Alta. political leaders collect their salaries while in hiding
Does democracy exist when elected officials refuse to carry out their responsibilities?
The major advantage of democracy is that the people get to choose their rulers in free elections. Once a government is elected, everyone assumes that its chief officials will show up for work, especially in times of crisis. But what if, instead of doing what they can to deal with a crisis, government leaders go into hiding? Such a thing seems unfathomable, that a government would simply fail to show up for work when its leadership is needed the most.
Yet, this is what is currently happening in Alberta amid rapidly increasing cases of Covid caused by an especially virulent strain of the disease. The bureaucrats who run the government’s day-to-day operations are still at their desks, but key elected officials have disappeared without a trace. As I write on Aug. 31, Health Minister Tyler Shandro has not been seen in public since July 28, Premier Jason Kenney has been AWOL since Aug. 9. Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the province’s chief medical officer of health, has not had a media availability since Aug. 13.
It may be relevant that a federal election was called on Aug. 16, and the federal Conservative Party may want its unpopular Alberta counterparts out of the picture until after the Sept. 20 election. Or that may have nothing to do with the disappearances. Perhaps, Kenney and Shandro have been kidnapped, and police are refusing to make the news public. Someone should at least file a missing person’s report with the RCMP.
Whatever the situation, this is an unprecedented situation in the workings of modern democracy. One would expect to hear more about it in Alberta’s media. This is a significant blow to responsible government. When the province’s medical system is a crisis, one does not expect its major overseers to go into hiding.
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush continued with his regularly scheduled events, flying over New Orleans after a visit with American troops in San Diego but taking no action until late on Sept. 2. That was four and a half days that the president was inactive on one of the greatest natural disasters in American history.
Bush was vilified in the media for his indifference to the tragedy in New Orleans where hundreds of thousands of people suffered without food, water, shelter or proper sanitation. More than 1,800 people died due to Katrina.
In Alberta, 2,364 deaths have been attributed to Covid since March 2020. There have been nearly 250,000 cases of the disease. We are now well into the fourth wave with 6,412 new cases having been reported in the last six days.
The premier in June promised Albertans their “best summer ever” as Covid numbers at that time were in decline. As far as he was concerned, the pandemic was in the past, and the need for related public health regulations over. Kenney may be having his best summer ever, but thousands of Albertans, including those who must wait for previously scheduled surgeries, are suffering.
Current trends indicate that in less than two weeks, the number of new daily cases will have passed their previous highs and hospitals and ICUs will be jammed even more than previously. Who is dealing with this crisis?
Overworked nurses, doctors and other health-care workers for sure. But certainly not the provincial government. Its leaders have washed their hands of the crisis and are pretending it no longer exists. Alberta’s media are failing to hold government leaders to account for their disappearance.
The term “responsible government” means that the government is responsible to the legislature and must step down when it loses the confidence of the majority of elected legislators. But what happens when the government abdicates its responsibility to the people who elected it? When the leaders go on collecting both taxes and their salaries but ignore their responsibility to govern the province in the best interests of the people of Alberta?
We the people have no alternative but to wait until the next provincial election two years from now. Our commitment to democracy does not allow us to establish a provisional government to do the work that the premier and health minister refuse to do. It is a shameful situation.