POLITICAL POSTURING ON MLA PAY ONLY A WARM-UP

Albertans should prepare themselves for one heck of a political show this fall

As grandstand shows go, the one put on by Alberta politicians at a members’ services committee meeting this week was every bit as dazzling as anything by the Calgary Stampede’s performers.

Forget singers, dancers and acrobats when you can instead watch a group of hyper-partisan MLAS argue about how much to pay themselves.

The political posturing was astounding, the rhetoric immense. And all of it was made more impressive by the fact that it was just the opening act for a much bigger spectacle over finances set to play out over the next few months.

Of course, the idea of elected officials having authority over their own compensation rates has always been a recipe for dramatics.

The Stelmach government sure found that out when it approved hefty raises for cabinet ministers, the premier and other senior positions in 2008.

Since then, moves on MLA pay have been in the opposite direction, such as what happened Tuesday when the committee voted for a five per cent cut to MLA salaries (down to $120,931) along with a 10 per cent rollback for the premier (down to $186,175).

That’s on top of a five per cent reduction initiated by the Prentice government in 2015 and other reforms brought in by the Redford administration in 2012.

To be sure, pay cuts for politicians don’t generate the kind of outrage that pay hikes usually spark, especially when many of those politicians are chronically engaged in maligning their own value.

Yet the same calls for independent oversight levelled against the Stelmach government should also theoretically apply anytime politicians want to reduce their earnings.

That’s because such moves tend to be just as cynical, motivated by one-upmanship and a race to the bottom.

In the case of Tuesday’s committee decision, it should be noted that the rollbacks were an election promise of the UCP. Even the NDP committee members voted for the salary trim, though you have to wonder whether they just wanted to avoid being shown up.

Regardless, the pyrotechnics at the meeting were not over the pay cuts themselves, which still leave Alberta MLAS among the highest paid in Canada.

The hand-wringing was instead over how the cuts should be framed.

For the NDP, their showboating was directed at UCP cabinet ministers, whom they accuse of “dilly-dallying” on approving money for services. There’s some truth to that, yet NDP members made themselves look silly with a laughably over-the-top amendment to have ministers’ pay set at $0 until they improve.

That’s about as puerile as it gets and the NDP members should consider themselves lucky the other side of the committee didn’t propose the same treatment for MLAS who waste time with ridiculous motions.

However, another motion from the NDP, to make sure the pay cuts “not be used as rationale to justify any measures to roll back compensation of public-sector workers,” was more relevant.

On the surface, that should have been an easy one for the UCP committee members to support, considering Premier Jason Kenney said essentially the same thing when he first proposed the MLA salary reductions.

“To be clear, this show of leadership does not mean that a future UCP government will be seeking salary rollbacks in the broader public sector,” read a Feb. 17 news release quoting Kenney.

Yet the UCP members unanimously rejected the NDP motion and on Wednesday we got a hint as to why Kenney held a news conference to mark his government’s first 100 days.

Ironically, the news conference was chiefly for Kenney to tout the 60-plus promises his government has already accomplished, yet when asked about his assurance not to use MLA pay rollbacks as leverage in negotiations with labour groups, the premier hedged.

While not directly answering whether he would stand by his words, Kenney repeated unsubstantiated allegations he’s made over the past weeks that province’s finances are in far worse shape than the former NDP government reported.

The premier has never been clear about the details of this supposed deception and was again frustratingly befuddling in his explanations Wednesday — though he said evidence will be available when a blue-ribbon panel’s report on Alberta finances is released in September. We’ll see.

In the meantime, whether based on legitimate justifications or not, it’s clear Kenney is no longer tied to assurances of avoiding public-sector wage cuts nor his commitment to maintain current levels of spending for health and education.

Maybe he never was.

After the raucous warm-up act staged this week, Albertans should prepare for one heck of a show this fall.

After all, if something as supposedly minor as a five per cent cut to MLA pay ignites such political grandstanding, imagine the fireworks when Kenney tries to do it to provincial unions.