It came from a delegate during a closed-door session Saturday morning discussing changes to the party’s constitution. At the time, reporters had been banished from the meeting and were quietly grumbling in the hallways about the credibility gap between an “open and transparent” PC government and a “closed and opaque” PC party.
As the discussion inside the hall rambled on, a contagion of yawns spread the hall, prompting one delegate to say to another, “If we really wanted to punish the media, we’d let them in.”
At least that’s what one delegate told me. Others agreed that the morning sessions were polite, orderly and excruciatingly boring. I don’t know what actually happened in the meetings because, for the first time in years, the PCs barred reporters from covering their convention. The idea being that delegates would feel free to say what was on their minds without fear of an intemperate comment appearing on the front pages.
The problem for the PC party was that reporters looking for a story pretty much ignored the invisible constitutional discussions and focused on a completely separate issue: the provincial deficit.
It wasn’t an issue on the convention agenda, but it was an issue on the minds of reporters and so they asked Premier Alison Redford about it Friday night.
“We have always said we would balance our operating budget,” said Redford. “We have also said we would have a long-term, transparent infrastructure plan.” That plan will mean going to the capital markets to borrow more money.
By mentioning the “operating budget” as opposed to the overall consolidated budget, and by talking about borrowing money, Redford gave the impression she is looking at putting the province back into debt.
That earned her at least one headline that said, “Balanced-budget promise in doubt” and more than one I-told-you-so retort from the Wildrose party.
There is, of course, an argument to be made for borrowing money for projects such as roads and bridges and hospitals. Borrowing money not only allows you to provide the infrastructure you need today, it also spreads the cost over several generations of Albertans who will benefit from those projects.
There is also an argument to be made that borrowing money to build schools, for example, is not the same as borrowing money to pay teachers. Again, a school is a physical asset that can be enjoyed for decades.
However, that’s not what the PCs campaigned on in the last election. They promised a balanced budget, capital and operating, not just a balanced operating budget.
Reporters pestered Finance Minister Doug Horner with questions throughout the day whenever he poked his head out of the meeting.
“We are not going back into operational debt,” said Horner. “There is a clear mandate for me from the premier that we will not be borrowing to cover our operating.”
Horner went on to say that it makes sense to borrow money now because the province made eight per cent on its investments last year and it can borrow money on the capital market for only three per cent. In other words it doesn’t make sense to cash in our investments to pay for roads, schools, etc.
However, that makes sense as long as your investments are making more than your cost of borrowing. And things can change quickly in the investment markets.
Again, that left the government open to attack from the Wildrose as reporters called up leader Danielle Smith, who happily provided quotes. Consequently, stories out of the convention that should have been focused on the PCs were making room for the opposition.
Almost lost in the media kerfuffle were the constitutional amendments.
Delegates voted to end the automatic right of each federal Conservative constituency association in Alberta to send 15 delegates to provincial PC conventions. This is a dig at the federal Conservative members who supported the Wildrose party in the last election. However, as a compromise, the delegates voted to continue offering automatic delegate status to federal Conservative MPs.
The discussions did get more heated, I’m told, when the amendments turned to changing the way the party elects a leader. Delegates voted to have only the top two candidates in a leadership race go on to a second ballot rather than the top three.
This is a slap in the face to former Premier Ed Stelmach, who won the 2006 leadership race after finishing third on the first ballot — and who faced internal party grumbling that eventually forced him to quit in 2011.
But the constitutional amendments and the PC convention were pretty much old news the minute they closed the doors.
Reporters went looking for another story and found it. And it’s a story the government will be unable to keep from the prying eyes of the media.
Original Article
Source: edmonton journal
Author: Graham Thomson
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