Sep. 12, 2012 - Issue #882: Down On The Farm
Transparency is just political window dressing
Alberta political expense disclosure announcment lacking important details
The notions of transparency and accountability in government are good ones. Government operates on behalf of the people of a jurisdiction with money that the people have pooled together for that purpose. It only makes sense, therefore, that the people themselves should be able to see how that money is being spent and ensure that there is no abuse or malfeasance taking place.
That's the theory. In the day-to-day world of politics, spinsters and sensationalist reporting, genuine transparency can be much harder to come by.
Last week Premier Redford announced a new expense disclosure policy for MLAs, cabinet ministers, and senior level public officials. Under the new rules, expense disclosures will be placed online and made accessible to Albertans every two months. The new policy also sets limits on the use of first-class air travel and bans the expensing of alcohol.
At the press conference to announce the new policy, the Premier highlighted that the policy will be the most robust in Canada and that Alberta will, from this point forward, be a leader in transparency, reporting and oversight of expense disclosure.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to understand how the Premier could make such an absolute statement given the lack of details presented with the policy announcement. There was no information given about what format the disclosures will take. There is no definitive statement as to whether those who violate the rules will be subject to sanctions and fines. And although there was the suggestion that officials will be able to apply to Treasury Board for exemptions from the rules, there was no clarity around what criteria will be used to determine the allowing of exceptions and whether or not the exceptions granted will be made public.
All of this vagueness would seem to indicate that either the policy was slapped together and announced before it was ready in order to take off some of the heat about the outrageous expenses of former health authority executive Allaudin Merali and former University of Calgary chair (and senator in waiting) Doug Black, or the government is just not interested in being transparent about the transparency policy.
But there is another far greater issue with the government using this new expense policy to highlight the premier's commitment to transparency and accountability. Although the expenses of MLAs and senior public officials can make for great media stories and call-in shows and can provide great fodder for attacks in question period, the reality is that when it comes to how government uses our collective money they are just a small drop in the bucket.
If Ms Redford was genuine about the sentiment attributed to her in last week's press release that her "commitment to Albertans to provide greater transparency and accountability has been consistent from [her] first day as Premier," and that this is a priority for her, then there are much bigger issues that she could and should be tackling.
One of the biggest, as researchers at the Parkland Institute have discovered repeatedly, is the reality that when public services in Alberta get privatized or contracted out, Albertans have absolutely no way of determining how much those services are costing, how effectively they are being delivered and what the actual results or benefits of privatization, if any, have been. This has been the case with the privatization of highway maintenance, the increased privatization of long-term care, the contracting out of infrastructure maintenance, the failed experiment with private hip and knee services and virtually every other government program or service that counts with the participation of the private sector in some way or another.
These are contracts and deals worth billions of dollars that result in private for-profit businesses providing the goods and services that Albertans depend on daily and for which we've paid, yet we are not allowed to see either the contracts or the details of the deals. Shouldn't a government that prioritizes transparency and accountability ensure that we have access to the information we need in order to determine ourselves whether or not these deals are actually in the public interest?
Ultimately being able to access the details of a $30 taxi ride or a $200 hotel room is absolutely meaningless if we can't also access the details of the billion-dollar deals that the government is signing with their friends, and donors, in the private sector. That's where transparency and accountability need to start. Anything else is just political window dressing.
Ricardo Acuña is the executive director of the Parkland Institute, a non-partisan, public policy research institute housed at the University of Alberta.
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