The Government Promised to Make Roads Safer - Have They?

For more than two years we've been told that the new distracted driving law would make Alberta streets safer.
More more than a year we've been told that the new impaired driving law would make Alberta streets safer.
While it's still too early to draw any final conclusions, the early signs are not encouraging. Quite the opposite in fact, as the number of fatal collisions is up 20 per cent from last year.
Calgary Police Chief Rick Hansen, for example, wants to see the province impose demerit points to distracted driving tickets. He believes that the $172 fine isn't enough and drivers aren't fearful enough of the consequences. Whatever the case, distracted driving is on the rise - not the decline.
Maybe drivers don't think they're going to get caught. Or maybe they feel that some provisions, like the ban on reading a text while you're stuck at a train crossing or in the drive-thru lineup - are just plain silly. One of the concerns many critics had was that the law might make some motorists try and hide their devices, which would make their actions even more dangerous.
Meanwhile, it was just back in September that Hansen was claiming the new provincial impaired driving law was working. But as 2012 draws to a close, police are on pace to lay over 1400 charges for being over point-zero-eight. Over 1200 such charges were laid last year.
And let's note the obvious: if the number of crashes and offenses had been down this year, then certainly the government and police would be touting the success of both laws.
Instead, we're now looking again at what more can be done.
Maybe more can be done, but we should be skeptical of the notion that the government has the answer.

Alberta's Queue-Jumping Inquiry is a Waste of Time & Money

My latest Calgary Herald column:

If a health care queue-jumping inquiry is held in the forest, and no is there to care, does it still make a sound?
It may well be that the public inquiry into queue jumping will prove to be so uneventful that Albertans will simply fail to notice it. However, if it is uneventful by design, and therefore a pointless $10-million expenditure, maybe we ought to pay attention.
After all, most Albertans would surely agree that there are challenges facing our health-care system. There may be differences of opinion as to what the most pressing and formidable challenges are, but it hardly seems as though the question of queue jumping should rise above them all.
It might be another story if we had evidence suggesting systemic and widespread manipulation of the health-care system by MLAs or other top government officials — in other words, the sort of evidence that would make this inquiry appear to be something other than a waste of time and money. Of course, we have nothing of the sort.
Despite that lack of evidence, despite a police investigation that turned up nothing, and despite the existence of far more serious questions of wrongdoing and shenanigans within the health-care system, it is the issue of queue jumping — and only the issue of queue jumping — that was deemed worthy of investigation via public inquiry.
That may explain why the government felt it was safe to call this inquiry.
However, as recently as February, Premier Alison Redford was pledging a much more wide-ranging public inquiry that would examine issues of doctor intimidation and political interference as well as queue jumping. As to whether she thought such issues needed to be examined, Redford stated unequivocally that “they have to be.”
That same month brought us further confirmation that there were troubling questions still unanswered as to why and by whom Alberta doctors were intimidated and muzzled. A report from the Health Quality Council confirmed that such bullying was widespread. But rather than the report being a jumping off point to a broader inquiry, it ended up being the last word on the subject.
Even after the narrow terms of reference for this inquiry were announced, the premier still tried to insist the inquiry could “follow the evidence” where it might lead.
We can now see how empty that assurance was. No such evidence has been explored, and when Liberal Leader Dr. Raj Sherman attempted to present such evidence during his testimony, he was shut down for straying outside the terms of reference.
Rather than hearing about the intimidation of doctors, the lawyer for the inquiry was much more interested in whether Sherman might have offered medical advice or examinations at his MLA office to his fellow politicians. To somehow argue that this constitutes queue jumping or that this would even occupy the time and resources of this inquiry, shows how absurd this whole exercise is.
So while Sherman was thoroughly interrogated, others with potentially useful or incriminating evidence have been allowed to skate through with softball questions.

Stephen Duckett, the former CEO of Alberta Health Services whose memo ordering an end to preferential treatment precipitated all of this, had little to say. He wasn’t directly aware of any queue jumping, and there was much he couldn’t recall. It was much the same from other notable witnesses, such as former health minister Ron Liepert and top health officials Lynn Redford and Brian Hlus.
Short of any tough questions, the only hope for any sort of explosive revelations seems to lie in the vain hope that witnesses would or will take the stand and directly incriminate themselves. Don’t hold your breath for that.
In the end, we’re still left with all sorts of unanswered questions about more pressing matters such as doctor intimidation, lengthy wait times and questionable expense claims.
It struck me that the government at this point might actually hope for a damaging bit of evidence, if only to justify this whole charade. However, such testimony might actually make people sit up and take notice of this inquiry with all its limitations and shortcomings.
That may be the last thing the government wants.

Ottawa Obfuscates on Foreign Investment

Finally we got some clarity today regarding foreign investment in Canada, yet in the process we also got more uncertainty.
The Harper government has approved (PM's statement here) the takeover of Calgary-based Nexen by China's CNOOC. Additionally, Ottawa gave the greenlight to the takeover of Progress Energy Resources by Malaysia's Petronas.
Both decisions were correct. These were decisions made by the shareholders of two Canadian companies and there was no need for the government to interfere.
If these foreign entities want to pour in billions in new foreign investment, then Ottawa should be getting out of the way.
However, Ottawa has indicated that it may indeed get in the way of future transactions. The government announced that future takeover deals in the oilsands involving state-owned companies will only be allowed in "exceptional circumstances". The Prime Minister says while Canada is open for business to foreign investors, it's not for sale.
But our government does not own these private companies. We might own the resources and we might set the laws, but none of that is up for sale.
If the government is so worried about the detrimental impact of state-owned enterprises, perhaps then we could start eliminating the crown corporations that still exist in our country. But in the meantime, the basis for the government's new policy is unclear. As Andrew Coyne points out:

Yes, it is true that they “play by different rules,” that they “have different incentives,” or have access to “different resources” than private firms. Yes, yes, yes. So what?
What precise harm they could do to us with these “different resources” is never explained. There’s no doubt that they can overpay us for things, as CNOOC may well have done for Nexen. If so, we should shut up and take their money before they have time to reconsider. They might even sell us stuff for less than they should. Again, why would we want to stop them?
What the critics are really saying is that state-owned enterprises sometimes do dumb things, owing to their tendency to pursue political rather than commercial objectives. That is indeed why, as the Prime Minister noted, state ownership has rather fallen out of favour in this country.

The fact is, foreign investment is needed to help develop the oilsands. and moreover, foreign investment is a net benefit to Canada. As the IRPP notes (PDF):

A dispassionate analysis of the evidence shows that the benefits of foreign investment far outweigh any real or imagined drawbacks. Foreign firms operating in Canada are more innovative and productive than their Canadian counterparts, and they pay higher wages. More importantly, they import significant amounts of technology from their parent companies, and the benefits of these technologies spill over to domestic firms. In addition, though the stock of inward FDI did increase somewhat as a share of GDP in the late 1990s, it has held steady since then at just over 30 percent — the same share as in 1970.

Worries about corporate takeovers and the “hollowing out” of high-value head office functions in Canada are also misplaced. Foreign takeovers have actually increased head office activities in Canada in recent years, because foreign firms typically find it to their advantage to keep such activities geographically close to their Canadian operations.

But in this case, the dumb state-owned enterprises are somebody else’s problem. The costs of their mistakes fall on foreign taxpayers, not ours, while the benefits accrue to us. Why self avowed free marketers, amongst whom the Prime Minister once counted himself, should fail to understand this is yet another puzzle.

More specifically, as economist Stephen Gordon notes, foreign investment is crucial to oilsands development:

The first is that foreign investment is very important. Investment spending must be financed by savings, and those savings can come from Canadians or from foreigners. Canadians investors already own 65 per cent of the assets in the oil and gas sector (this share is 47 per cent in the manufacturing sector) and are unlikely to significantly increase their holdings, if only to avoid putting all of their eggs in one basket. The Conservatives’ policy of favouring the development of the oil sands while simultaneously making life difficult for foreign investors, then, seems self-defeating.

If we're really open for business, let's start acting like it.

Premier Should Stop Playing Victim Card

My latest Calgary Herald column looks at the latest controversy swirling around Premier Alison Redford, and her assertion that she is the subject of "personal attacks":

The word “attack” can simply mean to take the offence, but it can also imply a particular aggressiveness or nastiness.
Certainly, the latter applies when speaking of political attacks, so it’s ironic that claiming to be on the receiving end of such an attack can in its own way be a form of going on the offensive.
It’s a tool frequently deployed to garner sympathy or to avoid answering difficult questions (usually both). Criticism, however, in no way constitutes an attack, nor does asking legitimate questions.
Premier Alison Redford would have us all believe that she’s been the victim of an ongoing series of personal attacks, not only perpetrated upon her, but also members of her family. In fact, judging by her remarks last week, these “personal attacks” are even traumatizing her daughter’s schoolyard playmates.
And indeed, who would stand for such a thing?
But could it be that all we actually witnessed here was scrutiny, criticism and a demand for answers? Understandably, it’s much more effective to raise the spectre of “personal attacks” without ever specifying the nature of the attacks themselves or from whom they originate.
Recent weeks have produced a series of controversies for the Redford government, so it’s not surprising that they’d just as soon turn the page to something else.
We’ve had revelations, for example, about the sizable donation to the PC party from billionaire Daryl Katz, and whether loopholes were used to help underwrite a flagging Tory campaign. We’ve had revelations that the premier’s sister, while a top executive with the Calgary Health Region, attended Tory fundraisers and billed those expenses back to the health region.
And, of course, last week brought revelations about the manner in which the province selected the law firm to handle a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the tobacco industry. Documents surfaced showing that while Justice minister in December 2010, Redford wrote a memo declaring that of the three firms shortlisted, the International Tobacco Recovery Lawyers consortium would be “the best choice.”
That consortium includes the law firm where her ex-husband, Robert Hawkes, happens to be a senior partner. Not only were the two once married (granted, many years ago), they remain close enough that Hawkes went to work for Redford’s subsequent leadership campaign and even led the transition team when Redford became premier.
Despite this potential conflict, Redford apparently made the decision anyway. Perhaps it was not truly a conflict, at least by the letter of the law, but one that was never addressed, or even, it seems, considered at the time. But rather than argue that no conflict existed, Redford instead tried to argue that she didn’t make the decision. It’s true that the agreement was finalized in 2011 under Justice Minister Verlyn Olson, but as even Olson conceded last week, there was a “preferred candidate” when he took office, and negotiations commenced. Certainly a negotiating partner is needed for there to be negotiations in the first place.
Not only that, but further documentation emerged indicating that officials interpreted Redford’s memo as a decision. Memos were sent to the “successful” and “unsuccessful” consortiums and a briefing note from the assistant deputy minister in January 2011 states that “shortly before Christmas, Minister Redford selected the (International Tobacco Recovery Lawyers).”
So not only did we have legitimate questions about a possible conflict of interest, we had questions about whether the premier had been less than honest. It should go without saying that we deserved answers to those questions, but instead, this was twisted to somehow represent an attack on the premier.
Late Monday, Speaker Gene Zwozdesky said he believes Redford’s version of events — that she did not pick the firm.
Last week, the premier informed us all that there are “lots of issues that we need to talk about” and that MLAs need to be “getting down to the business of . . . governing the province.”
It remains to be seen how interested the Tories are in involving the other parties in “governing the province,” but if we’ve been distracted from other pressing matters, then that is the fault of the government.
The premier is no victim here. Should this gambit succeed, the only victims will be those demanding accountability from their government.