NDP MLAs refused to take some sound advice

Committee chair forced into an about-face over 7.25% pay raise

Oops.

Just when you thought the NDP government was perhaps ready to take the training wheels off, you realize they might need training wheels on the front as well.

Helmets and face shields wouldn’t be a bad idea either. They’re still a bit wobbly. On Thursday, the NDP members of an all-party legislative committee managed to do a face plant — not once, but twice. And to add insult to injury, they did it while the Wildrose members of the committee were warning the government members to stop, take a breath and think before charging ahead.

At issue was a 7.25-per-cent raise for independent officers of the legislature — people such as the auditor general, the ethics commissioner and the chief electoral officer.

Everybody on the 11-member committee thinks the independent officers do important work and they do it well. But in a time of fiscal restraint, with a burgeoning government deficit, should public servants get a 7.25-percent raise comprised of a fiveper-cent wage hike on top of a 2.25-per-cent cost-of-living allowance?

Keep in mind, the officers already make between $148,000 and $273,000 a year.

The NDP MLAs thought the pay hike was fair and necessary. Their reasoning is murky — the portion of the committee meeting dealing with the debate over the pay hike was done in camera.

What we do know is they approved a ridiculously generous raise — then they voted to send themselves on a taxpayer-funded junket to Boston.

Besides an understandable public backlash, the story is remarkable for a number of reasons.

One is that the NDP MLAs could be so politically tone deaf they didn’t think of the terrible optics of approving such a large pay increase when the province is going through tough times.

The second is that the Wildrose members on the committee didn’t see their heads explode from sheer frustration.

They — as well as the one PC MLA on the committee, Manmeet Bhullar — practically pleaded with the NDP to reduce the hike to just the 2.25-per-cent cost-of-living allowance for the officers.

“While I certainly appreciate the work that they do,” Wildrose MLA Nathan Cooper said, “now is not the time to be raising the cost of wages for members that serve the legislature or, quite frankly, in the public service either.”

Cooper was proposing a reasonable compromise, just as Wildrose MLA Glenn van Dijken suggested the committee send two people rather than four to a convention of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws in Boston in December (the opposition members all refused to go on the trip).

The NDP members rejected the opposition’s sage advice and furiously pedalled themselves over a cliff and into a maelstrom of public outrage.

Within hours, a politically battered and bruised commit- tee chair, NDP MLA Denise Woollard, announced, “I will be calling this committee back together in the coming week to reconsider this decision.”

Translation: We screwed up big time.

There are echoes here of a controversy involving an all-party legislative committee last February, when the PCs were in control. Back then, the committee voted to increase the budget of the auditor general’s office, but was ordered by then-premier Jim Prentice to reverse the hike.

The opposition at the time — including the NDP — attacked Prentice for improperly interfering with the work of an independent committee of the legislature.

This time around, NDP officials deny Premier Rachel Notley had anything to do with Woollard’s sudden about face. Woollard, they say, simply saw the error of her ways after the meeting.

Next week, the committee will reconvene to do what the opposition said they should have done in the first place.

They should also make sure the government’s training wheels are on good and tight.