The United Conservative Party government patted itself on the back for eliminating one third of the province’s red tape at a poorly staged news conference yesterday in a part of St. Albert’s Arden Theatre usually reserved for the consumption of intoxicating beverages at intermission.
Despite the self-congratulatory tone of the presser, a cute video showing UCP ministers snipping pieces of tape with a giant pair of scissors, and the impressively precise figure for the amount of red tape allegedly cut – 33 per cent! – this claim needs to be taken with the traditional grain of salt.
The principal problem is that while a couple of reporters tried to get “Red Tape Reduction Minister” Dale Nally to explain the difference between “red tape” and legitimate regulations, he dodged and weaved and failed to produce a meaningful answer.
So, how does the government define red tape? Well, whatever it is, it’s something that “often creeps up slowly, hampering ingenuity, efficiency and growth,” according to a quote in the government’s news release attributed to Premier Danielle Smith. “It hurts our economy and it hurts Albertans.”
OK, then!
“Our attitude about red tape is simple: when we find it, we cut it,” said Mr. Nally – whose real portfolio is Service Alberta, traditionally the most junior in the Alberta cabinet – in his canned news release quote. He claimed the UCP has eliminated 200,000 regulations since it came to power in 2019.
So when they find it they cut it, except when they don’t cut it, of course. What about that demand that municipalities give the province a list of federal grants and supports they receive, one cheeky reporter asked, isn’t that just more red tape?
“We have never taken the position that all regulation is bad,” Mr. Nally responded stiffly. Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver “has made the decision that that is something necessary that he needs to move forward with,” he explained, so it’s obviously not mere red tape.
So, has the government really eliminated 33 per cent of all regulations on Alberta’s books? Of course not.
It’s eliminated a third of the rules that the UCP would like to eliminate, apparently – which defines the difference, I guess, between a glass two thirds empty and one that’s one-third full. Or something.
The government has published a red-tape reduction annual report that makes the questionable claim $2.75 billion has been saved by these actions. There is no explanation in the report of how this figure was arrived at or proving the unlikely assertion the claimed savings, even if real, are “leading to better access to health care services and improved environmental monitoring.”
“You don’t have to take our word for it,” Mr. Nally enthused nevertheless, pointing as a performance indicator an A-minus “grade” assigned by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a lobby group that habitually demands lower business taxes and complains about the cost of regulations intended to protect customers and workers.
The government’s news release also mentioned similar kudos from Restaurants Canada, the organization that has never seen a minimum-wage increase it approved of.
Needless to say, bouquets from such commercial special interest groups do not indicate a government acting in the interests of working people, health and safety, or sound policy.
Alberta’s first red tape reduction minister, Grant Hunter, who acted as the emcee for yesterday’s dreary affair, even admitted that the CFIB “helped us craft this very important initiative.”
Indeed, the government has formalized this approach, with the creation of nine “industry panels,” which in effect allow many industry groups to write their own rules.
As has been said in this space before, the UCP in fact has nothing against red tape – as long as it messes with its enemies or picks a needless fights with the Trudeau Government in Ottawa.
NOTE: This story has been updated to correct typographical errors and reflect the return of the video of the news conference to the Alberta Government website. The video was clearly removed to delete Mr. Nally’s response to Global News reporter Kendra Slugoski’s question about the Alberta government’s so-called “parental rights” policy. Mr. Nally’s strongly worded defence of the policy was clearly not the message the UCP wants to send. The clumsy edit can be seen at 27:00 in the recording now on the site. DJC
The UCP’s cutting red tape didn’t save Alberta any money. What it did do was harmful, and put people’s lives at risk. Grant Hunter doesn’t have any credibility in my opinion.
https://www.townandcountrytoday.com/local-news/province-ends-accreditation-for-childcare-centres-2147430
https://calgary.citynews.ca/2023/09/15/e-coli-outbreak-spotlights-daycare-food-safety-experts-say/
How does the government define red tape?
“Well whatever it is, it’s something that “often creeps up slowly , hampering ,ingenuity ,efficiency and growth…..it hurts our economy and it hurts Albertans. ”
So, does this mean she got rid of Parker and Locusts ??
Does this mean she’s retiring herself and going back to Radio full time?
“If the shoe fits…because that really IS her and parker in a nutshell (no pun intended, but..)
And as far as numbers out of a hat; I don’t know how many times I’ve read recently about “Con-d’rump Math”. Pick a number, the bigger the better, it’s more impressive.
Case in point ____ PP/caucus conference…
JT’s $9000 @day, $80,000 for a week…
Question period (masochistic Monday)
PP- 1st round: JT’s $89,000
vacation
PP- 2nd round: JT’s $80,000 vacation
PP-3rd round: JT’S $80,000 free vacation ( what the ?)
spewing 100 tons of pollution
flying in not one but 2 private jets. ***
*** okay, so this did make me laugh, I didn’t know our PM could fly 2 jets at once. Sky surfing ?
Both Dani &PP have this annoying/ aggravating habit of 3rd stage of mastication with numbers; and what really ticks me off is that they treat the ” unwashed masses ” of common people as door mats. But that’s not at all d’rump tactics, of course not.
Hey PP- 43 rallies last year on the tax payers dime– no carbon pollution there at all, right ? especially since no election has been called, but you’re not campaigning, right?
Sorry for the rant!!RRRRRGH
Like this? Less red tape spent on dead children the better? Guess they’re not opening a business any time soon.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/alberta-child-advocate-concerned-about-office-budget-cap-calls-for-action-to-support-youth-with-disabilities/wcm/efcdbd5e-169e-470e-af8e-c022caee1f45/amp/https://twitter.com/MarieFrRenaud/status/1749956929676554717
“You don’t have to take our word for it.” Your permission to disbelieve everything that comes out of the mouths of lying liars who lie is assuredly unnecessary.
“Red tape” might have protected hundreds of children in daycare from getting E. coli.
The TBA government’s intended audience is probably pleased and wealthier.
The UCP know this is all smoke and mirrors, but it’s good enough to fool the yokels who vote for them.
Hope the Spinisters didn’t ask for a glass of water in St Albert. Or get the limos washed!
I haven’t forgotten the stupid breakfast meeting I went to in St. Alberta when Gary Mar was health minister. There were about six nurses there and asked him some simple questions and the pathetic song and dance he put on was so sickening I felt like going up and slapping his face. He never did answer them. Former MLAs from the Lougheed era taught me that Klein’s Red tape cutting spree would only bring disasters for Albertans. Rules are there for a good reason and can’t be ignored or broken.
Well that’s exactly what happened as a former Social Credit MLA friend Jim Henderson pointed out. By cutting the so called Red Tape the Orphan Well Cleanup mess was dumped onto the backs of the people when the oil industry had been forced to pay for it under Lougheed and Getty.
Cutting Red Tape cost condo owners their homes when they were condemned for not being inspected properly when being built and it was Sonja Savage who found it smart to eliminate Lougheed’s protection on our mountains and now we are being sued for $8 billion. Rules put in place by our conservative governments should never have been destroyed which is why we are in financial ruin and no other oil rich area in the world is.
Alan K. Spiller: Ralph Klein’s good pal, Mike Harris, who is another phony Conservative and Reformer, was copying Ralph Klein’s bad moves, by privatizing and deregulating things. One of these was water testing. The results were the Walkerton tainted water tragedy.
Anonymous Good point. Harris and Preston Manning travelled across Canada promoting an American style health care system and weren’t very well received from what I was told. These Reformers certainly look after their pals. I think we should all demand to see a list of what this fool destroyed, don’t you?
I imagine the current government counts as one of their successes the elimination of public reporting of tuitions by private, for-profit schools.
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/proposed-alberta-bill-aims-to-reduce-private-schools-reporting-on-tuition-to-government
“Fir said the government has flagged some issues with how a small proportion of schools and operators have managed their finances, and the proposed changes will help create more transparency.”
Really? How is it more transparent if they can hide it from the public, which provides 70% of their funding?
I wonder if Orwell would call it “doublethink” or “Newspeak”? An old-fashioned Russian would probably call it “pravda.”
If you mean by “old-fashion Russian” the language, culture or people of pre-Soviet Russia, then remember that “pravda” is simply the word for ‘truth’. But I did notice my spellcheck tried to capitalize the word—as if it too only understands it as the proper name of the Soviet newspaper, “Pravda”—which, naturally, is not old-fashion Russian, that referring to a twelve-hundred year-old national ethnicity—; the Soviet propaganda rag nowadays symbolizes anything but the truth.
But I don’t doubt the english word ‘truth’ is at similar risk of losing its proper meaning the way MSM is going these days.
I’m surprised I missed that, Scotty. Indeed, pravda means truth, and izvestia means news. So, as they used to say in the Soviet Union, “There’s no news in the truth, and there’s no truth in the news.” DJC
Hey, I wonder if that “one-third eliminated” count includes all the environmental regulations that were “suspended” (permanently, I suspect) during the Covid Crisis.
Remember when CAPP (“Canadian Association of Petroleum Propagandists”) sent a wish list of “excessive” regulations to the federal Liberals, back in 202o? Justin Trudeau, that anti-oil anti-Alberta reprobate, promptly binned the list. Fortunately for oil, CAPP and the Alberta way (“give the oilpatch whatever they want”), they CC’d Jason Kenney–who binned the regulations, not the list.
Does Danielle Smith consider that ancient history, or will she claim it as a victory for herself?
So one third of the “red tape” is gone. I wonder how they calculated that. (Does anyone else recall “Math is hard”?)
Many people are saying Edmonton’s favorite opinionist, the Stapler, discovered that number for his TBA owners.
Dani and her clown RV have been bringing a lot of innovative lunacy to ol’ Alberty! It’s a shame we don’t have enough comedians to deal with it! https://youtu.be/jFtIZ0VuFhs?t=494
The UCP ministers who claim to have eliminated one third of regulations are clearly legends in their own minds. Have regular Albertans noticed this supposed dramatic reduction? Probably not.
Well at least they didn’t say they eliminated political hype, at which the UCP remain unparalleled at. However, it seems what one hand gives, the other takes away. So say eliminating some health or safety regulation for a business lobby they are in alignment with, while adding new regulations, say on munipalities who receive Federal funds.
Perhaps it would be better called a red tape reallocation, rather than a reduction. But that doesn’t sound so good politically and the UCP is all about hype.
A lot of the “red-tape” for businesses that operate in more than one province is the incessant need for reporting the same information in 13 different ways as each jurisdiction has their own legislation and report requirements. While they are at it, they could reduce the need for the same information to be reported to several federal agencies or provincial ministries. Why isn’t the OHS code from each province identical to the federal OHS code? Follow the money……
This one’s for DJC and any rag baggers who know what a rag shack was. Also for David Pecker’s Post Conrad Black media. Only the finest writings!
To even suggest that this UCP “Confederacy of Dunces” are Ministers of the Crown proves that we have regressed from tragedy to farce.
Your headline photo is of a man thinking, *frack you*, while trying to portray a kind gentle soul. How fitting for the Dani-Downer party! Only one thing might help us all join in a functional society! Free music! Maybe? https://youtu.be/MNG7PP9i7Gk
Are the UCP loons and the drug addled homeless two sides of the same personality type? Are both of them manifesting an inability to cope with a changing world and are falling into despair? The drug addicted are escaping into chemical oblivion while the UCP types have decamped to a demon haunted world in which they are heroes fighting demons of red tape and worse.
At least with the homeless you can still see the light of human intelligence in many of their eyes. With the UCP loons (are there any other types of UCP?) that human intelligence and empathy is missing except for the phoney “Jesus eyes” some of them come up with to hide their internal fear.
We have been here many times before in history. The UCP are not simply mistaken, they are dangerous and given their own way will soon tip into violence and scapegoating. You can see the start of this with the Edmonton police attacks on the homeless and journalists who are not obviously Caucasian. At remote sites, out of public view, even when the journalist is a nice white woman reporting on the dilbit pipeline, the RCMP will grab them as well.
By making us a resource colony of the US, you city people have unleased the same forces the US applies in its other colonies. We know from the other colonies that it will never be enough to just loot fossil fuels here. The carpetbaggers must take everything else as well, starting with the basic decency humans owe to each other. The UCP are well down that path now.
Once again houseless populations do not use drugs at a rate higher than those who live indoors. I don’t know why people keep saying this, it’s disrespectful, it’s inaccurate, and it’s unhelpful. Drugs are not the problem.
Fair enough LB. A lot of homelessness stems from people not being paid a living wage. Which in its turn can lead to the diseases of despair like drug addiction and political apathy.
CUTTitg red tape, never heard of any government doing that and it is most likely this is simply an announcment Smith is hoping people will pay attention to instead of her announcement to day of creating more red tape when it comes to children who are transgender. OMG, that woman is evil. You’d think she was an import from florida or texas.
She is attempting to impose her values on the children of the province. She isn’t their parent. she isn’t a medical professional of any sort. She is creating red tape which isn’t necessary. Banning blockers for kids, well that isn’t going to turn out so well. Wonder what will happen when children committ suicide due to a lack of medical assistance? Oh right they ought to have gone to Loblaws.
Doesn’t this dummy know people just have to step out of the province for medical services? Of course that will mean only those with money will get the assistance they need. Oh, well that is just power for the course with these UPC types.
Wonder what the Human Rights complaints will look like.
So red tape like water quality guidelines is a bad thing? Air quality? Health Care guidelines? Oil well clean up regulations? Yep all have to be eliminated! No profit in red tape! If only corporations and the 1% are left who is going to buy their products? Funny I have long thought that regulations where there to protect both the corporations and the citizens.
The original “red tape” was the red ribbon that US Civil War veterans had to wrap around their applications for veteran’s benefits. It’s really about unnecessary rules around process that do not affect outcomes if they are not followed. So, for example, requiring one to use only THIS form filled out in THIS manner to contact the government, rather than THAT form, when the eventual outcome of the contact is the same, is “red tape”. Whether the regulation underpinning that outreach to government exists at all or not, is not “red tape”.
Can governments and their bureaucracies be hidebound and rigid? Certainly. Do we want to deregulate all aspects of society? Not on your life. I want administrative fairness and flexibility in the bureaucracy in its application of the rules, not elimination of the rules altogether.
Red tape is anything standing in way of greater profits. This includes lowering wages, benefits and worker protection.
The goal of the UCP is to eliminate all regulation. Unfettered free enterprise is their goal. Free market capitalism like the 1920s. We know where that got us in October 1929 and for the next decade. At times 50% of Canada’s workforce was on welfare or relief as it was called.
History isn’t within the UCP’s understanding so they will stay the course until the crash! But who will it affect the most. The working folks.