MLA Report: Hypocrisy is political dynamite

By DREW BARNES on August 12, 2022.

“Practice what you preach.”

It’s one of those traditional adages designed to help us steer our lives in the right direction.

If your actions do not match up with the beliefs you espouse, you are either lying to the world or lying to yourself. When you are in a position of leadership but fail to practice what you preach, people notice. Do it often enough, and people see you as a hypocrite and come to resent you.

It’s a simple concept that nearly every Albertan understands. Everyone, that is, except our soon to be former premier and his team of insiders.

Here are three examples:

• Kenney promised to hold the line on spending and grow the economy to balance the budget. Instead he vastly increased spending and debt, relying on an oil boom to bail him out.

• Kenney promised to prevent government from picking winners and losers in the market then went on a corporate-welfare-spending-spree that would have made former Premier Don Getty blush.

• Kenney repeatedly flip-flopped on pandemic lockdowns, vaccine passports and mandates. His government’s lawyers continue to target and attack pastors and small business owners for allegedly violating health restrictions that were lifted months ago. He continues to do this despite being caught red handed violating his own restrictions.

On these and many other fronts, Albertans came to recognize Kenney as a hypocrite. That’s how he went from winning one of the largest electoral victories in generations to running out the clock as a lame duck premier in a span of just three years.

The sad part is Kenney’s collapse was avoidable. In most governments there is at least one official, often a finance minister, capable of stepping in to right the ship. However, at no point did Alberta’s finance minister even attempt to stand on his own or publicly challenge Kenney’s hypocrisy. He was content to act as a placeholder, cut cheques, and smile for photos.

It should come as no surprise then that, like Kenney, Travis Toews has proven to be a chronic flip-flopper. In the past three years he has been on the politically convenient sides of several issues, from instituting a PST, to de-indexing income tax from inflation.

His latest scandal is a perfect example. Toews now claims he had no idea that Deanna Hinshaw was awarded a $230,000 bonus, making her Canada’s highest paid Chief Medical Officer of Health. But the fact is taxpayers paid out more than $2.4 million in bonuses to senior bureaucrats and ministerial staff, an amount far too large not to be noticed.

Either the finance minister knew exactly what was going on, or he was willfully incompetent. Neither option is acceptable. The words and actions of finance ministers directly impact markets, and as such these ministers must be able to command respect while ensuring calm.

Regardless who wins the UCP’s leadership, Alberta needs a finance minister with a consistent record and message; a competent minister with real-world business experience who is not dogged by the chronic hypocrisy of the Kenney administration.

My advice to the next premier is simply this: Find someone who is more interested in saving taxpayers some bucks than passing the buck. Find someone reliable, who will mind the details.

Find someone who will practice what they preach.

Drew Barnes is MLA for Cypress-Medicine Hat

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