Laying It Out: What’s in an empty gesture?

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on December 12, 2020.

“So many Albertans are struggling right now, and I think this move – if his colleagues accept it, if the top bureaucrats accept it – will really show taxpayers that our elected officials and the top of the bureaucratic pyramid are willing to share in the tough times and that they understand the difficulties that we’re going through.”

–Franco Terrazzano, Alberta director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Cypress-Medicine Hat MLA Drew Barnes went public this week with a letter calling for Alberta’s provincial and federal elected officials, plus all bureaucrats earning more than $145,000 a year, to take a 20% pay cut for the next six months in solidarity with small and medium business owners, plus the entrepreneurs who are suffering during this pandemic.

The gesture has been well received by many of his constituents, he’s said, and it’s clear the CTF – an organization so dedicated to the ‘taxpayer’ that it focuses all its advocacy on the reduction of government revenue – loves the idea. It’s not hard to grasp why people would back the notion of six-figure officials making less money, especially when the economy is in the toilet and we’re constantly told every public dollar spent flushes it further down.

But once we slide past the initial idea that this is a smart move or a noble gesture, let’s ask ourselves what that pay cut would actually do to help entrepreneurs and business owners.

Setting aside that his letter doesn’t make a single mention of solidarity for Alberta’s workers, or those who don’t own a business but might also be struggling during the pandemic, let’s start with the dollar figure.

Conceding that I didn’t add up all 1,991 salaries of bureaucrats making more than $145,000 and instead assigned them an average of $175,000, if each person on Barnes’s list agrees to a six-month cut, it would total about $37 million in unpaid salaries. Just to be extra fair to Barnes, let’s round that total up to $40 million.

The UCP’s most recent budget update suggests a $21.3-billion deficit, so I suppose any little bit helps – even a minuscule 0.18% – but while the province saves the equivalent of a statistical anomaly, how, exactly, does $40 million removed from the economy, help the economy?

Maybe Barnes is suggesting dividing that money up among the entrepreneurs and business owners. According to the Government of Canada, Alberta has about 163,000 small and medium businesses, so if we cut out those greedy self-employed entrepreneurs, that’s about $245 apiece.

Live it up.

Next let’s consider what Barnes is personally offering to do without. An Alberta MLA’s annual salary is currently $120,936, so a 20% pay cut for six months is roughly $12,000 – a fair chunk of change for most people.

But while Barnes likes to make headlines calling for public pay cuts, it seems important to note that the longtime local MLA – as most now know – is also quite wealthy from a career in real estate holdings. No disrespect toward his financial success, but there is no doubt he could volunteer his entire time as an MLA and still fund his personal life.

Not every MLA has a lucrative side business, and for many, that salary – no matter how good it seems to be – is their only income. It seems rather disrespectful to colleagues like, say, Brooks-Medicine Hat’s Michaela Glasgo, when someone with a ton of money pressures her to take less, especially when doing so does nothing to help the province’s situation while taking $12,000 out of the local economy.

It’s easy to think MLAs make “too much” money when they draw more than most and are always watched by our critical eye, but if we keep cutting the pay down to a level where we’d all be satisfied, the only people who could even run for the job are guys like Drew Barnes, who show up rich to their first day on the job.

The office of elected officials needs to be enticing to all citizens, and all citizens need to have the opportunity to run – anything less is just a world run by rich people trying to get richer. And since that’s already our literal reality, we should be wary whenever one of them offers up a meaningless gesture.

And that brings me to my final point, which is, “Why are we like this?”

Why do we get excited at the thought of equal opportunity hardship? “Something bad happened to me, so I would feel better if something bad happened to you.”

Tarrazzano talked about “struggling” Albertans and touted those who would be willing to “share in the tough times.” Think of it like this: Would you offer to support a COVID patient by getting COVID yourself?

Don’t get me wrong, if Barnes would like to forgo his MLA salary, be my guest, but why should the rest of us participate in his race to the bottom? Wouldn’t it be a better gesture if he just advocated for actual support for the business owners he’s so anxious to help? And wouldn’t a letter to his colleagues better serve those Albertans if it suggested financial aid instead of offering pseudo financial strain?

Either way, if Barnes is so worried about Albertans that he’s willing to give up his own money in support, perhaps he could just offer a 20% discount in rent to his long list of tenants instead of making the news again for reportedly trying to evict them during a pandemic. Now that would be a gesture.

Happy Holidays, all! Back in the new year.

Scott Schmidt is the layout editor for the Medicine Hat News. He can be reached at sschmidt@medicinehatnews.com, or follow him on Twitter at @shmitzysays

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