HEY, BIG SPENDER
LAST SUMMER, THE PREMIER AND TWO CABINET MINISTERS ATTENDED THE OLYMPICS. THE INITIAL COST WAS ANNOUNCED AT $84,000. THE EVENTUAL BILL WAS BETWEEN $500,000 AND $950,000, DEPENDING ON HOW YOU COUNT.
Last April, my colleague Jack Mintz warned, in the pages of the Financial Post, about Premier Alison Redford’s upcoming spending spree. In June, she ended a wage freeze on Alberta bureaucrats. Deputy ministers now make $275,000. Ordinary bureaucrats now make 30 per cent more than they do elsewhere in Canada, and the medical bureaucrats make a full 60 per cent more.
Mintz’s warning and subsequent criticism of the Redford government are based on the premise that the PCs were a party elected to govern, to steer Alberta in a direction that could plausibly be identified with the public interest. But after more than four decades of rule, they are not a party in the normal sense of the term.
Aristotle would have called them an oligarchy. In an earlier column, I said they were a machine, and those who made it hum were its mechanics. They included the bureaucrats who attracted Mintz’s attention, but the net is much wider. The distinguishing feature of oligarchs (and mechanics) is that they rule in their own interests and not for the benefit of the public to whom they are nominally responsible.
For example, last summer, the premier and two cabinet ministers attended the Olympics. The initial cost was announced at $84,000. The eventual bill was between $500,000 and $950,000, depending on how you count. The premier’s airfare was $12,500 and her London hotel cost $1,376 a night.
Tourism Minister Christine Cusanelli said at the time that the trip had “a very strong business focus.” Of course it did. Everyone goes to the Olympics to do business. That’s why an apprentice mechanic, whose job is to protect the minister, invited her mom and daughter to join her at the front of the plane for the trip.
In July, Kelley Charlebois was confirmed as PC president and head mechanic. He clearly deserved the job, having been executive assistant to Gary Mar and, as auditor general Fred Dunn reported, was the beneficiary of a $400,000 untendered contract for which he provided verbal reports.
In August, defeated PC agriculture minister Evan Berger was hired by his former deputy minister as a “senior policy adviser” at $120,000 a year. Apparently he is tasked with ensuring Alberta remains rat free. Neil Wilkinson, the ethics commissioner, a former chairman of the Capital Health Region — and so another mechanic — saw no conflict.
In October, Albertans learned that yet another mechanic, Daryl Katz, who owns a string of drug stores and sits on the board of the Alberta Investment Management Corp., gave the PCs nearly half a million dollars. Alison Redford thanked him. Bill Smith, then party president, saw nothing wrong with splitting large donations among family members to circumvent the $30,000 limit.
Nor was there any connection between contributing over a quarter of the PC war chest and Katz’s seeking taxpayers’ money to build an arena for the Oilers or to raise fees for pharmacists. Redford professed to be shocked at the suggestion of linkage and said Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith was “rude” even to mention it.
We also learned last fall about the work of mechanic Joe Lougheed, who, in return for a handsome retainer, “facilitated” meetings between the Alberta College of Art + Design, a government-funded body, with government officials. Until stopped by an observant university lawyer, he also invited U of C people to attend PC fundraisers, supplied them with tickets, and then billed the university for his legal services. The minister responsible, Stephen Khan, was shocked at the suggestion of “graft of corporate corruption.”
More recently still, the government awarded a law firm employing mechanic Rob Hawkes, a former husband of the premier, a contract to litigate a $10-billion suit against tobacco companies. The firm stands to make a great deal of money on contingency awards as well as from the provision of legal services. The deal was negotiated when Redford was Justice minister and the losers in the competition were informed on her watch. It was finalized by her successor. Redford said: conflict-of-interest rules don’t apply to ex-husbands.
She then complained of being attacked. She is not a victim. Her only complaint is that the network of mechanics, the PC oligarchy that she heads, had been exposed.