New leaders often tighten ethics, transparency rules. Danielle Smith and UCP take different approach

When sweeping somebody else out of power, it's common for new leaders to use that same broom to tidy up the system to reassure the public that they are more honest and accountable than the bums they replaced.

This may not be the approach from the current Alberta government, but it's a time-honoured good housekeeping practice in politics.

When Stephen Harper defeated the Liberals to become prime minister in 2006, his first legislation was the Federal Accountability Act. It blocked political staffers from hopping straight from Parliament into private-sector lobbying, and put the ethics commissioner in charge of policing that.

Former premier Ralph Klein brought in the Freedom of Information system in his first months in office, and successor Ed Stelmach gave Alberta a lobbyist registry as his Bill 1.

In Jim Prentice's brief premiership, his government passed an Alberta Accountability Act which, like Harper's before him, put premier's and ministerial aides under the same Conflict of Interest Act rules on forwarding private interests, disclosure and post-employment lobbying as MLAs or ministers. It also expanded the rules to top-level bureaucrats.

The reforms won support from the Wildrose Opposition, led by Danielle Smith.

"Those rules that applied to MLAs before also now apply to staff in the premier's and ministers' offices, a very, very, very good improvement," Rob Anderson, the Wildrose's lead MLA on accountability measures, said in the legislature.

The gift of power 

A decade later, Smith is premier and Anderson her top adviser. The accountability reforms they've brought in during their first two years include letting MLAs accept larger gifts and creating various new exemptions for freedom of information requests.

The next measure Smith's team has laid groundwork for would undo what Anderson once called "very, very, very good."

Last week, the UCP members on a special legislative committee examining the Conflicts of Interest Act endorsed changes that would exclude all but the most senior aides to the ministers and premier from the law's provisions, as well as exempting top bureaucrats and heads of provincial agencies.

That means the end of legislated rules governing gifts given to most political aides, their professional/private conflicts and their post-employment "cooling off" period. It also ends requirements for disclosure to the independent ethics commissioner, and the office's oversight.

Instead, any rules or ethical breaches would be policed by the staffers' de facto boss, the premier's chief of staff. Rob Anderson, at present.

Grant Hunter, the UCP backbench MLA who proposed these motions at committee, suggested the changes were designed to bring Alberta in line with some other provinces and erase overlap between this act and other codes of conduct for the public service.

Watered down, rhetoric up

There are some times when the provincial government wants to be the nation's best, or provide a leading "made-in-Alberta solution." Ethics rules, critics suggest, might not be such an occasion. 

"If some other jurisdiction is not doing it, that's not the reason for us to water down our conflict of interest act," NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir told the committee.

He got more heated talking after the meeting to reporters: "These proposals are moving Alberta toward the most corrupt, unethical, secretive government in the entire country."

A government normally gets judged as corrupt and unethical by its misdeeds, not by the rules set up around them. Historians will quibble about which government deserves the "most corrupt" moniker Sabir wielded, but it assumedly wouldn't be the one the Alberta NDP currently opposes.

There have been questions earlier this year about ministers accepting luxury box tickets at Oilers playoff games presented by a medical supplier — questions that might have been answered sooner or nipped in the bud had the government not loosened gift restrictions last year.

Smith's first year as premier was also marked by the ethics commissioner finding her in breach of the rules for pressuring the justice minister regarding COVID-related charges. Some changes approved by the UCP-led committee, but not put before the full legislature yet, would put new conditions on the documents the ethics commissioner could request in investigations into MLAs' conduct, and give subjects of a probe the right to review and dispute findings before they're released.

The UCP also appointed an ethics commissioner who once bid to run as a candidate for the party, a break with the non-partisan tradition of that independent watchdog role.

Smith came in on a reform and change agenda, and it was about accountability, but it wasn't specifically about the conduct of politicians and their aides. Her issues were more tied to public health actions during the pandemic, and she's governed accordingly.

Her government's approach to the accountability or transparency rules they face has more often been to ease the burdens and limitations they create. 

"None of them on their own are sort of earthshaking, but they do sort of add up into a picture, don't they?" observed Lisa Young, a University of Calgary political scientist.

"The trend over a long period of time has been toward more regulation and limiting influence on politicians governing their behaviour."

But pendulums, Young adds, swing in both directions. So she says we shouldn't be surprised if somebody takes this trend in the other direction, toward loosening the accumulated rules around politicians.

Before changing the gift restrictions, the premier complained in an interview about being told by the ethics commissioner she shouldn't attend a big outdoor NHL game, or that she shouldn't be seen washing dishes at her husband's restaurant. 

"I want to stay within the rules, but sometimes if the rules haven't kept up with where we find ourselves today, we may have to adjust them," Smith told the Real Talk podcast.

The province's changes to transparency and accountability rules haven't just dealt with what members and staffers are allowed to do. With more Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act requests coming the government's way, the government has also made it more difficult for Albertans to access information that reaches cabinet, or learn how ministers and their aides navigate various crises or issues.

"FOIP is about access to government records, not access to political conversations," Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally said when he introduced those reforms.

Diane McLeod, Alberta's information and privacy commissioner, doesn't make the same distinction. In her analysis of Nally's bill, she reasoned that "political staff serve a public purpose and perform public interest functions," and the changes "may significantly degrade the openness of government of Alberta departments."

Perhaps the changes will allow the Smith government to act more efficiently, speak frankly without anxiety about prying eyes, and more easily fill advisor roles with the knowledge that a press secretary's job wouldn't come with narrowed career horizons afterward.

Perhaps, as well, the UCP's opposition will be afforded more reasons to bring out the broom next time there's an election.