PHOTOS: “This round, Jim, just bob and weave. No freakin’ mirrors!” Strategists from the Premier’s Office and Navigator Ltd. advise Premier Jim Prentice, centre, on today’s second go-round in the Legislature. Actual Alberta politicians and their advisors may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Education Minister Gordon Dirks and human rights promoter Laurie Blakeman.

The unavoidable conclusion after the Alberta Legislature’s first day back in business is that market fundamentalism is a far higher priority to the government of Premier Jim Prentice than the social conservative variety.

This is not particularly surprising, but it is a useful insight nevertheless.

Albertans observed the same pattern with the brief and coruscating arc described through the heavens by the government of former Premier Alison Redford. We have seen it with the federal government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper too.

DirksTo wit: social conservatism matters to so-called conservative governments as a rich vein of effective wedge issues, but social conservatives shouldn’t let their hopes get very high that anyone among the market fundamentalists who lead the governments they elect really cares very much about their enthusiasms.

So, yesterday, Day 1 of the Spring Sitting of the Third Session of the 28th Legislature of Alberta, saw the complete abandonment by the Prentice Government of its efforts to balance the passionate convictions of social conservatives and the liberal views of the majority of Albertans on the topic of gay-straight alliances in schools.

The amended version of Bill 10 brought back by the government was the same on the formerly controversial key issue – that publicly financed schools must allow students to form GSAs if they feel the need, whether or not the principal or the school board approves – as the private member’s bill it was designed to block, which was introduced by Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman in the Legislature last year.

This, as the Edmonton Journal put it yesterday afternoon, “was a 180-degree reversal from the Tory government’s previous position” in the fall, when the original version of the bill gave schools the ability to refuse GSAs the right to meet on school property. Elsewhere, the paper called it “a stunning about-face.”

The point was conceded by Education Minister Gordon Dirks himself, who is known to harbour strong social conservative views, and it would be interesting to know how this was received by so-con Wildrose turncoats like rural MLA Ian Donovan, who crossed the floor early at least in part because he found former Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith too squishily liberal on the same issue.

Oh well, politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say.

BlakemanAs for Ms. Blakeman, she was emotional. “It’s hard to contain my joy,” she told reporters.

Notwithstanding its surrender on Bill 10, on matters of economic fundamentalism, the government showed less give.

Leastways, there was no way Mr. Prentice was going to say sorry for telling Albertans last week they should “look in the mirror” to find the culprit behind the province’s current budgeting difficulties.

The thing is, regardless of how the citizenry reacted to his explicit mirror crack, Mr. Prentice was staying firmly inside his message box with the narrative that it’s us, wanting too much for too little, and not PC mismanagement of tax and royalty revenues, that make the pain of austerity measures a necessary prescription for Alberta.

So the premier bobbed and weaved and avoided the obvious during Question Period yesterday, just as he was doing when he got into trouble in the first place on the CBC last Wednesday.

The economic narrative that Mr. Prentice is pushing – a key part of which is that the province’s problems are really our fault, not his government’s – is important enough to the PC party’s bankrollers to spend some political capital defending.

It’s a small but significant irony that Mr. Prentice’s troublesome moment with the mirror came about because he was trying to avoid another topic: Alberta’s need for a fairer and more sensible tax regime.

In the classic fashion of politicians everywhere, he was trying to ignore the question posed by a listener by answering a different question of his own devising. Rather than address what ought to be done about the financial problem (that’s already been decided, my friends) he wanted to talk about who is responsible (not him).

The last thing in the world Mr. Prentice wished to start discussing last Wednesday was how our tax and royalty regimes are so far behind the rest of the country that we could raise $11 billion more through income taxes alone and still have the lowest taxes in Canada.

And the last thing he was going to do yesterday was apologize for that.

As Susan Wright explained in her excellent Susan on the Soapbox blog last weekend: “Mr. Prentice will not apologize. He thinks our outrage is a joke.”

His performance in the Legislature yesterday suggests that this analysis is substantially right, even if the premier doesn’t think it’s funny.

As Ms. Wright rightly argued, the Prentice Government seriously misjudged Albertans when it thought they’d put “parental rights” ahead of human rights and it similarly misjudged them when it concluded they’d buy the tale that Tory mismanagement was their fault.

The difference, as Mr. Prentice showed in the Legislature yesterday, is that the former isn’t really a very important part of his government’s program. The latter is pivotal.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

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10 Comments

  1. Market fundamentalism is the reason Alberta’s economy is the best in Canada. The freer the market, the freer the people.

    If Prentice goes against market fundamentalism in the budget, all of us will suffer.

    1. Absolutely…Best of all possible worlds:

      http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/alberta-has-more-working-poor-food-bank-executive-director-says/article22372295/

      The Canada-wide 2014 hunger count showed food-bank use increased in Alberta at twice the national average.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/alberta-income-inequality/

      Alberta Income Inequality Is Worse Than In The U.S.
      The Huffington Post Alberta | By Michelle Butterfield

      In Alberta, the rich keep getting richer, but where does that leave the rest of us?
      StatsCan’s new survey of top income taxfilers shows Alberta leads the country when it comes to unequal income. In fact, Alberta is the only province in Canada where the top 10 per cent of the population take home more than half the income. In 2012, StatsCan’s numbers show Alberta’s top 10 per cent of earners took home 50.4 per cent of all income.

      http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/booming-alberta-faces-growing-rural-homeless-problem-1.2623008

      http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/homelessness-count-for-alberta-reveals-most-live-in-calgary-1.2844876

      In Calgary, the rate of homeless has only dropped two per cent since 2008.

      http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-s-child-poverty-rate-remains-almost-unchanged-25-years-later-says-report-1.2848502

      Alberta’s child poverty rate remains almost unchanged 25 years later, says report
      Public Interest Alberta says cuts to programs that help people out of poverty a factor
      …143,200 children in Alberta lived below the low-income measure in 2012, which represents 16.2 per cent of all children and is very similar to 1989’s 16.4 per cent.

      With Alberta’s massive population growth, there are also 28,670 more children in poverty than in 1989.

      Public Interest Alberta’s Bill Moore-Kilgannon said one reason for the lack of results is cuts to programs that help people out of poverty.

      http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Poverty+rate+Alberta+kids+unchanged+since+1989+report+says/10410632/story.html

      http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=4eaf9840-1461-4e51-a733-c15baf38ce37

      Alberta’s high school graduation rate lowest among provinces

      1. Alberta’s high school graduation rate is low because of market fundamentalism in our province. People can get a good job without having to indebt themselves $50,000 or more in school. Choice, freedom, prosperity. The Alberta way, the successful way.

        1. No, Conrad, it is because of the provinces huge oil and gas endowment, without which there would be no jobs for high school dropouts to go to…and Albertans did not put the oil in the ground, did they?

    2. I might even be inclined (or is than inKliened) to believe you, Mike, if neo-liberals actually truly believed in free markets in and of themselves, rather than what they actually do, which is to argue for free markets only when it benefits them but start sucking on the public teat (and drinking most of mamma’s milk) when things go bad. As it stands, those like Prentice are really plutocrats in libertarian clothing, and those like you are like the teenager who wants mom and dad OUT of his life but still wants them to bail him out of jail when he gets picked up for public drunkenness.

  2. Mike C – The reason why Alberta is still the best economy in Canada is OIL not market fundamentalism. Despite the horrible mismanagement from the PCs for 40 years the oil has made us look good.

  3. It would seem the mother ship of the Prentice party has taken an active hand http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/canadian-intelligence-agent-arrested-in-turkey-accused-of-helping-isis-reports-267
    in ensuring that there are sufficient bride recruits for the oh so frightening ISIS tm BOOO!!! I’m not surprised that our fearless leaderships have decided that if they won’t scare us sufficient to requirements, they will help them to do so. Ice breakers to the middle east!!!! Nuke the Russkies!!! Attack AATTTACKKK!!!!

  4. In other news it has been reported that Shane “my wife is a shoe in” Saskiw has a sad over the state of politics in Alberta, and quits to pursue what is rightfully his, god damn it!!

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