If it looks like a duck...
Partisan appointments are not new in Alberta politics -- and I'm certain they aren't going away -- but nothing good comes from starting from a place of mistrust.
Nearing the conclusion of their second term in the role, a committee voted back in November to replace Marguerite Trussler, who was first appointed in 2014, and chief electoral officer Glen Resler, whose term is also up for renewal in May 2024.
At the UCP’s annual meeting last week, party members passed a resolution urging Alberta to ban electronic machines for tabulation or counting of ballots in provincial elections.
Mr. Resler, in a statement, said he respects that his employment is subject to reappointment and trumpeted changes under his leadership, such as making it easier to vote through electronic machines and expanded responsibility over election and political financing rules.
Globe and Mail, November 23, 2023
On Wednesday morning, a committee made up of a majority of UCP MLAs voted to appoint Shawn McLeod as ethics commissioner.
McLeod spent time in both private and public roles, including 10 years with the Alberta Labour Relations Board, labour relations within oil and gas, as well as serving as Deputy Minister of Labour and Immigration with the Government of Alberta beginning in May of 2019. McLeod has been assigned to “special projects” since the summer of 2023.
There’s nothing wrong with McLeod’s curriculum vitae, and I’ve heard from at least one person who has worked with McLeod that he (at least a few years ago) was a person who seemed not to have a particular inclination for partisan-influenced decision-making.
However, McLeod ran for the UCP nomination in Edmonton-Riverview in 2018.
If you put a random sample of 100 Albertans in a group, the likelihood that you could hit a member of any political party with a rock would be around five per cent. FIVE.
If you put a random sample of 100 Albertans who were eligible to vote in the last election into a group, the likelihood that you could hit someone with a rock who has attempted to win a nomination for the UCP since its inception would be 0.01 per cent.
You would have a better shot of hitting the 0.4 per cent of Alberta’s registered lawyers also statistically likely to be in that same crowd — not even a whole lawyer.
If it’s not quite clear what I’m getting at, I’ll be more specific: one cannot legitimately manage to even coincidentally appoint someone who has this type of partisan experience.
The issue may not even be that Shawn McLeod is partisan — it is the impression that he could be.
What we know for sure is that McLeod was planning to run for the nomination in Edmonton-Riverview — though it hardly matters where. Although Kaycee Madu, the should-be-disgraced-former-Justice Minister won a seat that year. Point being, there wasn’t a great chance of McLeod winning.
He withdrew from the nomination despite out-fundraising his opponent.
He became a Deputy Minister in Labour and Immigration (a good fit based on his resume, but I can’t deny that it appears to be a political appointment).
Smith removed “labour” from ministry portfolios when she became Premier in October of 2022, folding it into a new Ministry of Skilled Trades and Professions, of which Kaycee Madu was appointed Minister. McLeod was moved to “Advisor, Special Projects” after the election— which coincided with the ministry briefly associated with labour disappearing completely.
Trussler wasn’t immune to allegations of partisanship
Every time Marguerite Trussler dismissed an ethics complaint, she was accused of being partisan. Trussler’s spouse, as well as his fellow partners at his law firm, have a history of donating to political candidates and parties, with the majority of their donations going to those representing conservative governments. Which, not incidentally, coincides with the fact that the majority of governments Alberta has had in the last 50 years at least had “conservative” in their name.
I already dislike this attribution because it has eerily similar connotations to suggesting that Rachel Notley’s husband, or Tyler Shandro’s wife, shouldn’t be allowed to continue work they were doing prior to their spouse’s election, or even donate to a party, because it may be in conflict with their own roles as public servants.
We don’t want to give Danielle Smith any ideas for new ways to extend her government’s reach, do we?
The purpose of an ethics commissioner is not just to investigate complaints but also to determine which complaints are worth investigating in the first place. Trussler only launched a few investigations in her ten years in the role.
Interestingly, only two people were found to have breached the Conflicts of Interest Act during that time: current Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver back when he was leader of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta in 2017, and current Premier Danielle Smith, within six months of her appointment, in 2023.
In 2014, MLA Danielle Smith lodged a complaint against Premier Jim Prentice, Minister Stephen Mandel, and MLA Mike Ellis for partisan-themed government announcements (guffaw). MLA Rachel Notley also filed a second complaint. These were investigated and dismissed.
In 2016, Trussler investigated a complaint by Jason Nixon against Rachel Notley regarding fundraising events. Notley was cleared. (A very interesting complaint, by the way — highly recommend reading!)
In 2018, the ethics commissioner dismissed a complaint filed by the NDP regarding Calgary-Foothills MLA Prasad Panda’s ownership of shares in a company he toured, along with former UCP leader and MLA from Calgary-Lougheed Jason Kenney, and MLA for Innisfail- Sylvan Lake Devin Dreeshen, in India.
Shortly after the 2019 election, the NDP filed a complaint against then-Premier Jason Kenney alleging he had used the Office of the Premier to solicit donations after a UCP fundraising email was sent out and “signed ‘Premier Jason Kenney’.” Ethics “commissioner Marguerite Trussler said while the premier did not contravene the Conflicts of Interest Act when he signed the letter, she did suggest that this practice should be avoided ‘because it is not considered appropriate to use a government office to raise funds for a political party’.”
The NDP also filed a complaint alleging Kenney and then-Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer were in a conflict of interest by not calling in a special prosecutor to deal with allegations of election fraud stemming from the 2017 UCP leadership race. Trussler declined to investigate and, a few months later, the Alberta Crown Prosecutor Service did appoint a special prosecutor from Ontario to handle the case if one did arise. It did not.
Later that year, the NDP filed a complaint alleging a conflict of interest in the UCP’s decision to fire election commissioner Lorne Gibson. They were cleared.
In 2020, the ethics commissioner reviewed email complaints regarding then-Health Minister Tyler Shandro’s business holdings and determined that his position had not changed since Shandro was elected in 2019. The complaints were dismissed.
During the election in May 2023, Premier Danielle Smith was found to have violated the conflicts of interest rule when she called Alberta’s Solicitor General and asked him if there wasn’t some way to make Artur Pawlowski’s charges go away.
Remember when Prime Minister Trudeau was found to have “directly and through his senior officials used various means to exert influence” over Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould, in what we otherwise refer to as “the SNC Lavalin affair”? They’re the same allegations, the same findings, and resulted in the same outcome of neither stepping down.
After issuing the finding against Smith, the ethics commissioner recommended that legislation be introduced to pause any ethics investigations during writ periods — as Ontario has — so as not to provide “undue influence”. That legislation was introduced in November of 2023, and while it would not have affected the date the complaint was filed, prior to April 10, it would have prevented the decision from being published during the election proper.
This is a bothersome recommendation because the suggestion is that the ethics commissioner included in her response a political consideration. Charitably, Trussler may not have appreciated the fact that releasing her decision might have an effect on the outcome of the election; however, I feel like that consideration should have been outside the purview of the ethics commissioner’s office.
In June of 2023, the ethics commissioner declined to investigate whether it was a conflict of interest that Premier Danielle Smith used her official account to boost attention for the restaurant she and her husband jointly owned before putting said restaurant up for sale.
Trussler had issued a fine related to breaching section (3) of the Conflicts of Interest Act to Ric McIver in 2017 after he spoke against proposed changes AESO rates that, if passed, would directly affect a business his wife owns. Chances are, the difference was that McIver spoke to the changes in the Legislature, while Smith promoted her business on her Twitter account, that happens to also be the Premier of Alberta’s twitter account, but was previously the personal twitter account of an opposition leader, restaurant owner, and talk show host.
In December of 2023, Trussler decided not to pursue allegations that Danielle Smith’s office was involved in Alberta Health Services’ decision to rescind an offer of employment to former Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw, based on the investigation into Dr. John Cowell’s involvement in the decision.
Ethics commissioners can’t stop people from complaining, Angela
Many people had to take a second look at the news Wednesday — a non-partisan appointment given to a person who had sought the nomination for the political party appointing them? Sure, it happens on agencies, boards, commissions, and in higher roles in the public service — but ethics commissioner?
Chances are the person will be asked to investigate complaints about people they once hoped would be their colleagues. They may even be asked to investigate people they hoped to deliver regular smackdowns to in the Legislature during the cringe-worthy excuse for Question Period.
I feel fairly confident that a UCP majority on the committee would never have considered nominated someone who had run for the NDP provincially or federally. Or the liberals federally, for that matter.
Truly, I want to believe that people can be political party donors, or seek to hold office, without being zombie-like ideological yes-men. I want to believe that people seek office to solve problems and create a brighter future for everyone in the province. I want to believe that.
Unfortunately, when the bar is set to “you’re either with us or against us”, I find it incredibly difficult to be charitable.
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