Alberta Party calls for stronger ethics laws

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Vauxhall Advance

Today, Alberta Party Leader, Greg Clark, took aim at the PC government’s weak ethics laws.

“Since Jim Prentice became Premier, we’ve heard a lot of promises to clean up the PC government,” said Clark “Unfortunately, the PCs continue to take advantage of the weak ethics laws they wrote, which are among the weakest in the country.”

Earlier this year, Alberta’s Ethics Commissioner investigated Education Minister Gordon Dirks after he publicly announced new portables for a school in his constituency during last October’s by-election. The Ethics Commissioner called Dirks’ conduct “blatant political opportunism”.
The Alberta Party notes that the latest PC ethics violations include:
PC sole sourcing the golf course contract to Kan-Alta Golf Management Ltd., contrary to to Alberta’s trade obligations which requires all contracts over $100,000 to be publically tendered.

Intimidating public servants from volunteering for political parties
Candidates taking credit for projects that they had nothing to do with. Gordon Dirks’ election website claims personal credit for replacing the Elbow footbridges destroyed in the 2013 flood. However, design, construction and funding for the new bridges occurred months before Dirks was ever elected as MLA. In fact, Dirks had only been an MLA for 11 days by the time Mayor Nenshi cut the ribbon to open the last of the new bridges on November 28, 2014.

The Alberta Party will:

Prohibit public spending announcements during an election.
Prohibit cabinet ministers from using their office for political gain.
Conduct government business in the legislature – not behind closed doors.
Toughen Alberta’s campaign finance laws.
Strengthen our democracy by redefining the role of MLAs to better serve constituents and reforming how the Legislature operates.

Read the full statement at greg-clark.ca/restore_trust.