Dear Premier Stelmach,

It has come to our attention you may need some advice on how your government should best deal with the issue of MLA compensation.

Your need for guidance was already clear when you and your 23 cabinet ministers decided during a closed-door, private meeting of cabinet to sneak through 27 percent pay hikes for your ministers and a 31 percent pay hike for yourself, and then stick it at the bottom of an Order in Council disguised as "committee pay."

However, we appreciate you making your plea for good counsel more explicit in recent comments to reporters:

"If there are some better ideas coming forward for anybody that has a way of doing it differently, then I'm open to listening."

Well, Mr. Premier, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is happy to lend a helping hand.

Step one, admit you made a mistake. If you need help, just watch a tape of former Premier Klein doing this, as he was very good at it. In fact, his popularity often soared after he admitted fault and promised to fix the mistake.

Albertans don't demand you be infallible; they only demand you be honest. After all, you never campaigned on being perfect. You did, however, campaign on "governing with integrity and transparency."

Step two, reverse the $42,000 pay raises given to the speaker, the Liberal leader and the NDP leader. Your MLAs have eight of the eleven seats on the Members' Services committee that granted these raises in the first place, and you are the leader of their party. Tell them to fix their mistake.

Step three, reverse the secret $42,000 pay raise for cabinet ministers and the $54,000 pay raise for yourself.

Step four, agree to a randomly selected citizens' assembly to make decisions on MLA compensation.

The point that these are randomly selected is very important. This group has to be made up of average Albertans - not judges, university professors and former MLAs. Many of the so-called "independent commissions" on political compensation end up being a group of political hacks that do not represent the general public. Case in point: the sole "public" member of the City of Edmonton's "independent" compensation review was a former city councillor.

Moreover, citizens' assemblies have been used in the past by the governments of British Columbia and Ontario to decide electoral reforms. Even juries are chosen from the public at large. If randomly selected citizens are good enough to decide serious issues like murder trials, they should be equipped to handle the job of deciding how and how much to pay our MLAs.

Step five, allow the citizens' assembly access research, expert testimony and input from other citizens.

Step six, ask the citizens' assembly to release their report publicly and then enact the recommendations following the next election.

If the citizens' assembly agrees with your assertion that higher pay is needed to attract a better quality of candidates, then it only makes sense to make those changes at the time when Albertans can actually elect different MLAs.

And lastly, step seven, pass legislation prohibiting your government, or any in the future from secretly passing pay hikes for themselves. There is, and always will be a clear conflict of interest when you have politicians deciding their own pay. Obviously, this temptation can only be resisted by legislation.

Of course, the CTF has lots of suggestions on how best to reform MLA pay, but we won't bother you with those. We'll save them for the citizens' assembly.

Oh, and if you are ever tempted to do something as sneaky and underhanded as this again in the future, feel free to call us up and ask for advice beforehand. We can save you and taxpayers more than a few headaches.

By: Scott Hennig
Posted: June 03, 2008
Topic: Alberta

Contact the regional director Scott Hennig for further information.

Type: Commentary

Join Us   |   Donate