Alberta Speaker’s apology not good enough

WHEN YOU’RE AROUND AN ACTUAL PROBLEM SOLVER, IT’S OBVIOUS. — JIVANI

When is an apology good enough? I find myself mulling this question over after a weird week in Alberta politics. Last Wednesday a group of 15 Conservative MLAS signed a letter protesting the intensification of ANTI-COVID restrictions on retailing and gatherings in the face of an uptick in infections.

Alberta’s “third wave” problem, it should be said, is not yet as severe as it seems to be in Ontario. Right now the province still has fewer than 40 per cent of the hospitalizations it did at the New Year peak of its second wave and fewer than 60 per cent of the intensive-care cases. But there’s no doubt that there is a third wave, although it hasn’t manifested in an increase in death tolls.

The MLAS who signed the letter think that the rewinding of restrictions — which included the re-shuttering of indoor restaurant dining — is an unnecessary betrayal. “In early 2021, Alberta’s government announced what we believe to be a clear path forward to reopen our province,” the letter reads. “It took the public health threat of COVID-19 seriously, and provided a step-by-step plan to lift restrictions and restore confidence for our small businesses and communities.”

The rest of the letter amounts to asking “So what happened, goshdarnit?” The government’s road map has always contemplated the possibility that some of the steps might have to be backward, and you only have to look around to see that the newer variants of the virus represent an important change in the situation.

But the hinterland backbenchers who signed the letter are exercising an acknowledged right to criticize the government with which it shares a party affiliation. This kind of indignant open letter would be par for the course in the mother of parliaments back in London. Probably not a week of sittings goes by over there without somebody or other flinging a metaphorical rotten egg at the PM from behind.

Party discipline is much stricter here in Canada, and the whole idea that backbenchers have a special role to play in an assembly beggars our national imagination. In the UK, they still dimly remember the theory that backbenchers actually have special ethical status because they’re not being paid by the government — only the assembly itself.

So naturally the letter led to a torrent of speculation about premier Jason Kenney’s shaky leadership and the continuing United Conservative crisis. Maybe the caucus is in crisis, but if the letter was meant to tempt cabinet ministers to begin resigning in protest against Alberta’s lockdown, it hasn’t done its job yet. It seems to me that that would be the appropriate time to start raising eyebrows. (If the Assembly as a whole is unhappy, of course, it can always vote no confidence in a government.)

But here I am, talking about backbenchers, when one MLA who signed the letter happens to be Nathan Cooper of Olds-didsburythree Hills, a riding that might be the single most truculently conservative anywhere in the Dominion. Hon. Mr. Cooper doesn’t sit either on the UCP front bench or in the back: he’s got his own chair. He’s the speaker of the Alberta legislature.

For a speaker to sign a letter opposing government policy is a pretty serious and frankly inexplicable error — assuming the letter doesn’t contain the words “I resign as Speaker, effective immediately.” Impartiality is rule one of the speaker’s job: this behaviour is like a policeman deciding to take up shoplifting as a hobby. If Cooper came into the job needing to be told this, that would have happened in the first round of briefings he got from his clerks and advisers. Or perhaps an intelligent schoolchild passing by randomly on a legislature tour.

It’s sometimes remarked that being a Speaker is a much softer and more desirable job than being a prime minister or a provincial premier. In Alberta the Speaker has, among other perquisites of office, his own apartment in the legislature building. The trade-off is that you don’t get to bellyache about government policy (or that of the opposition), even when silence might compromise you with the voters in your constituency.

Indeed, if the other signatories of the letter were well informed, and had their wits about them, they would have objected to having their colleague’s name on the letter at all. Cooper’s signature on the letter is arguably a small infringement upon their backbenchers’ free-speech privilege.

The premier, who is one of the most experienced living parliamentarians north of the 49th parallel, noticed Cooper’s signature and raised hell about it this week. In response, Cooper apologized. The apology, delivered in the legislature Tuesday, is everything one could ask: its unconditional, expresses regret, and gives accurate account of Cooper’s offence. It seems, for now, to have put an end to the matter.

But that’s just the problem. Cooper may have heard so much griping about the lockdown from Olds and environs that he felt it was safest to sign the letter and say sorry later. If someone commits an obvious offence, and then utters pious words of self-recrimination while still receiving the benefit from the offence, are we bound to forgive and move on? Moving on is no doubt what we shall do, but I don’t have to like it.

BEHAVIOUR IS LIKE A POLICEMAN DECIDING TO TAKE UP SHOPLIFTING AS A HOBBY.