Parties tell themselves lies all the time. Practical, big-tent politics would nearly be impossible without them. They are the corks in the dyke of inconsistency that large, brokerage parties must use to keep the whole edifice together. The NDP certainly had their share of them, and the Tories have been racking up the score in its first seven months in office, but the bombshell dropped Monday afternoon isn’t a cork in a small hole. It’s a boulder wedged in a gaping wound. .Finance Minister Travis Toews introduced Bill 22 with the casual title ‘Reform of Agencies, Boards and Commissions and Government Enterprises Act, 2019,’ a bill that theoretically could do some good in streamlining the Byzantine network of quasi-government bodies. Whatever good the bill was intended to do – slipped in like a single film frame in Fight Club – is a section to abolish the Office of the Alberta Election Commissioner. .The Election Commissioner has been doggedly investigating events around the 2017 Tory leadership race and has thus far levied more than $200,000 in fines for illegal donations. Those investigations are not yet over, and have been expanded to include voter fraud and identity theft. All of it swirls around the highest ranks of the party, but has not yet landed directly on Premier Kenney himself. .Of course, the Tories will claim they are innocent no matter what, while the NDP will claim that the Tories are guilty as sin regardless of the facts. That is why the independent Election Commissioner’s office exists. Like any human organization, it is capable of making mistakes; but if mistakes are made, they can be appealed to the courts. Thus far, the Tories have filed no such appeal. .Their appeal is not to the courts, but to the raw political muscle of a majority government. With their majority, they intend to abolish the office and move its functions into Elections Alberta. For good measure, they pre-emptively invoked closure on all three stages of debate..The NDP rightly called this grossly anti-democratic, but had to plug a cork into one of their own holes of inconsistency. They routinely invoked debate closure against the Wildrose and PCs. They even teamed up with the UCP to invoke for the first time in Alberta’s history “pre-closure” of all debate whatsoever on a motion to expel independents and small parties from many committee positions. .In Alberta’s two-party legislature, neither party has a monopoly on consistency or the truth. .With Kenney out of the country, Toews was left to stickhandle the controversial bill. It had nothing to do with chilling investigations into his party or discouraging future ones, he insisted. Just a routine cost-cutting measure. In this case, trimming 0.3448 per cent of the budget..“Bill 22 ensures publicly owned enterprises and agencies, boards and commissions provide the best value to the taxpayer and deliver the results Albertans expect.”.The government’s official press release on the bill invoked the MacKinnon Panel’s recommendation to consolidate agencies, boards, and commissions. Unfortunately for the government, it made no such recommendation about the Election Commissioner’s office. .Even if the Tories were entirely innocent in their intentions, it’s extremely difficult to see how this cannot look like a cover-up. .All parties have blind partisans who swallow whatever they are told by their own team, and who believe everything done by the other side is wrong or corrupt. Surely, words in this column are unlikely to please either New Democrat or Tory; but to conservative-minded people with a critical eye, this cannot simply be swallowed. Unfortunately, all we have to rely on is an NDP opposition caucus that lacks both the numbers, or the moral credibility to stand up to it.
