Are we really supposed to believe that Alberta’s finance minister was never told about the chief medical officer of health’s 63-per-cent bonus? Seriously?
That’s what fast-fading UCP leadership hopeful Travis Toews, who was finance minister in 2021 when Deena Hinshaw received her now notorious $227,911 bonus, was insisting today.
“I did not authorize or approve this payment,” he averred in a tweet. “This bonus was paid out by the public service without ministerial sign off.”
Does anyone believe this?
If they do, do they also think such an omission isn’t irrefutable evidence of Mr. Toews’s incompetence as finance minister?
As an aside, his just saying this suggests Mr. Toews’s suitability for the province’s top political job may have been overrated. The man used to give the impression that still waters run deep. This may offer proof that, sometimes, still waters run shallow!
Back during the Best Summer Ever, the decision was undeniably made by someone to give Dr. Hinshaw that huge bonus. Was it Jason Kenney himself, the premier so smart he didn’t need to consult his ministers about the decisions he made for their portfolios?
This may explain why the United Conservative Party Government seems to be falling apart so quickly now that the day of Mr. Kenney’s departure from office is almost within sight.
“Albertans expect their tax dollars to be spent with the greatest oversight,” Mr. Toews’s tweet continued desperately. “I have promised to change the rules to ensure this does not happen again.”
Or to put that another way, having demonstrated my complete unsuitability for the job, I’ll make sure my finance minister doesn’t mess up as badly as I did!
Other UCP leadership candidates who were members of the Kenney Cabinet at the time also insisted they’d never heard about this before the CBC broke the story on Heritage Day.
That might be true. But the idea the finance minister was excluded from such a decision and that it was the work of a bunch of sneaky civil servants instead defies credulity.
This is simply not the way the civil service works. I know about this. Once upon a time I was a civil servant.
Senior civil servants advocate bad policies and policies that are not in their political bosses’ interests all the time. But sign off on them without telling the minister? Doesn’t happen.
Even Calgary Sun political columnist Rick Bell seemed to have his doubts about that suggestion.
“No time-serving bureaucrat urged caution,” he wrote. “No paper shuffler on the public payroll appeared to see a problem. No bean counter on the public dime had their eyes pop out at the eye-popping arithmetic. Nobody. Or at least nobody where a name can be put to a face.
“Apparently those are the facts.”
Mr. Bell’s experience in the public service must have been similar to your blogger’s.
Well, I suppose this may explain some of Mr. Toews’s confusion about what that unaccounted-for $4 billion for COVID mitigation was spent on.
But I’m afraid the day is over when anyone can take Mr. Toews seriously.
As Blaise Boehmer, Premier Kenney’s former policy advisor and obviously no fan of the former finance minister, put it this afternoon: “This looks like the beginning of the end of the Toews campaign.
“His only ‘feature’ was fiscal discipline, and he torched that by doling out 6-figure, taxpayer-funded bonuses that managed to offend basically everyone in Alberta.”
Our lame-duck premier’s claque in the UCP must now be trying to figure out how to get Mr. Toews out of the race while there’s still time to give Rebecca Schulz the party establishment’s ringing endorsement, otherwise it’ll be Danielle Smith or Brian Jean for sure.
That is, of course, unless Ms. Smith is actually Mr. Kenney’s revenge, so he can tell the world, “I told you so. That party’s full of crazies!”
One thing’s for sure: You couldn’t make this stuff up!
I believe Mr. Toews may have known something about a deal (of sorts) for Hinshaw’s support for the “Greatest Summer Ever” which would entail some amount of financial enumeration. Based on what and what amount, I think he’s really in the dark about because he really wants to be in the dark about it. Toews’ own tenure as finance minister has been eventful, problematic, and often filled with controversy. The nearly $1.3 Billion plugged into a pipeline to nowhere was bad enough. That and the sealing of the loan conditions for TC Energy from public scrutiny — another $6 Billion plus — already placed his leadership bid on life support the day it was launched. Clearly, if he knew that Hinshaw was going to score a fat payday care of Jason Kenney, he was going to have to make sure he wasn’t in the room when it was discussed. Plausible deniability. It works every time.
Of course, the task was left to Jason Nixon, who has no problem doing any dirty job Kenney hands him. He got the news he would be in the loop on Hinshaw’s bonus, and it’s likely he will be in on a lot more special arrangements that Kenney has cooked up prior to his exit.
The issue that the interested candidates should be addressing is what is the bill going to be when Kenney walks out the door? One thing that I have wondering about is that has Kenney worked out an arrangement for himself? Alison Redford did very well when she walked out of the Premier’s Office, so there’s no doubt Kenney was a parting gift of equal, if not more, value. It’s known that before his departure, Brian Mulroney was in extensive negotiations with the PC party for his deal to walk away. No question, the PC brass wanted him gone and were willing to pay through the nose to make it happen. But in this case, it was the use of party funds; in the case of Kenney, it’s going to be the use of public money to make him go away.
I suspect that the lavish pay-out to Hinshaw was just a test for the even bigger shocks to come. Maybe Alberta will be glad to pay any amount just to see Kenney leave. If that’s the case, hold on because the shocks are just getting started.
Just Me: This resembles another Nixon – Richard Nixon. I am not a crook! $7.5 billion on a pipeline, is flushed away, because of the assumption that the Orange Man would regain the presidency in America. The loan guarantees, and every other cost associated with KXL, is gonzo. Travis Toews was also lambasted for not properly accounting for $1.6 billion, due to very shoddy accounting practices. There are many other good examples of how the UCP is financially obtuse. Billions of dollars are lost. Then there was the $4 billion in misappropriated money, by the UCP, and this came from the federal government. Wouldn’t you know it, this happened, as soon as Travis Toews claims Alberta had a surplus, similar to that amount. Someone who was in the Alberta PC party, claims that money wasn’t misappropriated, and accused the NDP of making things up. Given how the UCP misuses money, and so frequently, this isn’t something that is made up. Albertans deserve a better government that what the UCP has provided.
“B…b…b…buuuuuut Rachel n’ the Dippers are teh REAL money wasters!”
…and this is how we’ll end up with a Danielle Smith Premiership. SMH.
@Just Me
I agree that the shocks are just beginning.
The Keystone Pipeline deal where kenney offered (“offered” = literally begged) TCL to take billions up front with a guarantee of 6 billion more has never been explained to Albertans. kenney, in many respects, appears to be an out-of-control gambler when it comes to taxpayer monies.
As for Toes financial acumen, any credibility he may have had as a C.A was nonexistent when he accused the NDP of having ”built a structural deficit” into the budget was more than entertaining. A standup comic could not have received more laughs over that gem.
Toes seemed to think he was clever indeed to blame all of the ucp’s financial woes on the ‘imaginary NDP structural deficit’.
It was actually his own boss that built a Massive Structural Deficit into the Alberta Budget by reducing the corporate tax rates from 12% to 8% which left a multi billion dollar shortfall in revenues. Corporations promptly used the money to pay down their debt, buy up more of their own shares and reward stockholders with hefty dividends. Some even ceased doing business in the province. In short, they gladly accepted the Billions and ran. None of them created those ‘elusive good paying jobs’ because kenney, toes and the ucp asked ‘nothing’ in return for the 50% corporate tax reduction.
As for where the money actually came from for the keystone largess, it may have been the missing 4 Billion that couldn’t be accounted for. However it is most curious that the UCP have refused to release annual financial statements for the Heritage Trust Fund since they came to power………
It is also curious that ever since kenney supposed resigned, he has not only been issuing demands upon the federal government but strongly ‘suggesting’ what President Biden should be doing with respect to where the U.S. should be buying their oil from.
I am surprised that kenney has time to attempt to direct the focus of both the Canadian and the U.S. Federal Governments. kenney seems to think leaders of all nations are waiting with bated breath to hear the pronouncements of a lame duck premier.
Given his constant announcements of grants, gifts, walk backs in policies, etc. for various segments of voters in AB, kenney has done more campaigning and announced more goodies than all of the ucp leadership candidates put together. One might almost think that there is a write-in option on the ballot for selecting the winner……….. And there still is a lot of mystery as to who purchased those ‘new’ UCP memberships………..
FTR, it appears that Toews never actually graduated as a CA. Instead he acquired a CFA designation only when the accounting designations for CA, CMA and CGA morphed into one, namely CFA.
Clearly he made a number of serious accounting gaffes and at least some of those have been exposed. Personally I’d like to know why in summer 2021 when our premier was “on vacation” , possibly in France, that the Minister of Finance did not take up his delegated job as “commander in chief” of the province, as is the process when the premier is not available. He was AWOL then and should never be given the leadership now.
Ema: Possibly in France, but, the way I heard it, at a dude ranch in Colorado. DJC
money laundering. My suspicion anyway. Who knows?
Consider me to be one of the Albertans who is outraged by the payoff, oops I mean bonus, paid to Dr. Hinshaw for her performance (in every sense of the word) during the pandemic. While many Albertans struggled to get by for any number of reasons, and none were under more pressure than front line health care workers in my opinion, it became increasingly obvious that Dr. Hinshaw had become nothing more than a shill for the UCP, pandering to their political interests when she should have used her authority as CMOH to enact health care policies that were in the best interest of the general population. You know, like, doing her job type stuff.
Here is a link to an article that I had seen some time ago, I think on CBC, but I can’t seem to find it there now. Nevertheless, the content is the same. https://calgary.citynews.ca/2022/07/13/dr-deena-hinshaw-documents/
Apparently Dr. Hinshaw delivered three recommendations to the government regarding the lifting of health care restrictions in schools, the third being ‘do whatever you want’. Seriously? Leave public health care decisions up to politicians instead of (highly paid) health care professionals? How does she, or the government for that matter, determine that her job is even necessary, never mind deserving of an enormous bonus, given that level of professional abdication?
I can only imagine that the details of the discussions between the government and Dr. Hinshaw were kept from the public because they went something like: “Here girl, here girl, here’s a treat. We can lift the restrictions can’t we?”
“We can? Awww, there’s a good girl.”
Does Travis Toews and the entire UCP party think that Albertans are this stupid? Albertans have had the wool pulled over their eyes, ever since the inception of the UCP. Despite prior warnings from others that the UCP weren’t going to be any good, because there were strong resemblances to how bad the Alberta PCs were for a very long time, when they did the opposite of the great things that Peter Lougheed did, Albertans still refused to listen. Unfortunately, things like this are the result, and this is one of many very pricey shenanigans from the UCP. This had to be some type of hush money given to Dr. Deena Hinshaw. The UCP is looking for a way to cover up their abysmal handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in Alberta. In the end, Dr. Deena Hinshaw gets a very large payout, while Albertans end up suffering the harsh consequences of Covid-19. There is no sense in this.
“Does Travis Toews and the entire UCP party think that Albertans are this stupid?”
Yes. To be fair, Albertans have given them plenty of evidence to support that conclusion. In the words of Dubya, “You can fool some people all the time, and those are the people you want to concentrate on.”
I suppose while we are to believe Ms Hindhaw was working overtime, Mr Toews was preoccupied with other things. Maybe he was paying more attention to running his hobby ranch in northern Alberta, or just asleep at the switch. “I didn’t know what was going on”, is really not a good defense for someone running to be leader of the province.
However, this does fit a certain pattern of how Kenney picked his key ministers – loyal, social Conservative leaning preferred, competence or scrutiny not required – the Sky Palace patio party gang. So Mr Toews may be destroying his remaining leadership chances, the part not already destroyed by running a dull, uninspired campaign.
Perhaps, Kenney will get the last laugh when he gets to say I told you so, if the kooks do take over the party. However, I suspect the party establishment is desperately trying to pull together a plan B, such as Ms Schulz. Unfortunately, building her up may simultaneously involve bringing Mr Toews down, it is a tricky thing. While I doubt Toews has actually been told to self destruct, nothing would surprise me at this point.
Of course Ms Schulz will also have to make the “I didn’t know what was going on” argument, hopefully more convincingly than Toews. I suppose it at least it helps she was not the Finance Minister, whose job it is to know about such things, and she can also claim to not be part of the old boys club.
As for Mr Toews, I suspect his political career will end up with him soon quietly riding off into the sunset, or at least some semblance of a ranch in northern Alberta.
That’s a great photo of Kenney. Reminds me of a newly-hatched turtle, that would have preferred to remain in the the egg and now intends to rain vengeance upon the world while his little tail twitches angrily. Do turtles roar?
Maybe the next premier, Hatched Turtle 2, can pick one of these for the new CMOH. It would be a lot less expensive. What a team!
https://galaxygiftshop.ca/search?q=hand+puppet
Maybe the government hacks should just use their mantra ‘No rules were broken.’ It worked for all their other shenanigans.
Maybe Rachel Notley signed off on it. She gets blamed for everything else.
That’s probably correct! She and Trudeau did it together!
Goodbye, Travis Toews.
Reminds me of a certain former US President: “I did not … have sexual relations … with that woman”. And just as believable.
So sweet to see Toews booted by his own sh*tkickers (anyone remember the photo-op from his first budget?)
Sadly, I fear that this will be successfully swept under the rug with all the other boondoggles, once they win the next election. The UCP’s (and predecessors) faithful have very short memories when it comes to the transgressions of their own party. I’d love to hear good strategy to teach them otherwise…
Sadly, information cannot be delivered as a suppository, which is a real problem given where they keep their heads…
Reminds and reminds me of so many who went before Dr.Hinshaw ,
Most recent the Ben Harper gig ,Steve Allen (war room),conditioning ,hero’s and manufacturing the “up my sleeve”move ,us Albertans are conditioned to this stuff and we don’t even know it ,
But the question remains how do you get on this train ?I need cash
And as far as the finance minister ,lost me at Beaverlodge
The first UCP leadership campaign was notably smeared by a devious kamikaze campaign. The current campaign will be remembered for “Duh, I didn’t know” dumbfoolery.
This is a death blow to his campaign and most folks don’t even know about it yet.
Over the years over coffee with my senior friends we have had a good laugh at how stupid many Albertans really are. My friends think I am a damn fool for letting these idiots hurl sarcastic comments at me for not being as stupid as them. I encourage them to show our young people how really stupid they are. We have all been targeted by various scams over the years but weren’t dumb enough to fall for them, yet we still see a lot of seniors believing every lie these phoney conservatives feed them, just read the blogs in the newspapers. The Sun Newspapers promote this level of stupidity and encourages it. Watching seniors trying to defend the stupid actions of this government is hilarious. You can certainly see how con artists do so well in Alberta and why so many come here to take advantage of the stupidity. Various police officers have told me over the years that they come to Alberta and steal from seniors for one or two days and are gone making it virtually impossible to catch them and I believe it. I don’t remember one case where the guy was caught when it amounted to small amounts to a lot of different seniors. Amounts in the $1,000. to $2,000.range was very common. Example of many we saw “ Your roof is in bad shape and is going to start leaking. Give me $1,000. I will be back tomorrow to fix it. Want to bet they never came back”. Of course by the time the senior woke and realized that it was a scam the guy had a lot of time to leave the province. One widow told me that she had , had her roof re shingled last summer and she couldn’t believe that it was already that bad so soon, but she trusted the guy. A huge mistake, and people wonder why I am so disgusted with seniors who fall for this type of stupidity when none of my friends are this stupid.
Alan K. Spiller: The Sun, The Calgary Herald, The National Post, and the Financial Post are often saturated with comments from people who defend these pretend conservatives and Reformers. They don’t bother to look at any facts. We certainly never had this level of ignorance, under premier Peter Lougheed, like we have with the likes of Ralph Klein, the Wildrose, the UCP, Danielle Smith, Brian Jean, Paul Hinman, and Pierre Poliveire. They will destroy the essential services we have, so they can privatize it, and they will also cause massive unemployment, while making their corporate friends even richer. Where’s the sense in that?
“I did not authorize or approve this payment,” he averred in a tweet. “This bonus was paid out by the public service without ministerial sign off.”
Wow this guy thinks Albertans are stupid. This is the most blatant lie I can remember in quite some time, and keep in mind, it’s 2022, so that’s a really high bar. Based on this statement alone, Mr. Toews lacks both the character and ability to pour water out of a boot, let alone hold public office. If Albertans believe this, they’ll believe anything.
Speaking of which, any UCP voters out there want to buy shares in the invisible bridge from Edmonton to the moon? Only five hundred bucks each!
Neil Lore: What’s even more ignorant is that there are people who blame Rachel Notley and the NDP for Dr. Deena Hinshaw’s big bonus. Their claim is that the NDP hired Dr. Deena Hinshaw, so she is behind this big bonus. Justin Trudeau is another who has been blamed for this. How obtuse can people be? There is no limits, apparently.
The handsome picture of Premier Kenney looks like he might be auditioning to be a new member of The Village People. Good for him. He’ll likely be facing stiff competition from the Holy See now that the pontiff has been gifted his own alternative symbolic head-gear.
I was musing about what sort of laundry list Kenney could tack onto Alberta as he heads for the exit. Considering that he is the sort of person who will impose some sort of self-serving (or ally-serving) project and all it a “Great step forward that will benefit all Albertans for generations to come…” there is almost no limit to what kind of crazy he will foist. And now that he has a faithful toady in Jason Nixon as finance minister, the mind is blown at what kind of crazy will be dropped.
I have thought of a few things that could wind up on this laundry list …
Kenney was enormously disappointed when Teck did not go through with the oil sands mining project. Though the project would have greatly expanded the capacity for oil sands production, and it had federal approval to proceed, Teck decided it was too large an investment to take on the uncertain climate. So, Kenney will order Nixon to make the allocation for $25 to $40 Billion in “de-risk investment” to begin the project. And if Teck decides not to get involved, some else will be recruited. Perhaps that Australian mining company that wanted to blow apart the eastern range of the Rockies? It’s not like they care about what happens in Alberta anyway, so they’re perfect.
The Keystone XL remains the money shot for Kenney and the UCP. So, why not enshrine permanent funding for the project? Trump 2024, baby. Or DeSantis 2024.
Looking east to still dropping a pipeline to eastern Canada, Kenney’s vision to join the other Fathers of Confederation is tough for him to resist. If Skippy Pollivere proves to be more flash than action, the notion of a pipeline and tanker port facility at Hudson’s Bay is a nice workaround if Ontario and Quebec resist a pipeline going through their provinces. Manitoba will surely be thrilled at the prospect of an enormous meg-project in the $100s of Billions of public monies from Alberta, for their north. And even Saskatchewan would be all in on it, because the Saskatchewan Party is owned by Calgary. And if need be, Calgary can own Manitoba as well, since B.C. hasn’t been turning out for them lately.
I’m sure this laundry list will grow even larger, so this maybe considered a small start. At this point, Albertans may begin to wonder why they’re paying for everything? I mean, they seem to think that Quebec steals from them, so just handing over billions to the other Western Provinces for Kenney’s crazy pipe dreams should be the sort of thing they’ve got all up in arms about.
Just Me: I don’t think the fine people in Nunavut would want a pipeline, or oil takers going to the Hudson’s Bay. The overwhelming majority of the Hudson’s Bay and the James Bay, for that matter, belong to the Nunavut Territory. Some body of water that has ice on it, for a good portion of the year, just isn’t feasible.
Obviously sorcery is afoot. This concrete, irrefutable, undeniable evidence that sorcery is both real and being well used within Alberta is all the reason we need to exult travis to the throne immediately so he may start a ministry of sorcery and end all sorcery in Alberta once and for all. It took an at least level 80 spell of financial shenanigans to make the ucpea lose all the money they did, maybe even level 100. The people of Alberta should be genuinely worried about the obvious levels of sorcery affecting the people of this province, especially the ones in charge. Ban all dice now!
I see K-Boy disheveled, unshaven, and hooped under a bridge project, his addled head propped up on his filthy hard-hat, futilely trying to focus on the label of a bottle:
‘Hoooo-wee!—this here party wine *hic* sho is made of crazy sour grapes! *hic*…
The corporate tax rate has to be increased, because Alberta Big Oil is making excessive profits. Stop Alberta Big Oil from looting the taxpayer.
I cry horse pucky on Travis’s claim. I am a long time BC civil servant and government just doesn’t pass out cash this way. And Travis you may recall this as fiduciary responsibility, which still applies to government and its agencies. Anyway I do hope you can ride your horse out of town better than you can manage as a finance minister.
In the ensuing battle between red tape reduction and cabinet oversight, reduction was severely trounced.