Is PC race impacting current work getting done?
Posted Jun 7, 2014 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
In several months, the PC party will have a new leader for the party, as well as a new premier for the province and some believe the wait is affecting work getting done now.
That’s the argument Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith made this week, using the term ‘paralyzed’ to describe how some ministers are unable to operate.
Speaking at a funding announcement in Calgary, Smith cited waits for a new funding deal with the federal government and the review of the Municipal Government Act still not getting done, saying the race has left work in limbo.
“We have absolutely no idea what the new PC leader is going to do, in what direction they’re going to take the province in, which explains a little bit why the ministers feel they have absolutely no authority to be able to make any decisions over the next three months,” she said.
“It’s paralyzed decision-making in the government and that’s I think unfortunate because there’s a lot of things that need to move forward.”
But Duane Bratt, chair and professor in the Department of Policy Studies at Mount Royal University said there’s lots of factors that can affect work getting done, like summer holidays, adding putting too much blame on the race can be unfair.
He also noted several examples of new measures since the end of the last session.
“We still have an embedded bureaucracy, we still have a premier,” Bratt said. “I look at some of the work that Manmeet Bhullar (Human Services) has done and Jeff Johnson (Education) has done, that doesn’t look like paralysis to me.”
He added municipal issues have been a long-term problem.
“Municipal governance has been problematic for several years, almost since it was announced, then there was a cabinet shuffle and this goes back to the Redford days,” he said.
