Questionable justifications hurt UCP’S credibility

The controversy over Alberta’s Bill 22 may soon seem like a tempest in a teapot compared to the coming showdown between the government and public sector unions.

The battle lines were abundantly clear over the weekend, as well over 1,000 protesters gathered outside the hotel where inside over 1,500 members of the UCP were enthusiastically showing their support for their leader — and, of course, Alberta’s premier — Jason Kenney.

While some labour leaders were talking about the possibility of a general strike, Kenney made it quite clear in his speech that he believes there’s little appetite among Albertans for such drastic action. He’s probably quite correct.

Moreover, Kenney is correct about the need for the Alberta government to get its finances in order and he’s probably also correct when he notes that union leaders are “making this out to be the arrival of the apocalypse,” adding that “this is by modern Canadian fiscal standards one of the most modest periods of fiscal restraint.”

However, if Kenney is going to keep public opinion on his side through the tumultuous period ahead, he needs to have credibility on these matters. A significant revelation last week concerning Bill 22 will likely cause him some damage on that front.

As we all know by now, Bill 22, among other things, fired election commissioner Lorne Gibson and rolled his position into the office of the chief electoral officer. This legislation was touted as a means to “deliver more savings for Albertans” by eliminating “unnecessary government spending.” In other words, Gibson’s firing had nothing to do with anything he happened to be investigating; this was all a simple cost-cutting measure. Or so we were told, anyway.

As it turns out, this cost-cutting measure is

That’s $77,999 more than the $1,554,001 Gibson was seeking.

actually more of a cost-creating measure. Not a significant amount of money, mind you, but indeed an added cost.

The budget request for 2020-21 from the chief electoral officer includes a price tag of $1,632,000 for the compliance and enforcement duties that his office is now responsible for. However, that’s $77,999 more than the $1,554,001 Gibson was seeking for that year.

The finance minister’s office claims there are still some savings to be found in redundancies in IT and administrative costs, but it turns out those reductions had already been factored in by Gibson.

So it would appear that the government has not been square with Albertans as to the impact — and possibly the intent — of Bill 22. There likely is a considerable amount of public support for cost-cutting measures, but the government should not be taking advantage of that to achieve other means. If the mantra of cost-cutting gives the government a convenient cover for settling political scores or pursuing other agendas, then it makes it difficult to take future such claims at face value.

For example, over the weekend, Kenney offered an explanation for why his government is going beyond the sort of steps they talked about during the campaign. The premier claims that after the election, finance officials revealed to him a $6-billion hole in the budget, a hole that was the direct result of the NDP government’s over-projection of revenues.

That would indeed represent a serious challenge to the new government, if true. However, given that the claim also creates a political club with which the government can swat away future opposition criticisms of its agenda, we should be careful about taking it at face value.

And, as we’ve seen, some government claims shouldn’t be taken at face value.

While Bill 22 may be shoved to the back burner in the face of the coming political maelstrom, the government shouldn’t get a pass on this. If not to save money, why then was Gibson fired? Why the changes to the position of election commissioner? It’s not unreasonable to expect the government to be honest with us.

For their own sake, it’s a bad time to start chipping away at their own credibility.