We deserve unfettered truth
If the Alberta auditor general’s scathing rebuke of the provincial government for failing to keep us informed carried the same weight as end-of-term report cards, elected officials and staff would spend the next two months in summer school.
In Auditor General Merwan Saher’s strongest language since taking the top job monitoring the government’s checks and balances, he raised serious questions in a combination of reports about the Progressive Conservatives’ commitment to openness and accountability.
“I’m not saying the government doesn’t know what it’s doing,” Saher said. “I’m saying the government isn’t telling Albertans.”
Of his many concerns, a lion’s share of attention went to the report analyzing the province’s complete failure to monitor whether Alberta is hitting its greenhouse gas emission targets, or to publish a single document on those outcomes.
It is galling, especially when you consider that the auditor general’s office originally flagged this problem in 2008.
Time and time again, Alberta’s failure to monitor or track basic environmental indicators has caused problems both at home and abroad. It’s just plain bad practice in light of how critical it is to improve our environmental reputation globally.
How can we evaluate what we don’t measure? How can we know if things are improving if we don’t know where we started?
It is not just environmental indicators that concern the auditor general, though. Saher critiqued the entire process of annual reports, basically saying they failed to provide any useful analysis of departments’ work, priorities, successes, failures and ability to achieve results at a reasonable cost.
“To be credible, public performance reporting on results must be complete, fair and balanced,” the report said. “This means reporting on results that are good, as well as those less good or unsatisfactory.”
There are countless good reasons to explain to Albertans when results are heading in the right direction, and when they are not.
Consider, for example, the serious issue of sexually transmitted infection rates and the number of children born each year with congenital syphilis. For a decade, between 1992 and 2002, no newborns were born with this dangerous infection. Then, in 2008, it came to light that 14 children were born with the disease between 2005 and 2007.
It was evidence of a clear public health danger and a sign that resources needed to be shifted to combating the problem.
Today, Albertans know those efforts are paying off, because they can see it clearly presented in the statistics published in Alberta Health’s annual report. There is a stated goal that this province wants no babies born with congenital syphilis. For the last two years, the province has happily achieved that goal, according to its most recent annual report.
Even there, that report describes some of the programs implemented since 2009, but does not discuss the cost of those screening measures and public awareness campaigns. That kind of change could make the information more meaningful.
It is human nature to want to gloss over the negatives. That’s why judging anyone’s life by, say, their Facebook posts is a mistake. Few people will voluntarily share all their troubles publicly.
The difference for a provincial government and the elected officials who oversee that work is that they do so on behalf of all Albertans, who deserve the unfettered truth.
The auditor general has provided a template for how annual reports should be composed. Officials would be wise to study up so that future reports receive top marks for insight and openness.