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See also Frank
Quennell |
Lorne Calvert
Nothing equitable about
policy
Randy Burton, The StarPhoenix,
November 16, 2004
Learning Minister Andrew Thomson's
recent musings on public-sector wage restraint are a classic
case of government-speak, at once vaguely reassuring, yet totally
meaningless.
He seems to be saying that
the government's public-sector wage mandate is not about saving
money, it's about helping people.
That might sound like a stretch,
given that Premier Lorne Calvert's austerity package is the most
draconian such initiative of the last 20 years. Roy Romanow never
went this far. Neither did Grant Devine.
And neither of them were any
great friend to labour, certainly not in the way the Calvert
government likes to portray itself. That this particular government
can hang such a horse-whipping on the unions without a full-scale
revolt is an astounding stunt.
So perhaps it shouldn't be
surprising that Thomson can't bring himself to utter the word
"restraint." In fact, he doesn't characterize zero,
one and one over three years as an austerity move at all.
Thomson says the wage mandates
"are there for a reason and that's to make sure that all
public-sector workers benefit equally and we see wages move up
accordingly across all categories and all sectors," Thomson
said.
In other words, this is not
about restraint. It's about equity.
If you can get your head around
this concept, then it should be no trouble at all for you to
understand that when the government says three years, it actually
means four.
After eating dirt for three
years, public-sector workers will be rewarded for their patience
with a cost-of-living increase in the fourth. Thus the provincial
austerity package is no longer 0-1-1. Now it's 0-1-1-?
You can insert your own numeral
at the tail end of the equation, based on your best guess at
the rate of inflation in '05-'06. If inflation is running at
three per cent, then the government gets away with a five per
cent raise over four years, which would have to be termed a major
success.
The problem is not with the
result so much as it is the process. Rather than simply explain
a policy at the outset, the Calvert government has a nasty habit
of hiding crucial details of its plans, only to have them leak
out later. Usually it's fee increases, but this time, it's wages.
We heard nothing about the cost-of-living wage carrot at provincial
budget time, we heard only about the big stick of restraint.
The reasons for this were purely
political. In its rush to sugar-coat a one-point hike in the
provincial sales tax, the talk was all about the need to tighten
our belts, make the hard choices, etc. etc. Thus, imposing a
wage restraint package was the means Calvert and Co. chose to
make a tax hike more palatable.
It was only months later that
we discovered there was a clause in the wage agreement the government
called a "light at the end of the tunnel."
Maybe the government didn't
actually lie about this when the policy was first announced.
It merely failed to tell the whole truth. It was a political
parlour trick, that's all, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
Thomson now talks about it
as though it was the guiding principle of last spring's budget.
If that were the case, then you might expect the pain to have
been shared equally. Yet the job cuts that came along with wage
restraint affected only civil servants in the countryside outside
the capital city.
Government workers within the
NDP's Regina power base were barely touched. Even at that, the
savings achieved through job cuts amounted to only $8 million,
hardly the austerity drive that was promised with such fanfare.
The whole argument looks exceedingly
weak now that the government is riding high financially on $50
a barrel oil, higher royalties on uranium and natural gas, and
$370 million in back pay from the federal government on the equalization
account.
As today's mid-term financial
report will show, the fiscal crisis described in the March budget
has been washed away in a rain of cash just six months later.
It's small wonder cabinet ministers are now looking for new arguments
they can use to prop up the wage restraint package.
Not surprisingly, the province's
teachers don't seem to be biting.
Somehow, I just don't see the
teachers buying into three years of pain when the government
is wheeling buckets of cash into the treasury room. At one time,
this government had a clear policy of what it would do with surpluses,
which was to split them three ways between debt reduction, tax
relief and program improvements.
Not any more. This government
seems to like to react to pressure, thereby encouraging a free-for-all
among a variety of interests. The policy vacuum makes it all
the harder to hold the line on public-sector wages, no matter
how it's justified.
Thomson could simply call it
getting tough with the unions. He could even call it policy on
the fly. He just shouldn't call it equity.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2004
Does our
premier really think it is polite to ignore and condescend to
individuals that a Queen's Bench judge has found to have been
maliciously prosecuted by his government?
Premier feels media access
taken for granted: Calvert to control media access more carefully.
Sask.CBC Feb 5 2004
REGINA -The premier won't be
speaking to reporters as often. Officials say Lorne Calvert feels
he has made himself too accessible to reporters and thinks that
access has been taken for granted.
Calvert refused to answer questions
Wednesday after a public appearance at the Saskatchewan Urban
Municipalities Association convention.
"I will speak when I am
prepared to speak, and today I am not prepared to speak,"
he said.
An official in his office says
the premier thinks reporters are being disrespectful towards
him, and that one journalist interrupted him during a private
meeting Wednesday,
Calvert appeared irritated
earlier in the week when reporters asked repeated questions about
an election promise he may not be able to keep.
"I think I've spoken to
the question, I can say no more," he said.
Deputy Government House Leader
Pat Atkinson says the premier has asked cabinet ministers to
now do more of the talking.
"If the public has a question,
there are ministers responsible for every department and the
ministers are to be available to the press to answer questions
when it comes to their department," Atkinson said.
Atkinson said Calvert has been
one of Canada's most accessible premiers, and that he would continue
talking to reporters on important matters of public policy.
Copyright © 2004 Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved
Our sorry excuse for
a premier, Lorne Calvert: Sorry, can't say sorry
Friday, January
16, 2004:
Rev. Mervyn Brass from CKOM tracked down Lorne Calvert in B.C.
where he is apparently stuck because of avalanche warnings.
Calvert echoed
the previous government hacks. No apology.
Lots of sympathy
for the Klassen family and what they went through, blah, blah,
blah.
Brass pointed
out that the police chief apologized twice.
Calvert says
he will wait and see what happens with the appeal.
All legal opinion
we have heard so far indicates that apologizing does not affect
or influence an appeal.
We have every
reason to think that Dueck is also intending to appeal. On Wednesday
we will receive full clarification from Judge Baynton about whether
the three defendants will be held to the agreement signed by
both counsels, Gerrand and McKillop that in the event they lost
the liability phase, they would have to wait until the conclusion
of the damages phase before any appeal could be filed.
You would think
Premier Calvert would not be frightened by an avalanche since
he has shown himself to be completely at ease with using piles
of snow to cover the truth about what goes on in his government.--Steele
Calvert wants to say sorry
The Leader-Post; With files
from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, January 17, 2004
Premier Lorne Calvert would
like to offer an apology to Richard Klassen and his family, but
says he can't while the matter is still before the courts.
During a conference call Friday,
Calvert said since the province has appealed the malicious prosecution
lawsuit, he is not prepared to apologize during that process.
"It would be inappropriate
for myself as premier to intervene in that legal process,"
said Calvert.
But at the end of the legal
process, if the initial finding is upheld, "I would want
to be the first to make an apology, but that, at this moment,
is not an option that is available to me," said Calvert.
Klassen and 11 others won the
judgment last month against Saskatoon police Supt. Brian Dueck,
Crown prosecutor Matthew Miazga and therapist Carol Bunko-Ruys,
who were involved in falsely prosecuting them for sexually abusing
three Saskatoon-area foster children in the early 1990s.
The province has begun the
process to appeal the Dec. 30, 2003 verdict, prompting protests
from the plaintiffs, who believed they had an agreement that
would forestall an appeal until after damages were determined.
© Copyright 2004 The Leader-Post (Regina)
Premier won't apologize
before Klassen appeal
SASK.CBC.CA, Jan 16 2004
REGINA -Premier Lorne Calvert
says he will be the first to apologize to the Klassen family
if the original malicious prosecution judgment stands up to an
appeal.
Last month a judge found that a Saskatoon police officer, a therapist
and crown prosecutors wrongly treated 12 people in a case involving
false alllegations of child sex abuse. Some of the defendants
in the lawsuit are appealing that decision with the help of a
government lawyer and the support of the province's justice department.
Calvert said Friday that as long as the matter is before the
courts, he can't apologize.
"Let me just say this,"
he said, "If at the end of the legal process, if the initial
finding is held up, then I would want to be the first to make
an apology...at this moment it is not an option that is available
to me."
Calvert says he sympathizes
with the Klassen family and agreed that nobody should have to
go through what they did.
Copyright © 2004 Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
