Alberta Speaker Ken Kowalski and other former PC ministers line up to wait for their transition allowances. Tory politicians may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Mr. Kowalski, former Premier Ed Stelmach, Iris Evans, Lloyd Snelgrove.Civilization as we know it in Alberta has ended.
Ken Kowalski, 66, is stepping down. The Speaker of the Alberta Legislature and its longest-serving MLA – “the dean of the Legislature,” in Press Gallery-speak – made the announcement this morning in a news release that looked as if he’d typed it up himself late last night on his home computer.
“As I enter my 33rd year as an elected person, I have decided that I need to take back my life and find a private life,” Mr. Kowalski said in his unexpected announcement. “As a result, I am withdrawing my candidacy for the PC Association of Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock and will not be a candidate in the next provincial election in Alberta.”
When he goes, of course, Mr. Kowalski will pocket a nice little payout of more than $1.3 million dollars.
He joins a rapidly growing list of Progressive Conservative MLAs – many of them cabinet veterans and former party movers and shakers – who are streaming for the exits.
On the list so far: former premier Ed Stelmach, 60, the man who started it all when he announced his intention to resign in January 2011; Iris Evans, who is just days away from her 70th birthday and served as health minister under premier Ralph Klein; Ron Liepert, 62, the bull in Alberta’s political china shop, health minister under Mr. Stelmach and now finance minister; Lloyd Snelgrove, 55, president of Treasury Board under Mr. Stelmach.
Lesser lights include former energy minister Mel Knight, 67; former children’s minister Janis Tarchuk, 56; Richard Marz, 67; Barry McFarland, 63; and Ken Allred, who will be 71 in a couple of weeks. By the time this is posted, this list will probably have grown: at any rate, expect neo-Con grandee Freddy-Lee “Ted” Morton, 62, once the Finance Minister and now the mighty Minister of Energy, and
Gene Zwozdesky, 63, another former health minister, to join the list before long.There are two reasons why generational change is happening so dramatically right now in the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party:
The first: Premier Alison Redford, 46, has decreed that it will be so.
Do not doubt this. Like Mr. Kowalski, most of the departing old-timers are mouthing platitudes about how it’s time for them to recover their private lives, pursue their hobbies, travel or whatever. As Mr. Allred, the MLA for St. Albert, gamely told a local bi-weekly newspaper, Premier Redford had nothing to do with it: “I have got other things I want to do in life.”
But the reality is that Ms. Redford and her political aides and allies have made it abundantly clear behind the closed doors of the caucus room that the time has come for the relics of the PC caucus to move on. This is a calculated political decision to renew the Alberta Tory Party and make it acceptable to a new generation of voters – exactly what Ms. Redford was elected by party members to do.
It is said here that many of the retiring MLAs mentioned above would have preferred to hang onto their seats for another four years, and had tried to cut deals to do just that with candidate Gary Mar, who was the front-runner in the Conservative leadership campaign last summer and fall. Their fates were decided as surely as Mr. Mar’s on the night of Oct. 2
when party voters spoke and said “Alison Redford.”The second reason: The need to depart swiftly has been clearly tied to the financial wellbeing of veteran caucus members.
They’ve been warned: They can have their huge payouts if they go now, but if they linger, the big bucks may not be there when it’s time to retire. What would you do if you had to choose between $1.3 million to go immediately, or a pig in a poke and maybe a quarter of that after three or four years on the backbenches? It’s not quite a hanging in a fortnight, but nevertheless it would concentrate an MLA’s mind wonderfully!
Alberta MLAs’ generous “transition allowances” – brought in by Mr. Klein as a way to eat his cake and have it too after eliminating similarly generous Legislative pensions during his mid-1990s privatization and cutbacks spree – pays three months’ salary for every year of service based on a member’s three highest-paid years in office.
In addition to Mr. Kowalski’s $1.3-million-plus payout, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Mr. Stelmach will receive a transition allowance of a little over $1 million, and most of the rest the following: Mr. McFarland, $709,500; Ms. Evans, $698,700; Ms. Tarchuk, $645,400; Mr. Marz, $544,200; Mr. Snelgrove, $513,000; Mr. Knight; $513,000; and Mr. Liepert, $348,700. And this is not to mention their remaining pensionable earnings.
Whether or not Ms. Redford’s strategy will bring success remains to be seen, but it seems a better bet than leaving a generation of tired old Tory warhorses still in harness while voters grow increasingly antsy and began to think seriously of voting for alternatives like the Wildrose Party, led by the 40-year-old Danielle Smith.
It doesn’t hurt that
the Conservative Party is well placed as the province’s Natural Governing Party to attract a new generation of candidates likely to both be loyal to Ms. Redford and to appeal to Alberta’s habitually conservative voters.Meanwhile, pandemonium must now surely reign in Mr. Kowalski’s Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock electoral district, a large rural riding northwest of Edmonton.
The best laid plans of Wildrose candidate Link Byfield – rather like those of his leader when Mr. Stelmach last year announced his plan to quit – have been blown to smithereens. The money he spent taking pokes at Mr. Kowalski in the local weekly newspaper has gone swooshing down the drain.
There will likely be a dozen candidates for the nomination the Speaker is giving up, many of them credible people who believe Mr. Kowalski’s old job will be a sinecure. Look for a packed nomination meeting attended by literally hundreds of community members.
This being Alberta, not only has everything changed, but everything remains exactly the same!
This post also appears on Rabble.ca.
5 comments:
Well David, the Baby Boomers and before them leave and in come Generation X and like you say in your very last sentence - the mountain of poop stays the flies are younger.
DJC, another generation of slexze, slxme and scxm loyalist trough drinking swxine is ready to drink at the trough. Rest assured, they will carry the same tradition of lying, bullying, intimidation, electoral fraud, secrecy, and kurruption that this province is worldwide famous for now, and even places like Texas, or even repressional dictators envy what the trough drinkers here have.
@Carlos, have faith, more and more people are holding their noses and not going to vote PEE SEE. They are tired of the same old crxp being piled on people's dinner plates. People want some wholesome leadership, somthing that will bring good balance and a totally new group of people. The trenched out established ways of things has worn on people. They are looking for change. Its great if all other parties gain seats, ND'S, Libs and WR. Anybody but toree is good change.
Anonymous I have been waiting since Peter Lougheed left :) - I am sure I can be cataloged as having faith :)
The new flies look worse than the old ones.
I just checked and found a post on DaveAlberta from August where he writes about Ken planning on running for an 11th term, so it does seems that there was some internal pressure to resign. I wonder if the transition allowance is also based on the years that he receives a pension - a form of double dipping that Conservatives seem to relish. I also wonder if the conservative party has kicked in with some dollars to ease the transition for those MLA's who needed a little pot sweetening to pack up and leave. I would also presume that there will be some paid board positions with private companies and provincial entities for these bravely departing soles.
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