| "There’s no longer a discernible Progressive Conservative party agenda. It has no philosophical anchor. Its horizon is the next election. The party is left with a husk of conservatism: knee-jerk Reform party reactionism, mean-spirited law and order rhetoric and the politics of patronage."
With that the Calgary Herald endorsed Nancy Betkowski for Tory party leader in November 1992. Little has changed for the Tories in 12 years. The knee-jerk reactionism cannot be blamed on the Reform party but on plain populist intolerance. The mean-spiritedness is no longer confined to law and order. As for patronage, Klein’s people have filtered out of government and into key jobs in every other government agency in the kingdom.
History makes fools of all political analysts eventually. The Herald was wrong to believe that Betkowski (now MacBeth) was the only leadership contender who could lead the Tories and the Alberta government out of the fiscal and policy wilderness of the early ’90s. The observations from 12 years ago, however, prove that the Kleinites have not changed the Tory party. They have changed the Alberta government, but not enough to justify the term revolution that they like to throw around. More significant for Albertans today is what has not changed under the Kleinites.
Before Klein won the leadership, Albertans believed the province’s financial problems were a combination of falling revenues and rising spending. The Kleinites ridiculed us into accepting that out-of-control spending was the only reason for government deficits. Seven straight years of increased spending and budget surpluses have put the spending rhetoric to bed. The Kleinites now look like federal Liberals – slammed by interest groups and the left for not spending enough and beaten up by real fiscal conservatives for extravagant spending.
The style of spending has changed under Klein. Most new money outside of health goes into one-time or short-term capital spending. For example, the Kleinites have financed a building spree on university and college campuses, but have given little extra money to pay for maintaining the buildings or hiring people to fill them.
Predicting oil and gas prices remains a problem. In 1992, then treasurer Dick Johnston consistently overestimated the average price of oil and gas and watched his balanced budgets sink into a sea of red. Klein’s treasurers have turned Johnston’s crystal ball upside down. Their predictions are as purposefully wrong as Johnston’s, except their budgets end up bloated with black ink.
Oil and gas royalties were a hot topic 12 years ago. One of the 1992 leadership contenders, then energy minister Rick Orman, had just restructured the royalty regime of former premier Peter Lougheed to help the floundering energy industry. Alberta’s cut on oil and gas was reduced to help struggling companies cope with the low oil prices of the early ’90s. Those tough times are a dim memory for the oil patch, but any suggestion of ramping up royalties again is treated with the now trademark Klein ridicule and industry threats of layoffs.
New sources of revenue have risen to challenge oil. Natural gas is now the king of resource revenues, and gambling profits fight with oil revenues for second place every year. Sadly, gambling represents the only successful diversification of Alberta’s economy under Klein’s stewardship. Parasitical addiction industries aside, Alberta remains the shock-susceptible, commodity-driven hinterland economy it was 12, or even 30, years ago.
The Kleinites have centralized government power to an unprecedented degree. In 1992, hospital and college administrators, school principals and school boards actually made financial decisions. Today, the provincial government controls their lives. Regional health authorities were created to be closely managed middle-persons that keep spending under control. College and university base funding was cut or frozen – replaced with one-time funding directed to provincial-government priorities. Taxation powers were taken away from school boards and municipalities were forced to become provincial school-tax collectors. Despite all the control, the Kleinites have been bailing health and school authorities out of deficits for years.
Within government, the control Lougheed had over his government was reasserted. Klein ministers stick to the key messages or have their hands slapped. MLAs do not speak out of turn for fear of losing a committee appointment or a goodie for their riding. According to former Klein staffer Peter Elzinga, only three people can change the direction of government policy: Klein, his wife and Elzinga (now replaced by Steve West).
The control seeps through Alberta society the way it did in the Lougheed years. The Kleinites have produced business plans, government strategies and now 20-year plans, but little has truly changed in Alberta and there is little hope it will change anytime soon. The Tories have money, people and Ralph’s world. Jump on the wagon or be prepared to shiver in the ditch for another five years is all hindsight can teach you today. |
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