Kicking business the heck out of Alberta politics

Almost everything wrong with Alberta politics can be traced back to the fact that for more than a decade, the Progressive Conservative government has governed NOT for the people, but for business and the rich instead.

And the answer to many of the province’s problems is to kick business right out of politics and restore the rightful influence of individual voters in the political process.

This article proposes a plan to do just that, but first, some background:

Business control of government is a problem the world around, and it has been a problem for far longer than a couple of decades, but it was exacerbated by 1980s Reganomics, the mantra that said ‘cut government programs so you can reduce taxes so you leave more money in the economy so it trickles down to average people in the form of employment’…yadda, yadda.

The problem with Reganomics was – and still is – that cutting programs to keep taxes low deprives people in need of the services they need, at the same time as leaving enormous piles of cash in the hands of corporations and the rich…cash they usually KEEP rather than spend. That’s why international bankers decry what they call ‘dead money’ (an estimated $600 billion in Canada alone). When businesses are rich, but refuse to spend, people are left both poorly off and incredibly underserviced by government.
 
The Root of the Problem

Let’s focus on Alberta, where businesses and/or anyone with enough money, can donate up to $15,000 to a political party every year, and $30,000 in election years.

That kind of money buys a heck of a lot of attention from the elected government, to the extent in this province where the government has initiated huge changes that favour business. Privatization of long term care institutions and home care services, drug policy changes that benefit huge pharmaceutical companies and are killing off the small independents, a major move to PPP funding for infrastructure, muscling universities to become cookie-cutter assembly lines for major industrial occupations…there are so many examples.

The worst of it began with Ralph Klein, who in very short order killed the progressive income tax that is universally recognized as a social instrument to have the rich pay a greater share of society’s costs. He dropped the personal income tax to a flat 10% for all, leaving huge gobs of money in the hands of the rich.

Klein slashed the large-business tax from 15.5% to 10%, again leaving billions in the hands of corporate Alberta. Then he dropped the small business tax from 6% to 3%, and far more than doubled the amount of profit a business, like a doctor’s or lawyer’s professional corporation, could earn and still be considered ‘small’.

And THEN! he blamed Albertans for the fact that government did not have enough money to provide services. He said we had a spending problem, when in fact he had created a revenue problem.

Wealthy people loved Klein. He made them even richer, even as he cut or killed program after program that helped the homeless, protected single unemployed moms, took care of seniors, kept us healthy, educated our kids and funded critical municipal services.

What’s truly astounding is that Klein had the gall to do all of this under the smokescreen of creating The Alberta Advantage, which, he said, would end up making us all richer.

In reality, however, the Alberta Advantage was nothing but the greatest tax giveaway to the rich and their corporations that North America has even seen.

That’s why in this province, what business wants, business gets. That’s why we still have a government that wants to cut, cut, cut so it can even further reduce taxes.

This has to change. But how?

Here’s a four-point plan for kicking business the heck out of Alberta politics and reducing their enormous political status level from absolute control to that of simple equality-of-participation.

Step One:  Ban all political contributions by business during, and in-between elections. No more donations. Period.

Step Two:  pay for provincial party election campaigns with public money, including the constituency campaigns of candidates representing each legitimate political party.

This keeps the rich and corporations out of political campaigns, preventing them from buying the future loyalties and attentions of government. Because equal amounts of public funding will go to all legitimate parties, and to each of their candidates, this change will also balance the strength of each party’s voice in the campaign. No longer will the party with the best business connections (the best fundraising apparatus) be able to dominate the airwaves. Every party’s election budget, and every candidate’s budget, will be equal.

This won’t be expensive. At $5 million for each of 4 provincial parties, and $75,000 for each of their candidates in the 87 ridings, the cost of this change works out to something like $46 million every five years, or 1/5000th of the government’s spending during a 5-year electoral term.

Small price to completely remove the strings from the business puppeteers’ hands, don’t you think?

Step Three:  In-between elections, in order to fund their ongoing operations, political parties would have to rely solely on small donations from large numbers of people.

An annual donation limit of $250 would absolutely prevent any one person from buying influence with his or her donation.

To encourage healthy, active parties, the tax credit regime that now gives 75% of the first $200 back to the donor at tax time would be sweetened. In the new regime, everything up to the maximum $250 donation would be fully tax refundable. This would only be marginally more expensive than the current system.

The great benefit here is that it would be to all parties’ benefit to assertively reach out to the average citizen to solicit their support. The greater the number of citizens that parties contact, and the more they relate to average people, the more money they’ll raise. No more enormous effort being put into corporate fundraisers where 3,000 of the 1% fork out $500 to schmooze with the Premier and her Cabinet.

Step Four: issue all government contracts over something like $100,000 in full public view.

We must put an end to the nudge-nudge, wink-wink cronyism that pervades the way government does billions of dollars worth of business.

No longer should people be prevented from doing work for the government because of their politics, or because of who they don’t know.

This reform would see an all-party committee of MLAs, chaired by an Opposition member, meeting in open public session to hear the recommendations of senior civil servants, to question them, to deliberate and decide on contract awards.

Media would be free to attend. Committee sessions would be livecast on the web, and contract bidders would be informed in advance when the contracts they bid on are to be discussed.

A great side-benefit of this reform is that civil servants would be restored to their historical role of informed, independent advisors, a great relief to some very good people who for more than a decade have been ignored, strong-armed or bullied into submission by the Progressive Conservative government.

It’s time that logic, reason and fact-based decision-making are restored to a proper balance with political ideology. Placing civil servants in positions where they can bring those qualities to bear on politicians is a great way to begin the process.


Conclusion

This is not an anti-business diatribe. Let’s be clear that business is good and profits are good. Business hires you, me and our friends; it allows us to pursue our dreams. 

While business has that critical role to play in our society, we need to remember that we enable business, and not the other way around. Without us, there would be no profits for business. WE are the starting point.

To operationalize that outlook, we must (re)develop the conviction that government governs for the people above all other things. Government’s primary purpose is not to make things great for business. It’s to make things great for people.

It’s time to put people back in control of the Alberta government.

And the only way to do that is to sever business’ ability to buy political influence, so politicians can once again turn their focus to the people.