks feeding hungry children is a good idea.
This shouldn’t be a news flash, of course. But it has taken a week for Jean to provide an answer to a simple question posed to him April 5 — Do you support Premier Rachel Notley spending $10 million to expand a pilot program providing free lunches in needy schools?
Last week, Jean fumbled with a non-committal response that included the robotic statement that we must “get our house in order and start controlling our expenditures.”
A party official said later Jean would have a definitive response in days or weeks. Weeks?
That allowed Notley to gleefully paint Jean as a cold-hearted ditherer who needed “six or seven weeks to figure out if he’s in support of a mere $10-million program to feed hungry kids in schools.”
Anyone who knows Jean realizes he’s not cold-hearted. In fact, he’s arguably the most emotional MLA in the assembly, regularly getting choked up when talking about abused children or the massive fire that a year ago ravaged his constituency of Fort McMurray.
But for a week he was open to attack by the government as speculation grew that he was focused on other things, such as not sticking his foot in his mouth over gay-straight alliances in schools and the complicated political chess game that is the ongoing discussions over merging the Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives this summer.
Finally, on Wednesday of this week, Jean had an answer to the free-lunch question.
“Nowhere in Alberta should a child go hungry and I hope that this particular system is going to be implemented in the interests of making sure that all Alberta kids get a good nutritious lunch and a good nutritious meal. And if they can’t get that at home then I think absolutely they need to get it at school.”
Now, was that so hard?
The government will no doubt still needle Jean about taking a week to come up with that answer.
But the NDP should be careful about crowing too loudly. It has managed to fumble a few times itself when giving what should have been an easy answer.
During question period Monday, for example, Wildrose MLA Prasad Panda asked why the government was setting up a new Crown corporation to deal with infrastructure contracts.
Infrastructure Minister Brian Mason mocked Panda by saying there was no such plan. “Maybe in his next question he can answer where he gets this idea of this Crown corporation from.”
Except that there is such a plan. It’s in the newly signed Canadian Free Trade Agreement that includes this clause — “Alberta gives notice of its intention to create a Crown corporation which will be responsible for all infrastructure procurement.”
It took a day for the government to explain the clause was merely a bargaining tactic against other provinces that have in the past used Crown corporations to shut out Alberta companies. The government said it has no plans to actually form a new Crown corporation.
Mason was obviously out of the loop when it came to the details of the interprovincial agreement signed last Friday. But his uninformed — and unnecessarily cheeky — answer made him and the government look foolish.
And Tuesday, when deputy premier Sarah Hoffman was asked about an energy efficiency program, she went off topic to rail against Wildrose members for being against gay-straight alliances in schools.
The question dealt with the government-hired company, Ecofitt, that will be going doorto-door installing free high-efficiency light bulbs in every home that wants them. The Wildrose question — would Ecofitt be using the house calls to push sales for other products?
Hoffman’s tirade against the Wildrose made it look like she was trying to avoid the question.
The answer, according to government officials, is that Ecofitt doesn’t sell products. It will simply point Albertans to other government programs to save homeowners money on heating and lighting.
So, the answer Hoffman should have given is a simple “No.”
Just as Jean’s answer last week should have been a simple “Yes.”