| What’s next Ralph? During the past few months we’ve seen your public persona morph from gambler to grinch to sugar daddy. What role do you have in mind for the upcoming session of the legislature? After all, you will be looking across the aisle at the strongest opposition in years. Kevin Taft, your arch-enemy, the guy who won more public support than you did during the fractious Bill 11 fiasco, will still be there. David Swann, the soft-spoken doctor that your government once fired for speaking up on behalf of the public (rather than the oil industry) will be joining him. The NDs have doubled the size of their caucus. The brand new Alberta Alliance even managed to elect an MLA.
Will we see the gambler again? The guy who slipped out of an important premiers’ dinner in Ottawa last summer and headed for the nearest casino so he could play the slots? Or perhaps you’ll bring back the grinch that stole the November election? You remember him? The guy that mocked the disabled, and then insisted that he, and he alone, would decide if the public deserves public health care.
After the election, when you and the party realized you weren’t as popular as you once had been, the grinch exited stage right. The curtain went down for a while as you (and Rod Love, your faithful stage manager) figured out what to do next. And then, lo and behold, you emerged as a sugar daddy.
After years of strangling Alberta’s universities and colleges, and then forcing students to pay more for less, you announce plans to lavish money on them. Isn’t that what the Liberals and NDs, and students everywhere, had been asking for all along? Could your new-found generosity have anything to do with the fact that the Liberals elected Harry Chase in Calgary Varsity, a riding where almost every other house is occupied by someone who works and/or studies at the University of Calgary?
You also decided it was time to raise the minimum wage. How good of you. After all, for years you had defended Alberta’s right to pay the lowest minimum wage in Canada even though your government, and many oil companies, were pulling in billions of dollars thanks to the surging prices of oil and gas. Even the City of Calgary complained about Alberta's minimum wage when it discovered that too many people were on the verge of homelessness because their income didn’t allow for a decent place to live. But I guess you and the party had to lose a few seats before it hit home.
Your former chief of staff, Steve West (also known as Dr. Death because of the way he slashed government budgets and employees), has also benefited from your largesse. He got a severance package worth $180,000 for six months work. Reminds me of the sweet deal that Kelly Charlebois managed to negotiate with your colleague Gary Mar. No minimum wage for those guys, just maximum take, and take, and take again.
But of course we all know that sugar daddies don’t provide favours for nothing. They expect favours in return. And they expect them even though they are old, and worn out and not very appealing anymore. Just like your government. Do you really think Albertans are that easy?
And isn’t it interesting that you chose to announce your intentions regarding university funding and minimum wage before the upcoming session of the legislative assembly. Were you trying to firmly establish your sugar daddy persona so by the time the session opened the opposition would look like a bunch of ungrateful whiners? Or were you worried that the opposition, people elected by Albertans who don’t agree with you, would steal your thunder? That you would actually have to publicly answer for some of the lame decisions your government has made? Like the decision not to hold a public inquiry into the voting irregularities in the last municipal election – irregularities that appear to involve one of your MLAs. Or your decision to stall the new hospital in the southeast while at the same time handing out lucrative contracts for hip and knee surgeries to your friends in the private sector. Or your stand on same-sex marriage, a position sure to encourage mean-minded homophobes all over the province.
Most Albertans know that you would rather run the province by fiat than engage in the open democratic process afforded by a session of the legislative assembly. That’s undoubtedly why Alberta’s legislature, where all elected representatives can participate in the governing of the province, meets less than any other legislature in Canada. But you haven’t banned it altogether, so another session gets underway March 1.
You’ll have to face 21 opposition members. But as you well know, that number doesn’t really reflect what happened in the last election. For if you remember, more Albertans voted against you and your party in that election than voted for you. It’s going to be hard to forget that, especially if opposition members stay on their toes. But you’re a smart politician, Ralph, and quite a chameleon. So we’ll all be watching to see who or what you morph into next. |
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