| The recent passing of Jane Jacobs has once again focused attention on her writings about the nature of city economies and urban environments. But another aspect of her writings deals with broader issues, such as government policy and taxation, that hold important lessons for our provincial government. These topics surface in her last book, Dark Age Ahead, in a chapter titled "Dumbed-Down Taxes."
In the book, Jacobs introduces the notions of "subsidiarity" and "accountability" and defines them this way: "Subsidiarity is the principle that government works best – most responsibly and responsively – when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses. Fiscal accountability is the principle that institutions collecting and disbursing taxes work most responsibly when they are transparent to those providing the money."
We need go no further than Alberta to find instances where governments have subverted the principle of subsidiarity in the last 15 years and, as a result, have also subverted the principle of fiscal accountability, the two of which are linked. It is indeed ironic that Alberta governments have complained of a lack of subsidiarity on the part of federal governments even as they governed provincial cities and regions in similar fashion. The principal areas, but by no means the only ones, where this has occurred have been education, health care and the infrastructure of cities.
In education, the provincial government removed the power to raise school board taxes from local school boards and reserved it for the province, which then doled it out to local school boards as it saw fit. The result was that local boards could no longer raise and depend on adequate funding for their particular needs. This in turn impacted their ability to function responsibly and responsively, leading to such aberrations as the $850 million shortfall needed to repair and upgrade Calgary schools. As well, local boards became the scapegoat for running deficits and were smeared as being incapable of managing budgets. It's much like giving $500 per month to someone who knows they need $600 for monthly household expenses, and then accusing them of being fiscally irresponsible.
In the arena of health care, successive governments removed local responsibility and devised regional health authorities while promising elected local members. For years the elections did not occur while government-appointed persons sat on the authorities. When partially elected boards were eventually established, some local groups dared to assert some subsidiarity by disagreeing with the government policy of the day. The government's reaction was to nullify elections and reassert control. As with educational bodies, health regions find themselves chronically unable to cover expenses, are under attack for fiscal irresponsibility and suffer the ire of their constituents for the policies of the province. Subsidiarity and fiscal responsibility are lost and substituted by frustration and powerlessness. An egregious example was the destruction of the Calgary General Hospital which to this day has not been supported by any public fiscal accounting. Transparency in such matters has also been a casualty of provincial administrations of the last 15 years.
There is also the matter of urban infrastructure. The long-running battles, for example, between successive mayors of Calgary and the provincial government have sometimes been characterized as a battle of ideologies between Liberal mayors and a Conservative government. Although there may be some truth to this, the real battle arises from the lack of subsidiarity and fiscal accountability rooted in the way government collects revenues and then disburses them according to its agenda. Meanwhile the local urban governments are forced to fight the same battles as the school boards and regional health units. The two major cities in Alberta – alternately squabbling and coming cap-in-hand – are forced to adhere to policies that often bear no relation to their unique needs. To be fair, this happens not just in Alberta and is compounded in all major cities by recent federal governments.
Finally, perhaps one of the most blatant examples of a lack of subsidiarity and fiscal accountability was the recent "prosperity bonus," a $1.4 billion giveaway based entirely on the whimsical decision of the premier. When local and regional input is ignored and decisions are centralized and made to fit all, that is the extreme outcome. An administration may argue that it is merely taking big government out of the face of the people, but in doing so it removes much if not all of the subsidiarity and fiscal accountability. In effect, this policy exerts even more political controls over local affairs. |
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