Heart of the New Waste?

Well, it seems that our illustrious Mayor is at it again. Hot on the heels of the footbridge fiasco, we now learn that Mayor Bronco is planning to ride again, this time getting a shiny new logo and rebranding for the city to replace the outdated and old-fashioned rubbish that he commissioned two years ago.

Forgive me if I don't exactly injure myself applauding this glorious initiative. Part of my cynicism stems from a general mistrust of all things marketing, and the other part comes from having another glance at my property tax bills. $25 million on a bridge that I'll never use, and in all probability few other people will either. Blue cart recycling at $8 a month, $3 per day to park at a station that was free to park at until last week. We are being gouged, and gouged hard in the middle of a recession, and for what? Infrastructure upgrades for the long term? Social programs to help people who have been laid off find work? No, a couple of bridges and half a dozen new signs at the edge of the city.

Unsurprisingly, every consultant's favorite mayor has already commissioned a group of consultants to advise on whether or not we need some rebranding. At a cost of $100000 they came up with the recommendation that Calgary needs a new image to replace last year's image, and it just so happens that they are in the rebranding business.

Jeepers - here's an ide for you Dave. Next time you get one of these silly notions about hiring some consultants in Spain or Toronto or whatever, just stop. Lean out of the office window and ask the first person to walk down 7th Ave what they think. Listen, say thankyou and give them $1000. Want to know what to do about crime? Yell across the street and ask the cops coiming out of the CPS gym what they think, don't go dialling long distance to a firm of professional gobshites in New York or wherever. Chances are they've never even heard of Calgary.

By the time this exercise is over, the chances are that Mayor Dave will have spent over a million bucks on a few words that mean absolutely nothing to the Calgarians that paid for it. "Heart of the New West?" What does it mean? Will cowboys ride to Stampede on Segways? Will bandits have shoot-outs in Chinatown with laser guns? It's meaningless - the consultants might as well have said "Calgary - bingo jango dig dog dash," it has the same level of nonsense and instant forgetability that the other slogan has.

I think it's time we told you someting Dave - your tailor is ripping you off. Those fancy clothes that everyone tells you you're wearing. It's lies. Turn one of your CCTV cameras on yourself and look at the evidence. Your haberdashery consultants have pulled the wool over your eyes, but over the rest of your body there is not a single thread. $25 million bridges? Bogus. A bridge is a bridge is a bridge, sure it may look nice, but after a few years of being tagged and trampled on, they all look pretty much the same.

Tell the consultants to ply their trade elsewhere and hire some unemployed construction workers to take down the old signs and put up new ones that say "Welcome to Calgary. Passing through or staying awhile, we hope you enjoy our city. Just don't live here because you won't be able to afford the taxes."

Alberta NDP to target Calgary ridings.

Alberta NDP Strategists to target Calgary ridings.

Why?

According to today's Calgary Herald, the Alberta New Democrats are having a bit of a think about how to orchestrate a breakthrough in Calgary. Apparently, they've decided that people in Calgary don't join or vote for the NDP because nobody asked them to.

It's all the fault of the young people, explains one of their supporters. And the old people as well. The young don't vote, and the old won't change their vote, so the NDP needs to try and get the young involved more so that they will go and vote NDP. As for the established voters, it seems that they're not that interested in them because they are Conservatives.

With a strategy like that in place, Ed Stelmach should feel confident about going on a year-long holiday to Hawaii.

What the NDP don't seem to be able to grasp is that they don't offer an attractive alternative to the Conservative government. Even the Liberals are seen as being a bit left-wing for the average Albertan voter, so voting for the NDP ranks alongside a vote for Joe Stalin on the Alberta political spectrum.

The NDP would do a lot better at the municipal level, where Calgarians often vote for liberal aldermen. Of course, they can't be liberal aldermen because they're meant to be politically neutral, but as the NDP supporter mentioned earlier pointed out, leopards rarely change their political spots. Even the NDP have had an alderman elected in Calgary, Bob Hawkesworth won the provincial election for the NDP in 1989, and he still sits on the City Council today.

The NDP are trying to do too much, too soon. They had two faltering steps in 1989, and have been trying to enter the Calgary Political Marathon ever since. More baby steps Brian, that's the key.

Why the rest of the world has embraced performance-related pay.

"Don't laugh, there's a recession on."

Well, it didn't take long, did it? An unelected board is given the power to set it's own pay, and lo and behold they award themselves a 25% raise. On top of a $50k honorarium, the great and good of the Alberta Health Services Board also receive $750 for each meeting they attend, and they attend four meetings a month. Let's do the math:

$50,000 + $37,500 = $87,500

So these fine people earn $87,500 plus for a part-time job. Where do I sign up?

Let's be clear about this - Ron Liepert isn't responsible for the pay raise these people awarded themselves, nor is Ed Stelmach. They are guilty of being too trusting, and assuming that the board members wouldn't do something outrageous in the middle of a recession if they were able to set their own pay rates. Unfortunately, trust does not a contract make, and the lawyers appointed to the board would have been able to point this out.

The people responsible for this debacle are the members of the board who voted for the raise. They moved the motion, they debated it, they voted for it.

It's not like Ron Liepert to be so naieve about these things, he's as sharp an operator as you'll likely find in politics. He's clearly picked some very bright people for the board. In fact, it looks like they might have been a bit too bright, but at the end of the day we don't want dummies running healthcare in Alberta.

Is there anything Stelmach and Liepert can do about this? Not likely - the board members would have studied their contracts and the board bylaws to ensure their raises were watertight. The only thing they can do is learn from this mistake and change the bylaws to ensure that the board loses it's pay-setting powers. Liepert and Stelmach should also make it clear that this behaviour is unacceptable - board members are not members for life, they should be encouraged to show restraint in future. Forcefully encouraged.

Having one health services board for the province makes sense, and Liepert's healthcare reforms have been very encouraging - rewarding people who take care of themselves at the expense of people who don't. In fact, the Conservative government's policy on healthy living has been very strong - from Dave Rodney's Smoke-Free Places Act, to his Physical Activity Tax Credit bill to Liepert's efforts to reform healthcare delivery. These have been progressive and far-sighted pieces of legislation that will benefit us all over the years.

The reform we really need, though, is performance-related pay for the board. Performance measured in terms of increased life expectancy, not waiting times in hospital or the number if ingrowing toenails removed in a month, and certainly not performance in terms of whatever the board thinks it means. We've seen what happens when they're allowed to think for themselves.

And they wonder why only criminals like them?

President of Calgary Criminal Defence Lawyers Association says getting rid of two- or three-for-one sentencing deals is a "distraction."

Apparently, the federal government's plan to do away with two or three for one deals for prisoners on remand is a distraction, to take our minds off the recession, according to Charlie Stewart, the president of the group responsible for ensuring crooks are back on the street by tea time, should they fall foul of the law for some reason.

Of course it's a political ploy Charlie, that's what politicians do. However, they also respond to what people say, and what people have been saying for some time now is that they are fed up with crooks being rewarded for breaking the law. They are also fed up with lawers dragging things out to ensure that sentences are reduced to time served as often as possible. After all, the burglars and drug dealers have to make a living too, so no sense putting them in jail.

Perhaps Charlie and his laweyer friends could work out some kind of deal with God and have Jose Neto get a two for one deal on the eyes he lost, caught in the crossfire of a gang war in downtown Calgary. Maybe Keni Su'a's family could get two of him back for the one they lost in the Bolsa Restaurant shootings on New Year's Day? Perhaps the five people killed by Daniel Tschetter as he allegedly drove his cement truck at high speed down Highway 2 while under the influence could get a few more years of life as a reward for not breaking the law.

Somehow, I think that Charlie and his friends will be working harder to have Tschetter's 10 previous driving offences expunged from the record, than they will trying to get justice for his victims. Thank God for the politicians.

Calgary-West: You couldn't make it up.

Anders vs Kennedy-Glans

The War Of West Calgary.

Well, it would be nice if this was a full-blown political war, as opposed to what can most accurately be described as a spat between two political nobodies. Anders has hardly proven himself in parliament over the years, although all credit to him for winning nomination and election battles despite his best efforts to sabotage himself.

This is no mean feat for an MP who prompted local radio stations to ask it's viewers "Where's Rob?" in the last election. Anders is something of a controversial character, voting against Nelson Mandela becoming an honorary Canadian citizen may well have been justified on ideological grounds, but he was a lone voice against the honour. Anders is either very brave, or somewhat misguided.

Anders is also a very vocal critic of the Chinese regime, and compared the Beijing Olympics to the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936 - cautioning against, for example, allowing Canadian athletes to be used as propaganda tools for the PRC government. Again, Anders courts controversy by sticking to his ideological guns.

Both of these stands do seem to resonate with his constituents, however. They turned out in record numbers and returned him to Parliament with an increased majority in the last election, so they obviously like what they hear. Anders' only major gaffe was to vote for a Bloc Quebecois proposition that would allow Quebec to withdraw from any federal initiative they didn't like. Anders was the only non-BQ MP to vote for this motion.

Anders is the very definition of conservative values at the federal level - he doesn't even compromise these values when the rest of his party do so. Again, while this may make his fellow MPs treat him with some disdain, his constituents like it.

Donna Kennedy-Glans is, on the other hand, a liberal. She may be a member of the Conservative Party of Canada, and she may state that she is a conservative, but in deed she is a liberal. At least in the Alberta sense of the word.

Kennedy-Glans runs social enterprises, tours the middle east studying the plight of women in Muslim countries and provides a consulting service on improving corporate social responsibility. Whereas Anders has stood for the rights of oppressed peoples everywhere, even in Quebec, Kennedy-Glans is more in tune with the plight of women, and has called on governments around the world to use her charitable foundation to help find global peace through empowering women.

These are strange words indeed for a conservative, especially an Alberta conservative, and are unheard of from a Calgary conservative. What Kennedy-Glans offers the people of Calgary-West is a real change from the status quo. Anders is a Harperite Tory, Kennedy-Glans is a much more progressive conservative, if not a liberal.

Quite what the electorate will make of this contest remains to be seen, but judging by the length of the lines outside the Calgary-West AGM, it has certainly livened up the constituency association. As it is, 29 members of the Free Calgary West group were elected to the board of the riding, with only 1 pro-Anders member elected to the board.

Is the writing on the wall for Rob Anders? Possibly, given the number of party memberships that Kennedy-Glans supporters have sold over the last few weeks, it's hard to see how Anders will fight his way back from this.