Alberta Politics Just Got Interesting

First Dave Taylor moves to sit as an Alberta Party MLA, and then Stelmach steps down.

I'm not sure what to make of all this just now, but things definitely just got interesting.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say that the Alberta Party is well positioned to fill a void in Alberta's politics and Dave Taylor may be just the right guy to help them become a visible part of the process.

As for Stelmach's departure, I think it tells us that the PC party is not a united monolith at all. There's too many signs that suggest he was pushed out - and likely as not pushed out by the extremist right who are beginning to fear that the Wildrose Alliance is eating their base of support up.

With an election likely in the next year or so, 2011 should be very interesting with the PCs trying to portray themselves as "renewed" and two new parties competing for the votes of voters long disaffected.

It's Called Shooting The Messenger

Not smart, Mr. Stelmach. This morning's lecture telling Albertans to "settle down" on the health care issues, followed by what you did to the messenger in your own caucus.

Dr. Sherman is not the problem - the problem exists right smack in the midst of the government you are responsible for, Mr. Stelmach.

Things weren't in great shape before Mr. Liepert became the minister responsible, but they have taken a distinct turn for the worse since he created his "superboard". Although Gene Zwozdesky is more moderate than Liepert, the fact is that things have continued to deteriorate.

In firing Dr. Sherman, you have shown Albertans that you are more willing to shoot the messenger than to take actual actions to resolve problems. Chastising Albertans for their very real concerns about access to health care tells us you are very, very out of touch with the lives of real Albertans.

Mr. Stelmach, you have neither the vision or wisdom of Peter Lougheed, nor do you possess the baffling charisma of Ralph Klein. How many votes have you just alienated?

The First Step Towards An Authoritarian State

Criminalize everyone.

That's essentially what Special Ed and his band of geniuses are proposing with Bill 16.

I'm not saying that it is wise to be doing any of the things prohibited in the act while driving - that isn't the point. This is a piece of legislation which gives police blanket permission to hand out tickets for anything that they feel like.

Have an iPod on your dash? Oh - must have seen you operating it while driving. Is that a lipstick sitting on the console? You were seen putting it on in the car - that'll be $172 please. Or perhaps you have an apple core sitting on the passenger seat - whoops, that must be proof of distracted driving.

You can see where this heads - quite quickly. An awful lot of tickets get written, and most people won't bother to contest them, even though they are mostly going to be based on the word of the officer writing the ticket.

On CBC this afternoon they had some whackjob on the radio who was going on about how the law wasn't strict enough, they should have banned cell phone use altogether - including hands-free.

Broad, sweeping laws like this do nothing for public safety, and provide law enforcement officials with a tool that can be used primarily to harass civilians.

Alberta Cuts Health Care To Pad Executive Salaries

Via The Calgary Herald:

Eight senior executives with Alberta Health Services received nearly $500,000 in bonuses last summer, leading the opposition to demand the government put an end to such hefty payouts.

In Edmonton, Liberal health critic Kevin Taft released documents left, Tuesday -- obtained through access to information legislation -- that show top health bureaucrats received bonuses between $19,000 and $130,000.

So, in the Spring of 2009, the Alberta Government cut a range of programs - some of them meeting key medical care needs of their patients - so that Liepert's "superboard" could afford to pay out executive bonuses?

Alberta Health Services is now finalizing payouts for the 2009-10 fiscal year -- including Duckett's performance-based compensation -- which will be determined once the financial statements are reviewed by the auditor general in June. The organization ran a deficit of $1.3 billion for the fiscal year ending in March.

We're going to pay out bonuses when the organization is losing money? WTF? If you go losing millions of dollars, and your workforce is as completely demoralized as we've been hearing about lately, I'd say that's a failure of leadership. Starting with the executives.

Regardless, cutting services only to direct monies into "bonus compensation" for executives is positively insane.

This says so much about the "Old Boys Network" that is the Alberta Government under the PCs. Not only is there a lack of vision, but the priority is lining their pockets not fulfilling the government's responsibilities towards its citizens.

Alberta's Budget

Alberta's government tabled its second deficit budget yesterday.

Several things struck me as being of interest in it.

First of all, was the deep delve into the 'Sustainability Fund'. I don't actually object to that per se - rainy day savings are something that are always a good idea. That said, I think it is highly questionable that we have not one, but two such funds - the one Ralph Klein created and the Heritage Savings Trust Fund created by Peter Lougheed. If we are to be looking for economic efficiencies in such times as today, should we not be consolidating such funds to reduce administrative duplication?

The second piece is a 'what's missing' moment. We have a government staring down the business end of a $4 Billion deficit, even after raiding the sustainability fund cookie jar. Basically, the Alberta government is basing it's entire 'get out of deficit' plan on rising resource prices. This is a really poor plan when you think about it, as it is entirely based on revenue streams that the government has little or no ability to influence. Resource prices move on the open market - which may or may not go up in the next few years.

This is solely because the Alberta government under Ed Stelmach is unwilling or afraid to levy taxes. While I don't necessarily like taxes, it strikes me that relying on resource revenues (a diminishing income source in the long run) to balance our budgets is missing the point that both the Sustainability Fund and the Heritage Savings Trust Fund were created to address - namely that we cannot afford to be shackled for all time to finite resources - and doing so is fiscally myopic.

The last piece I will pick on in the budget is the lack of meaningful effort put into moving Alberta's economy out of being resource-centric. If there is one thing that governments in this province have missed the boat on repeatedly in this province it is the very notion of getting our focus out of being purely resource centric. In fact, their "plan" for getting out of what is clearly a systemic deficit position itself shows us that the Stelmach PCs have absolutely no clue how vital this is to Alberta's long term viability.

So...to paraphrase Brian Mason after the Throne Speech last week, I think the Stelmach government has successfully delivered the greenest budget in decades - mostly by recycling old budgets from the Ralph years. Sadly, they haven't realized that those budgets didn't work so well either.

So ... Forsyth Found Her Spine

Today she crossed the floor in the Alberta Legislature.

It has been a long time since I heard anything out of Ms. Forsyth that impressed me - but today she sounded like she is actually has started thinking a bit. This is a distinct improvement on the response I received from her when I approached her about Ted Morton's bill 208, when she left me with the impression she had been ordered to vote for the bill, so vote for it she did.

Isley cautioned, though, the Wildrose Alliance must present itself as a viable governing alternative that is just slightly right-of-centre on the political spectrum. The party also must be careful how it manages the crossovers so as not to be painted as a protest party, he argued.

“We need to be moderate ... We can’t be viewed as just a protest fringe movement if we hope to form the government,” he said. “I don’t think they want to just throw their arms open and say that anybody that wants to come can come.”

Interesting ... it shows an awareness within the WRA that they have to show themselves to be something other than a reactionary party.

Thinking about it further, Forsyth has to be getting closer to retirement - she's been a part of the Alberta political scene for a long time - it wouldn't surprise me at all if Forsyth sits until next fall and then steps aside, to allow Danielle Smith to run in a byelection.

Although today's floor crossings are really a warning to Stelmach, and provide a glimpse into the cracks in the PC's foundation in Alberta, I have yet to be convinced that Stelmach and his inner circle will get the message.

I will reserve my judgment for now on the WRA - they haven't convinced me yet that they are mature enough to form a government - much less whether they represent the kind of government that I would support.

One More Step Back To The Dark Ages

Good grief, is it possible for the Alberta Government to be any more malicious?

Mental-health patients at Alberta Hospital will no longer get free toothbrushes, face soap, sanitary napkins, coffee or snacks after Alberta Health Services stopped covering the cost.

For those unfamiliar, the Alberta Hospital is the provinces primary mental health hospital. If somebody's mental health issues are serious enough to require hospitalization, then chances are they have very limited - if any - resources at all.

Tadra Boulton, spokeswoman for Alberta Health Services, said Alberta Hospital Edmonton was the only hospital in the province supplying patients with personal hygiene items and with slippers or sunscreen for comfort. That cost the system $70,000 each year.

Cutting that was "part of aligning and standardizing our supplies across the province," Boulton said. "In other hospitals and care facilities, patients bring in their own items or they have their own family bring in their own items."

Do I really need to point out that there are significant differences between mental health hospitalization and acute care hospitalization? If I go into hospital for surgery, chances are that I will be released within a few days. If I'm hospitalized for mental health issues, chances are that it isn't a well defined "few days" to stabilize the situation.

Even more distressing is that mental health issues often result in long term poverty for the afflicted because of a combination of inability to work consistently (or at all) and the collective misconception society has about mental illness in general.

"They're such a vulnerable group and frequently they are folks who lack financial resources to support themselves in the community, let alone when they're in the hospital," Harrison said. Often, their families have broken apart because of the burden of mental illness.

"Gosh, this seems like one more stress and pressure for the families and patients who are already stressed due to their illness and the burden on the family but also about the uncertainty about the future of Alberta Hospital Edmonton," Harrison said.

Once again, the Stelmach government is balancing its budget by attacking those who are among the most vulnerable in our society, and those who have little or no political voice.

That Was Predictable

The next group to bear the brunt of the Alberta PC government's mendacity has just been revealed.

Alberta's plan to cut about $12 million from its People with Developmental Disabilities program is scaring disabled people and their families.

Mary Anne Jablonski, minister of seniors and community supports, blames the cuts — which amount to about two per cent of the program's $604 million budget — on the economic downturn.

There's a pattern at play here - and the pattern is firmly rooted in a combination of mendacity and cowardice. The Stelmach government picks target populations with little or no political voice to be the front line of their agenda to cut, cut, cut. All the while refusing to examine seriously consider how the government could improve its cash flow.

So ... who's gonna be next? You?

Bill 50 - And What It Tells Albertans

So, the legislature passed Bill 50 yesterday.

I have all sorts of problems with Bill 50, but in particular what it represents. Essentially, the Alberta Government has just removed public process from the creation of power transmission lines. If the minister decides that a given transmission line is "critical", then there is no regulatory process to vet whether the line is in fact critical, or whether it unreasonably affects people living along its route, or will unnecessarily hike electricity costs for Albertans.

This is a serious problem - the Stelmach government is setting things up so that they are even less accountable to the public than Klein was ... and Klein was pretty awful for accountability. Klein didn't like accountability much, and it appears that under Stelmach, it's about to take a turn for the worse.

We've already seen the first steps in this with Liepert's "Health Services Superboard", which both Stelmach and Liepert hide everytime something controversial is being done with the health care system in this province.

Now we have a situation where cabinet wants to appropriate the power to be the regulator and the lawmaker with respect to large infrastructure projects. This has the potential to be extremely destructive to participation in Alberta's democracy (which is already depressingly poor).

Last election, over 80% of the seats were decided by 22% of the eligible voters - Stelmach won on apathy. Think about it.

The PC's No Longer Represent Albertans

One only need look at this weekend's leadership review for Ed Stelmach.

Mr. Stelmach received a vote of confidence from 77.4 per cent of PC delegates eligible to cast ballots during a mandatory leadership review. The result of the secret-ballot vote was announced to the cheers of more than 1,000 people on Saturday night at the close of the party’s annual party convention in Red Deer.

Considering that less than half that number in the general population would vote for Stelmach, I'd say that 77% suggests that the PC party has officially lost touch with Alberta voters.

Stelmach is easily the weakest Premier this province has seen since Don Getty and by far the most out of touch with Albertans as a whole. (a neat trick, given how awful Getty was) That the party delegates chose to give him such a high approval rating says more about the party's sense of entitlement than anything else.

A premier who has bungled every major policy decision moment since the last election should be in deep trouble with the party apparatus. Instead, they give him a resounding vote of approval - as if the anointed one could not possibly make a mistake.

Stelmach Needs To Take A Long Walk Off A Short Pier

What is it with Alberta's governments and their incessant idiotic approach to anything resembling human rights issues?

The most recent outrage comes in the form of collecting and analyzing all prisoner communications.

Superficially, one might think "what's so bad about that?", after all they're in prison which means they are convicted of something, right?

The proposed changes to Alberta's Corrections Act broaden what provincial prisons can monitor, allowing for any technology inmates might access in the future, such as video or computer communications. Databases will be created, and, given "reasonable grounds," prison directors can search what inmates have said or written.

Well - there's a bit of a problem here. Someone being held in a remand facility is not necessarily convicted of anything - they may be facing serious charges, but they have not yet been convicted of them. Last I checked, this violates the fundamental principle of our justice system - the presumption of innocence.

Second, it arguably violates a key tenet of Canada's Charter of Rights:

8. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

Please note the lack of exclusions in S. 8 and the surrounding areas regarding someone who has been incarcerated, so presumably S8. applies just as much behind bars as it does on the outside. Around the clock surveillance and recording of all communications arguably constitutes an unreasonable search.

I just love how the bureaucrats are going to invent their own rules for "reasonable grounds" to use this accumulated information. This isn't going to be written in law - it's going to be at the whim of politicians and bureaucrats. I just can't imagine how that could go wrong, can you?

But, this isn't just about what can happen to you behind bars. It's about what the Conservatives from Alberta actually understand about human and civil rights. To them, it's all conditional. Are you conforming to their ideal little worldview? If not, then you don't deserve to have any rights, and they think they can arbitrarily revoke your rights at their whim.

Alberta's doing it, and make no mistake about it, Harper would do the same and worse if ever granted a majority.

This Is NOT To Be Confused With Fiscal Prudence

So, uncle Ed is going to take a 15% pay cut.

It almost sounds good, doesn't it?

Until you remember the 34% pay RAISE he gave himself a year ago.

Cabinet ministers will give back 10 per cent of their cabinet allowances (a cut of $6,391 per minister), but also does not include base salary and committee pay.

The premier's overall pay cut amounts to about six per cent of his total salary, which was about $213,000 prior to today's announcement. Cabinet ministers will each give back about three per cent of their total individual salary, which was $184,000 heading into today.

This is important - it's not really a 15% cut - it's less than that when you account for the extra "perks" our politicians receive for sitting on committees and other bits of pay that make up a sizeable fraction of the total pay that our politicians get. $6,000 for a cabinet minister (on an overall salary of $184,000) is peanuts - it's symbolic at most, and makes virtually no difference to the cost of operating the legislature that Alberta's taxpayers fund.

But, it's not like I've seen anything from Team Ed that suggests any ability to balance the books or otherwise manage finances.

Do They Know What A Balance Sheet Is?

So ... Liepert's little orgy of staff terminations last year cost taxpayers $22 Million last year, and a total of $80 Million to found his "superboard". But that's not all, because the Health Superboard overpaid their severance on top of it all.

Then, we also have Stelmach handing out plenty of fat pay raises to his staff ... during the worst economic downturn Alberta has seen in years.

I've said it before - the Alberta PCs have lost sight of their responsibilities and obligations to Albertans. Their sense of self-entitlement has gotten to be such that they can't even balance their own books.

Something Doesn't Add Up Here

So ... the Alberta Government is running in the red, with a cash flow problem. So ... they need to cut services - right?

Or perhaps they might start with cutting the bonuses and other unnecessary expenditures?

(as an aside: The 44 million spent on bonuses is enough to fund GRS for the next 60 odd years)

Alberta's Conservatives have lost sight of their responsibilities and priorities where the people of Alberta are concerned.

More Conservative "Innovation" - Alberta Style

So, now our geniuses in Edmonton want to close acute care beds and create long term care beds to replace them.

This is another example of how short-sighted the Alberta government really is. The problem they are addressing? There are people in acute care beds that should be in long term care facilities. So far, so good - creating long term care beds is a reasonable thing to do in addressing that problem.

However, it is dead wrong to simply close those acute care beds once you have shuffled the patients out of them into the new, and apparently cheaper to operate, long term beds.

Why do I say that this is an error? Simple - the supposition is that the acute care bed is not meaningfully needed outside of its current role of being a long term bed is false.

The net effect of this change is to further reduce the available bandwidth in acute care, which is guaranteed to increase waiting times for necessary treatment. It has been pointed out that the volume of this cut is equivalent to closing down the Grey Nuns hospital in Edmonton - it's just split between Edmonton and Calgary.

We already know that Calgary (and likely Edmonton too) is running with far fewer beds than we should be. This article shows Calgary and Edmonton at 1.7 Beds / 1,000 population - which is less than half the national average, at the time, and near the bottom of the heap when it comes to other countries ... only marginally better than Mexico.

All this does is exacerbate existing problems. Rather than actually measuring the effect of one change (adding long term care beds) and then determining how best to utilize those resources, they are just going to cut the acute care beds - regardless of whether or not those are needed for other purposes. The people who will pay the price for this? Those who find themselves in need of hospital care for any reason and are unfortunate enough to live in Calgary or Edmonton.

Stelmach and Liepert: Starve HealthCare

Remember the 1980s, and 1990s? You know, when Alberta's governments closed down - and did not replace - a big chunk of the hospitals in Calgary. The Grace, Holy Cross and Calgary General hospitals all fell under the government's axe. It's only been in the last few years that any effort at all has been made to start replacing the beds that were sacrificed at that time.

Now, we find that the Stelmach government is going to open the expansion at the Peter Lougheed Hospital but not fund actually operating the beds - instead beds in other parts of the hospital will be closed. I imagine the same stunt will turn the South Calgary Hospital into a white elephant.

The government cries poverty, yet it has been crying poverty over health care even when revenues were at record highs. It also ignores the fact that since the Klein government blew up the General, Calgary's population has grown to over 1,000,000 residents. Meanwhile, it has only been in the last few years that infrastructure spending has even begun to even start to catch up with the demand on the system. Calgary's EMS system has run at critically low levels many times over recent years because there weren't sufficient beds and staff in the emergency rooms for Paramedic crews to turn patients over to.

Meanwhile, we have Ron Liepert's Health Superboard awarding itself astonishing salary increases, and Liepert appointing a panel to "review" health care once again at taxpayer's expense. They are increasing the overhead costs in the health care system without actually improving the availability of care.

Meanwhile, Stelmach continues to all but give away Alberta's resources to big business, and "refuses" to consider any changes to taxation on either an individual or corporate level.

Let's Talk About Fiscal Responsibility, Shall We?

So...now we know where the money cut from treatment services this spring is going: Executive compensation for Liepert's "Superboard":

A former deputy minister who helped create Alberta Health Services, then ran part of it for nine months, walked away from the cash-strapped department with a $257,500 bonus as part of her severance package.

The severance deal for Paddy Meade, whose position with Alberta Health Services ended after about nine months, included two years' worth of salary (about $1 million), and a$257,500 bonus, the maximum amount possible in her contract.

Excuse me? But that's beyond offensive - especially when the government is crying poverty and running about cutting services. Seems to me that cutting executive compensation would be one heck of a good place to start - instead of going after treatment options for citizens.

Oh - wait - this is Alberta...it's no longer Government by the people for the people here. It's become government by the Con$ for the benefit of the Con Arti$t$.

Governance By Ideology

In Alberta, the Conservative government has been in power so long that they have lost sight of the practical realities of government, and in particular the need to be flexible in coming up with policies to deal with difficult situations.

First up, we have Ed "I won't raise taxes" Stelmach whining about how it's going to be "long and painful" getting out of the fiscal hole that the PC's are busy digging for taxpayers.

Stelmach has vowed there will be no tax increases or new levies introduced as the government scrambles to balance the books, and reiterated government spending will be reined in.

"We will tighten our belt further," he said.

Right...so "Steady Eddie" is going lean entirely on standard neo-Conservative dogma about taxation and take a primary tool of government off the table - taxation.

During the 90's and early 2000's, Ralph Klein took advantage of burgeoning royalties from the energy sector, and proceeded to chop taxes. That's all well and good, except that it leaves the government fiscally starved the moment that energy prices fall. (which they have)

Instead of investing the surplus revenues in the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, Klein mostly burned the money, and put a dribble here and there into his own "Sustainability Fund" - all the while draining any gains from the AHSTF. Had the Trust Fund been allowed to grow as it should have during the recent boom years, it would be worth a lot more than it is today, and much more than the $12bn "sustainability fund". But Klein, and now Stelmach, are far to short-sighted to understand this concept.

Then we get the government talking about "belt tightening". That always sounds good to the public - mostly because the public memory in this province is disastrously short term, and few people remember the consequences for Albertans from Ralph's early years, or the disastrous cuts that Getty imposed on areas like education.

Add to this the announcement yesterday from the Alberta Health Superboard that they are going to "cut jobs to improve service".

Currently, the health system faces a $1.3-billion deficit and has long surgical and emergency waiting times. It aims to have a balanced budget and reduced waiting times in three to four years. Part of those cost savings must focus on the workforce, since 70 per cent of the budget is spent on human resources, Duckett said.

Wait a second here. Health care delivery is primarily done with people - lots of them. Whether we are talking about nurses, doctors, clinical technicians, laboratory technicians, there's a lot of people that need to be present to analyze, diagnose and treat patients. You aren't likely to improve service by axing people.

... one might consider the massive pay hike that the "superboard" voted itself as the first place they should start cutting.

At least the UK government has looked at its NHS and published an extensive program of reform and funding change where the public can read and understand it.

Instead, in Alberta we have a government that is so used to being unaccountable to its citizens that it keeps its plans secret, only to drop it on us at the last possible minute - just as they did with the 2009/10 budget, where they conveniently chose to announce that a large number of health care services were being arbitrarily delisted.

No rationale, no chance for public input, no explanations whatsoever - the axe just fell.

This is not government, it is dictatorship. Sadly, it is dictatorship by the mendacious, and I have little faith that there is anything resembling actual thought going into the picture.

More Dog Whistles Out of Edmonton

So, Premier Stelmach finally said something about his direction yesterday.

A defiant Alberta premier broke ranks with some of his own senior cabinet ministers Tuesday, declaring that, under his watch, taxes will never increase to help the government escape from its multibillion-dollar deficit and a deepening fiscal hole.

One day after some of his most trusted ministers said both tax hikes and program cuts are needed to redress the province's revenue crunch, Premier Ed Stelmach said his government won't hike personal or corporate taxes, and vowed never to adopt a provincial sales tax.

This is another dog whistle moment - to the extreme right wing base that now seems to have control over the Alberta PC's. It's a signal that under Stelmach, the government is going to get axed down to as small as he can make it.

It shows a disappointing lack of vision and wisdom on his part though. He has just shackled himself to only surviving on existing revenues - by far the majority of which are coming in from a natural resources sector that has been pummeled in recent months.

Stelmach has just taken so many tools off the table, that his government's ability to respond to the economic situation we see today is reduced to two things: borrowing money and cutting services. That's it.

It's a sacred cow in Alberta that we will never have a provincial sales tax. When times have been good, that's been feasible for the government to get away with, and it plays well at the ballot box. What Stelmach, and others, fail to recognize is that a Sales Tax would go a long ways to stabilizing the revenues that the Alberta Government sees.

Unfortunately, Stelmach is playing to his base - he has been more blatantly since the April budget, and it's going to get a whole lot worse in the coming months. Especially when the leadership of the governing party isn't even willing to consider all of the tools that are available to him in addressing the current situation.

Stelmach's approach is going to make the recession in Alberta lot worse, and a lot deeper for longer in short order - purely so he can shore up his support within the party.

Talk about a government being past its "best before" date!

It's Time To Replace "Progressive" with "Regressive"

... In Alberta at least.

Another Alberta MLA has been opening his yap and showing us the ugly side of a party that has been in power for far too long.

Today's specimen is a relative unknown by the name of Doug Elniski.

Doug's gotten himself into trouble for a couple of things recently. First up are some comments he left on his blog (since consigned to the memory hole - but then that's what internet caching is for!).

Google Cache copy of his blog



That's just the preamble - and it's sufficiently sexist to be generally offensive in a dozen dimensions, but perhaps the grand prize winner is this:

Ladies, always smile when you walk into a room, there is nothing a man wants less than a woman scowling because he thinks he is going to get shit for something and has no idea what. Men are attracted to smiles, so smile don't give me that "treated equal" stuff, if you want equal it comes in little packages at Starbucks.

I see. So in Mr. Elniski's fantasy world, there's no need for women's rights and equality? Beyond falling into the ancient and irritating trope that women are purely ornamental, Elniski's comments are simply reflective of a man whose attitudes are straight out of some antediluvian era where women where treated as nothing more than chattels.

The provincial NDP is demanding that Elniski apologize for his recently memory-holed remarks. This is good, but there's more to the picture.

It turns out that Elniski was sent by Stelmach to show his face at the Edmonton Pride parade. Okay, fair enough. Then there's what he posted to his Twitter feed during the parade.



Put in perspective with a bunch of other things to come out of various members of the current Alberta government caucus, it becomes more and more clear that anything resembling progressive in this government is long gone. The wingnut opinions are getting more voice, and in their usual fashion it is snide, condescending and disrespectful of their targets.

So, the tally so far this spring?:

Liepert - Delists gender reassignment surgery to make political points
Blackett - Undermines recognition of sexual identity in the human rights code by providing a bogus escape rights for parents whose faith is offended.
Evans - Denies reality for so many Alberta families it's not even funny by slamming everybody who does not / cannot afford to do the stay at home parenting routine.
Elniski - Shows us that he's just about as snide and sneering as the rest, the only difference is that he isn't in cabinet yet.

Who's next?