Less than 24 hours after the Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government pulled the plug on low-income transit programs in Edmonton and Calgary, Seniors, Community and Social Services Minister Jason Nixon executed a screeching bootlegger turn this morning and completely reversed course.
It must have been a hell of a reaction UCP MLAs got – especially from voters in the crucial electoral battleground of the City of Calgary.
I can’t recall Alberta Conservatives backing off a terrible policy this quickly since premier Ralph Klein’s government hastily pulled a bill that would have stripped hundreds of victims of forced sterilization of their Charter rights by employing the Notwithstanding Clause to put a cap on the compensation they could receive.
That was in 1998, and Albertans’ sense of fairness was instantly aroused. I’ve been told by someone who was at work in the Premier’s Office that day that the many callers were so angry the telephone lines almost melted.
Well, there’s no danger of that happening any more – we all have wifi.
But it would appear the reaction was similar this time, which says something good about Alberta and Albertans, if not about Premier Danielle Smith and her party.
“Alberta’s government understands the need to support low-income Albertans,” Nixon said contritely in this morning’s statement on the government’s website, which at 100 words was about as short as the minister’s communications staff could make it. Still, any published statement was a change from yesterday, when the government gave notice to Alberta’s two largest cities but didn’t even bother to publish a news release on the topic.
“That’s why we provide direct transit subsidies to Albertans on income support and AISH in communities across the province, including Calgary and Edmonton,” Nixon’s statement continued.
Well, then, one is tempted to ask, Why did you try to cut them off? But I’m sure the government would prefer that we just conclude no harm, no foul, and let it go.
“Calgary and Edmonton also run their own transit program, which the province subsidizes,” Nixon’s statement continued. This was similar to what Nixon’s press secretary conveyed yesterday to media, implying public transit was strictly a municipal responsibility.
That’s a pretty bold assertion for a government that just days before was insisting municipalities can’t take funds from Ottawa for infrastructure projects without provincial permission because they have no constitutional independence from the provinces in which they are located.
But I guess the UCP brain trust must have reckoned they’d better be consistent about something.
“Following conversations with the two largest cities, it is clear that the cities are not able to pay for their full programs at this time,” Nixon’s statement said.
“As a result, Alberta’s government will continue to extend this funding to the cities and work with them to ensure their low-income transit program continues to be funded in the future,” he concluded – somewhat ominously, since the phrasing suggests the province will help the cities find some other programs unpopular with conservative voters to cut. Like bike lanes, perhaps.
As they say, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away — and, in the case of Alberta, sometimes flip-flops if things get hot enough.
“I appreciate that Minister Nixon recognizes the negative impact that defunding this program will have and is reinstating funding at last year’s level,” Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said on social media early this afternoon. “The City of Edmonton is proud to support this program, even though it is an example of Alberta’s big cities stepping in to fund support programs for low income Albertans that fall under provincial jurisdiction.” (Emphasis added.)
The reaction yesterday to the cuts from elected municipal officials, Opposition politicians and the commentariat was extremely harsh. But that is unlikely to have persuaded this stubborn and ideologically dogmatic government to change course.
The course change had to be the result of thousands of Albertans picking up their phones and telling their MLAs what they thought of the idea, probably pretty bluntly.
Yesterday, Mr. Sohi said more than 250,000 passes were sold last year, and Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek put the number in her city so far this year at nearly 120,000.
That’s a lot more potential supporters than the 700 surviving victims of the former United Farmers and Social Credit governments’ 44-year eugenics spree had when Klein had his bright idea to keep costs down in 1998. Soon after Peter Lougheed’s Progressive Conservative Government came to power in 1971, the Alberta Eugenics Board was disbanded and the Sexual Sterilization Act repealed.
The seniors, students and families living below the poverty line who benefitted from the transit pass subsidy might not be anyone the UCP pays much attention to, and the government may have been tempted to pass off their loss as insignificant. But they would have had friends, parents, children, neighbours and other advocates willing to pick up the phone on their behalf as well.
It’s certainly to absurd to suggest, as a few folks did on social media yesterday, that the pressure for this giant flip-flop came from a pro-UCP Postmedia columnist or was the result of some kind of complicated stunt by the UCP to look good by revealing and then revoking a policy that was bound to be unpopular.
The Smith Government now looks both vindictive and foolish, as if they were so focused on punishing big cities for their voters’ electoral choices that they couldn’t foresee the obvious reaction to pulling a worthy program they bragged about in their 2023 election platform.
We may never be told the full details, but it is a certainty that this was the result of a spontaneous reaction from the public.
Naturally, Premier Smith tried to blame the imbroglio on poor communications – i.e., somebody else’s. “It’s unfortunate that it was communicated the way it was,” she told the CBC’s Power & Politics. “We’ll be a lot more careful about how we have some of these program changes communicated in the future.”
So, talking points first, program cuts after.
“Great, the UCP did the right thing and reversed their decision to cut funding for the low-income transit pass,” said Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood MLA Janis Irwin, the NDP critic for housing policy, on social media yesterday morning.
“But they deserve no kudos. They thought they could get away with an attack on some of our most vulnerable neighbours. Don’t forget, Alberta. And stay loud.”
Good advice.
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