8 September 2004

Blind To The Real Problem

I’ve never been entirely sure just why I do it, but every morning when I get up one of the first things that I do is read the local newspaper headlines. I read the stories behind the ones that catch my attention the most. The other ones that catch my attention get added to a list for later research. Today I saw a headline which prompted me to read the story immediately, and I’m still not all that sure what I think about what I read in that story.

First of all, some background information. The City of Edmonton is about to have a municipal election in which we will select our next mayor and the members of our city council. The mayoral race promises to be interesting. This time around we have three candidates: Wild Bill Smith is our current mayor and is seeking reelection. Stephen Mandel and Robert Noce, his opponents, are currently city councillors who are also seeking the mayoral seat.

Now, then, on to the important stuff.

The article I read this morning quoted Stephen Mandel as stating that if the Province of Alberta doesn’t approve new methods for municipalities to raise money then City Council will simple have to hand over the keys to the city to the Provincial Government and make them run the city. So, how does Mister Mandel propose to raise more money for the city coffers? How does a municipal income tax sound to you?

Now, maybe I’m just becoming something of a bastard in my old age, but I cannot help but hold true to the opinion that if the governments were spending their money properly then we wouldn’t be facing these kind of cash shortages. The problem with the idea of a government spending its money properly is that it can’t be done. A government by its very nature is a bureaucratic animal, which means that one of its primary responsibilities is to pay the standing army that serves its administrative and service needs. Another key responsibility is the payment of salaries to MLA’s and MP’s and other political representatives who have given up their lives to look after the public good. Those two requirements alone eat up a significant portion of the government’s coffers.

There are other problems too, most of which can be summed up in one word: committee. A direct consequence of living in a democratic society is that a certain threshold number of people must agree to something before it can be done. These discussions are often held behind closed doors and are conducted by people designated to represent the interests of various arms of the government and the private sector. These committees often issue reports on their findings, and more often than not those reports are ignored, thus neutralizing what was supposed to have been the positive effect of the committee’s involvement. Consequently, the money spent on the committee hearings is wasted. This sequence of events, combined with the fact that a committee is the only known form of life with six or more legs and no brain, pretty much negates the positive value of committee hearings in general.

Another source of monetary waste is useless reforms. For some strange reason we have this notion in our heads that we must reform everything we touch, that it wasn’t good enough the way it was. Alberta in particular has been the victim of many such reforms. In his quest to balance the budget and pay down the provincial debt Premier Klein earned the utter contempt of people like me by cutting health care and education and social programs in general down to the bone to finance his reduction of the debt. And when voters like me complained about the detrimental effects that these cuts were having on our everyday lives Premier Klein effectively turned his back on us and dismissed us by telling us in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t his problem. Now he wants to reform the health care system, and he’s tossing out the idea that he wants to do it in ways that violate the Federal Health Care Act. From what I understand of what I’ve read concerning Premier Klein’s proposed reforms he really intends nothing more than finding new and improved ways of passing the costs of health care on to Albertans, with the result that even more of us will be paying out even more money to government programs than we are now.

I’ve said before that I have no problem with the idea that it costs money to run the government, and I meant it. The continuing inflation of our currency has resulted in a set of circumstances in which our dollar doesn’t go anywhere near as far as it used to. Combine that fact with the reality of rising costs for gas and utilities and the simple fact is that more and more money is required to do less and less work with each passing year. I recognize that this is the case and that matters are only going to get worse. But is another tax really the best answer that these people we’ve elected to office can come up with?

For God’s sake, as Canadians we already pay out more than twenty five percent of what we make with each paycheck in taxes and deductions. Shouldn’t there be a limit to how much the government can reasonably take from us? Instead of looking for new and improved ways of separating people from their paychecks shouldn’t we be looking at new and improved ways of making the government accountable to the people for how it spends our tax money? Shouldn’t we be taking the government to task when they hold committee hearings and issue reports that go nowhere?

And the problem isn’t just with the Federal and Provincial governments either. The municipality is just as bad. Look at the renovations to Churchill Square. Millions of dollars are being spent to overhaul the visual image of the parcel of park land just across the street from city hall, when the reality of the situation is that it was just fine the way it was, thank you very much. When I think about how much money is being spent on that one project alone I have to ask myself if there isn’t anything better for us to spend our money on. Do you have any idea how many people the Food Bank could feed with the amount of money the city is spending on the Square? Do you have any idea how much low cost housing could be built for the same sum? Do you have any idea how many homeless shelters we could build for that money?

Instead we’re talking about adding another tax to the list because it’s easier to come up with a new solution than it is to address the real problem. It’s easier to pass the costs of inflation on to the citizenry than it is to face the fact that inflation means we have to be more and more frugal with our money. It’s just another case of politicians wearing blinders, seeing only what they want to see.

You know, I was prepared to give Stephen Mandel a chance, to actually sit down and have a good solid look at his platform and decide based on that if he was the kind of person that I wanted to entrust with the running of this city. Now I’m just too disgusted to bother.