At the AUPE annual convention on October 14, 2010, David Swann talked about the importance of the public sector, the challenges that sector faces, and the universal values that mainstream Albertans must defend in order to enjoy a better government.
Good morning, and thank you so much for the opportunity to join you at the convention today. I consider it a great honour.
So why am I here today? Well, it’s because I believe that you and I share some common values. We may not all share the same politics – some of you may even be crazy enough to support the Wildrose – but I believe there are certain universal ideals that we’re all working toward.
Alberta Liberals believe, for example, in fair play. To me that means a decent salary for an honest day’s work. People who believe in fair play recognize that not everyone comes into this world with the same opportunities; not everyone has a supportive family, or the simple good luck to find a decent job or avoid hard times. The power of civilization is that it gives us the ability to take care of each other. That’s why we support proper funding for public health care, public education, public libraries – all the institutions that allow a society to grow and thrive, to maintain health.
Alberta Liberals believe in truth and transparency. That includes telling the truth on a day to day basis, but it also has larger implications – I believe in the importance of scientific truth, for example, because without the hard data that science provides, you can’t come up with policies to push our society along the right path. There’s a reason so many people are upset about the federal government’s decision to axe the mandatory long-form census; we realize that good science leads to good policy. Transparency and Integrity are crucial in life and in politics.
Alberta Liberals also understand the power and potential of free enterprise, its ability to create wealth and opportunity. Hard work and the freedom to innovate are the engines of success.
And we believe in the absolute necessity of long-term planning. Our society is complex, with today’s decisions playing out over the course of decades and even centuries. Development of natural resources, education, economic development – all of these issues require leaders to plan for the long haul. We’re long past the days when we can afford to ride the rollercoaster of boom and bust. Our health and education systems require stable funding. Nor can we simply spend our resource wealth without addressing the long-term consequences.
Our caucus members come by these values honestly. I’m a physician; another of our MLAs was a nurse; we have a former boilermaker in our caucus, a lawyer, a writer and researcher, an actor, a teacher, a key fundraiser for the Calgary Children’s Hospital…people from many religions and walks of life. We share these values because we’ve lived them, and we’ve seen how they benefit the entire community. And these values inform our vision of the province: leaders with integrity helping people live in a healthy environment creating a healthy economy for the long term. Or as it says on the cards on your table, in four words: health, enterprise, foresight, integrity.
You don’t join the public service without sharing these values or some form of that vision. I’m here today because I feel, like many of you I’m sure, that the mainstream Alberta values we share are under threat. The issues you face on a daily basis – and I hear about - are evidence of that threat.
Working Albertans are facing tough times right now. Alberta still lags behind other provinces when it comes to worker health and safety, and it’s hard to trust the Workers’ Compensation Board when we know that there are government incentives to deny or reduce claims. Workers are being asked to do more work for less money. Administrative changes in the public sector come so fast and furious that workers live in a constant state of anxiety. Centralization is removing decision-making power from the hands of the people who need it most – the workers in touch with local issues. Outsourcing is exerting downward pressure on wages and benefits. With the government racking up huge deficits, workers are justifiably worried about their pensions.
I’ve learned from counselors and child and family workers of unacceptable caseloads and their reluctance to speak out due to fear of retaliation by this government. I have personal experience with such intimidation!
Frankly, even employers lose out thanks to our lax labour laws. I know plenty of employers who realize the value and the potential of their workers, but who can’t help them realize that potential thanks to a lack of resources for extra training and succession planning, for example.
Why are public sector workers facing these challenges? I believe it’s a combination of ignorance and ideology. We have a government that doesn’t know how to deal with the boom and bust cycle, and an attitude that doesn’t recognize the value of people. Faced with red ink, they see cutbacks as the best solution, rather than planning for the long term.
And now we’re faced with the rise of a political party even further to the right of the Tories, the Wildrose Alliance. There are some things everyone should know about Danielle Smith and her Wildrose Alliance. For example, they don’t believe unions should even exist. That’s not spin from me – that’s a position she’s taken in writing. She believes that unions are self-serving entities that punish good workers and protect bad ones, that destroy workplace morale, and harm the environment they operate in. That’s a direct quote from one of her newspaper columns. So the Wildrose flat-out believes that unions are evil. The PCs, as you well know, think that unions are, at best, a nuisance they have to put up with.
Liberals, on the other hand, believe that unions can reflect the highest aspirations of humanity: the desire to look out for each other, to work together toward a common goal, and to make our province a better place. I think that this shows the place where a group like the AUPE and the Alberta Liberals can work together. We share fundamental values. We don’t see government or unions as organizations that push down on people, that do things to people; they are the people coming together to achieve great things.
For some time now I’ve felt that the only way to stop Alberta from drifting away from the mainstream values that have served us so well is for people who share those values to start acting – preferably acting together, but at the very least, getting more involved in politics. Join a constituency association. Find a candidate you can support and volunteer for him or her. Donate money or services. And convince everyone you can to learn the issues and to vote on election day. Alberta has an awful lot of people who share our mainstream values – they just don’t go to the polls. Imagine the difference we could make if just another ten percent of people who share our values went to the polls to vote.
I don’t care if you’re a Red Tory, a New Democrat, a Green, a Liberal, even a moderate Wildrose Alliance supporter, if there is such a thing. If you share the universal values I outlined earlier – compassion, fairness, integrity, hard work, foresight – then I think we all have an obligation, a duty, to work together for a better tomorrow. Alberta is a good and wonderful place to live and work and raise a family. But we can be better than merely good. We should aspire to greatness, and by that I mean an Alberta without poverty, without homelessness, without preventable, senseless worker deaths and injuries, without unfairness and cover-ups. A place where every student earns their high school diploma, and most go on to postsecondary studies. A province with a functioning public health care system with reasonable wait times, a province where seniors in assisted living can enjoy quality, dignified care.
The current government always says they’re building the best healthcare system in the world, and “someday†we’ll have it. Well, I can’t wait for “someday†anymore. I don’t think anyone here can. It needs to be today. We have the resources; all it takes is the will to make someday today, to have the promise of Alberta realized so that we actually live there.
I should wrap things up by answering a question from AUPE President Smith, who asks what the Liberal position is on public disclosure of contracts between the Alberta government and private enterprise. Well, the Official Opposition is in favour of much greater openness and transparency across the board, which is why we pushed so hard for a lobbyist registry, for example, and why we want to close the loopholes in the half-baked registry the government was finally forced to create. And our 12 Steps to Clean Government is a call for wide-sweeping change. With regard to contracts, our basic philosophy remains the same. All citizens have a stake in how their tax dollars are being spent, and openness means that Albertans will know whether or not they’re getting proper value for contracted work.
What I think is crucial is greater public disclosure at the beginning of the contract process; we want to avoid situations where good public sector jobs are outsourced as a fait accompli, with workers being offered their old jobs at a fraction of their old salaries. That’s unfair, underhanded, and any government I lead won’t be a party to that kind of shady dealing.
Thank you again. I look forward to a day and welcome your help in creating a place where Alberta’s workers enjoy just and fair labour laws, safer workplaces and above all, a more progressive, caring and sustainable society.
I look around and I see power in this union, power to make the Alberta we all deserve. That’s part of your job every day. Don’t forget that you have that power.
Thanks very much and enjoy the conference.