9:22 a.m. - 2002-11-10
Baksheesh
A piece of the puzzle fell into place yesterday. Old question. I've always been curious why there was such a change in our current Premier when he became leader of this Province.
He started out as a "normal" Calgarian; a turn of the month Scorpio born in 1942. Attended the same high school as my parents about a decade after them. Didn't complete it but that wasn't such a big deal. Higher education can be a useful tool, but that's dependent on the person. There are a lot of self-made, successful people in this country who relied on their wits rather than a degree. This man obviously had the ability to make a major contribution to society simply on his own merit. Not that he didn't and doesn't have weaknesses - some of them of concern.
Anyway, he moved through a variety of journalistic assignments until he became a reporter for one of the main TV stations in Calgary, covering crime and City Hall. Sometimes that was interchangeable. In the early 1980's he ran, to much derision and scorn, for mayor of Calgary as a "man of the common people" candidate. To everyone's shock, including his own I think, he won. For the next decade he was a very good mayor.
I dealt with him as part of my volunteer activities and he was always very helpful. Sometimes, it was a simple matter of being heard out - something that the bureaucracy of the time refused to do with "normal citizens" which is why the mayor's original election platform was so popular - sometimes he advocated or intervened on our community's behalf. For example, when we were trying to have a public park built in our quadrant of the city - 30,000 children and their families with no free recreational facilities - the bureaucrats told us we would have to purchase land from them then raise all the funds to build it - about $5 million. Our area paid some of the highest residential taxes because we were a new area, but our residents were mostly house poor young families just starting out. In addition, although all of the other three quadrants had several major beautifully appointed and maintained parks, some covering several miles of green belt, none of their residents had ever had to pay anything toward their creation, development, or upkeep. The rationale offered by the bureaucrats was that we didn't deserve the same amenities because of our lesser status as human beings - immigrants, working single parents, and young, house poor families. We put together a presentation showing our economic value to the city coffers and compared it per capita with other parts of the city to demonstrate that our residential taxes were on a par or higher than the other quadrants and that they being siphoned off to pad projects in other parts of the city. We also pointed out that someone in the bureaucracy had cut developers and large businesses in our quadrant a tax deal that had them being assessed at rural rates (about one tenth of city business rates) while the balance of the business owners in the city were paying full freight. We ended up being required to raise nearly $1 million toward the park - which we did in about four years - but a lot of change was forced on the city bureaucrats by our issue, through the mayor's intervention, so that the treatment of average citizens became a little more equitable. It was a lot harder to do the back door baksheesh thing.
At the end of the '80's the mayor decided to run for a seat in the Provincial government. He won easily and was assigned the Environment Minister's portfolio - something that caused a lot of howling in this city because we are the head office capital for Canadian oil and gas companies. It was expected that he would be given the position of Minister of Energy. The Premier at that time was being seen more and more as a liability to the governing party, so he was forced to step down and a leadership race was held. After some very questionable antics - I know because I had been asked to act as a volunteer observer of the voting process based on my experience in running elections - and some very odd poll outcomes our past mayor became leader of the Progressive Conservative party, and thus, Premier of the Province.
There was an almost overnight transformation in the man. Going from a true "man of the people" to a man of whoever had the cash or influence. It was obvious that he had sold his soul to gain the leadership position, but who he owed that to took longer to become obvious. Policies of the government now became to take the entitlements of Alberta citizens, earned through our natural resources and Provincial income, and to sell them off to the highest bidder. Thus the sale and sell out of hospitals, education, land, and water. Legislation was gutted so that there was no protection or avenues of appeal for the average citizen and no accountability or reportability required of provincial politicians or bureaucrats - almost a complete reversal of the sequence of events at Calgary's city hall taking almost the same amount of time - a decade - to complete.
Yesterday, in the local newspaper, there was an "accidental" reference to a particular oil and gas company and it's links to our Premier, that shone a very big spotlight on a lot of things that have been unexplainable without that piece of data. It explains a major environmental boon-doggle perpetrated in the '80's that has cost hundreds of Calgarians in one single community their homes this past year, because of severe soil contamination where their homes were constructed during one of the city's boom periods. That contamination had been known to city fathers, and indeed there was a caveat for the longest time that forbade the city to assign their workers to be in that area for more than a few days at a time because of the pollution, since the 1960's. A tri-party agreement signed at that time by the city, the oil company in question, and the railway confirms that understanding. A series of newspaper articles, published about a year ago, had traced the path of the contamination and the decision making process over a forty year period leading up to the "discovery" of the risk posed to homeowners but there was never a "who dunit" expose of the players. This answers that question and explains part of the links and influence. This particular oil and gas company has been infamous since the '40's for its willingness to do whatever it took to get it's way. It has probably "owned" several other politicians and others in positions of power, but it is obvious now that their corporate hand was the one writing the scripts for the Premier ever since he took leadership in the provincial government.
I'm guessing that our Premier may hate himself (explains his self-destructive behavior lately) and the deal he has made. About the only way out, would be for him to confess and tell the story of the "transaction" between him, his "people", and the oil company. I wonder if he has the strength or integrity left to do that. I hope so.
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