Del Graff – daveberta.ca – Alberta Politics and Elections

PC MLAs follow Prentice command to cut Auditor General budget

Progressive Conservative MLAs sitting on the Standing Committee for Legislative Offices voted last week to deny a request from Child and Youth Advocate Del Graff to reinstate more than $200,000 in funding cut in Dec. 2014. At the same committee meeting, MLAs voted to reinstated more than $500,000 in funding previously cut from the Office of the Auditor General.

Jim Prentice Premier Alberta — Jim Prentice

Sending a strong message that he just might not trust his party’s MLAs to act unsupervised, Premier Jim Prentice held a press conference shortly after the vote and publicly ordered his PC MLAs to backtrack on their decision to reinstate the Auditor General funding. This move served to redirect the public focus from cuts to the Child and Youth Advocate and on the cuts to the Auditor General.

Mr. Prentice’s directive removes the thin veneer of “committee independence.” It was always assumed that PC MLAs received their marching orders from the Premier’s Office, but typically those types of dispatches are sent from the 3rd floor before the committee meetings, not after the votes have already been counted.

Matt Jeneroux MLA Edmonton South West — Matt Jeneroux

Responding to his new orders, committee chairman Matt Jeneroux hastily scheduled a meeting for this week, allowing the PC MLAs to change their minds and vote how Mr. Prentice directed them to.

Not one of the Progressive Conservative MLAs on the committee, including former Wildrose MLAs Gary Bikman and Jeff Wilson, had the fortitude to defend the decision they made last week. Only NDP MLA David Eggen and Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman voted against the funding cut.

And now, because of Mr. Prentice’s orders, both the Auditor General and Child and Youth Advocate will face budget cuts this year.

Dave Hancock MLA Edmonton-Whitemud — Dave Hancock

Looking past the thick-rhetoric of “tough economic times,” the Office of the Auditor General is probably the last office of the Legislature that should have its funding cut. As Mr. Prentice and Finance Minister Robin Campbell plan to impose a 9% across the board budget cut, the Auditor General should have the funding available to audit the financial statements and the systems of government.

Last year, Auditor General Merwan Saher released a damning report into former Premier Alison Redford‘s misuse of government aircraft. The public outrage generated by that report forced former Premier Dave Hancock to request an R.C.M.P. investigation into Ms. Redford’s activities.

Jonathan Denis MLA Calgary Acadia — Jonathan Denis

With an election expected within weeks, the 43-year long governing PCs are likely cautious of any further scandals or critiques that a fully-funded Auditor General could uncover.

This is not the first time the PCs have cut funding to the Auditor General.

In 2009, then-Auditor General Fred Dunn announced the delay or cancellation of 27 out of 80 planned system and financial audits due to lack of financial resources. At the time, backbench PC MLA Jonathan Denis (now Justice Minister) was quoted as justifying the lack of funding to the Auditor General by defending that year’s one-year MLA pay freeze. [editor’s note: Alberta is always in tough economic times]

The 2009 funding cut came soon after Mr. Dunn’s office reported the PC Government kept quiet for 3 years about reports showing the province could bring in more than $1 billion in additional royalties each year without harming industry, that a former PC cabinet minister and his top aide charged nearly $50,000 in personal expenses to their government credit cards, and that the PC government’s poor planning left it with a maintenance backlog of roughly $6.1 billion.

Raj Sherman is back

Only weeks after resigning as Liberal leader and announcing his retirement as MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark, Raj Sherman has been hired by the Liberal Party the campaign manager for the 2015 election campaign. It is unclear why interim leader David Swann has hired his predecessor, or what real campaign management experience the retiring politician brings to the table. Truly bizarre.

Sharpen Your Pencils, Alberta. Slash-and-burn is back.

Premier Jim Prentice Alberta PC leadership race — Jim Prentice celebrates his victory in the PC Party leadership contest on September 6, 2014.

Living in the land of the lowest taxation rates in Canada allows many personal benefits but long-term government stability has not been one of them. Relying heavily on natural resource revenues, our political leaders continue to stumble from embarrassment of riches to poverty and never appear to learn from our past.

Robin Campbell Alberta Finance Yellowhead — Robin Campbell

And here we go again. Progressive Conservative Finance Minister Robin Campbell announced plans yesterday for a 9% across the board funding cut in the 2015/2016 provincial budget, which is expected to tabled near the end of March.

Two years ago, we were told that funding for colleges and universities needed to be slashed in order to survive Alison Redford‘s “Bitumen Bubble.” Twenty years ago, many Albertans accepted the deep funding cuts imposed by former Premier Ralph Klein and then watched with cynicism as the government spent the next two decades trying to repair the damage done to our public infrastructure and health and education systems.

While claiming “all options” are on the table, the PCs have already ruled out increases to corporate taxes or resource royalties, and likely also the introduction of a provincial sales tax or a return to a progressive taxation system. Rather than looking at alternative revenue sources, Mr. Campbell and Premier Jim Prentice appear to be on an unfortunate course towards drastically cutting public service funding.

Four months ago, Mr. Prentice said he found low morale and high turnover in the public service “shocking.” But with the Finance Minister warning of deep funding cuts across the government, it is difficult to see how he plans to change this situation.

Alberta is now facing a crisis not caused by low oil prices but by decades of poor planning.

As a province with decades worth of dependence on revenues from natural resource royalties, it should not be a shock that we need to be smarter about how we plan and finance our government spending. Maybe our only problem is not our over reliance on cyclical natural resources revenues, but that the Progressive Conservatives are just bad fiscal managers.

One dull pencil

Genia Leskiw MLA Bonnyville Cold Lake — Genia Leskiw

Bonnyville-Cold Lake MLA Genia Leskiw fumbled embarrassingly this week when she tried to explain why the Standing Committee on Legislative Offices, which is controlled by PC MLAs, voted to reject a request from Child and Youth Advocate Del Graff to restore $275,000 in funding that the committee voted to cut in December 2014.

“I don’t really believe they’ve sharpened their pencils as sharp as they could have,” Ms. Leskiw told CBC reporter John Archer when asked why the advocate’s request was denied. When pressed for details about why the funding was denied, Ms. Leskiw responded that she was not an accountant.

This is not the first time Ms. Leskiw has used the ‘I’m not an accountant’ defence. In 2012, she pleaded ignorance when asked about the extra money she was collecting from the infamous ‘no-meet committee,’ telling the CBC that “I don’t even look at my paycheque.”

Mr. Graff asked for the funds in order to continue investigations into the deaths of children who are in the province’s care or who are supported by the province. In 2014, the PC Government faced harsh criticism when a Calgary Herald-Edmonton Journal investigation revealed the government had dramatically under-reported the number of child welfare deaths over the previous decade.

Mr. Prentice defended the funding cut and ordered the MLA committee to revoke the $500,000 in additional funding it had just granted this week to the Auditor General. The Premier’s heavy-handed move raises the question of why legislative committees exist if he can unilaterally overrule their decisions. Will any of the PC MLAs on the committee have the backbone to stand up for their decision when they meet again next Tuesday? Or will they simply bow to the whim of their party leader?

The cuts in funding for the Child and Youth Advocate and the Auditor General take place as the provincial government provides $18 million to rebuild the Kananaskis Country Golf Course, which was damaged in the 2013 floods. Public funding for the golf course has not been revoked, but plans for other critical projects, like the long promised new Cancer Centre in Calgary, have now been delayed.