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.

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.