I don’t care what anybody says, I like this guy Kevin Taft. Which isn’t to say the Liberals would make a good government for Alberta, just that Taft himself seems a smart, decent guy with good ideas about how to make democracy work better. Some of those ideas are in his new book, called ‘Democracy Derailed: A Breakdown of Government Accountability in Alberta – and How to Get it Back on Track.’ The book arrived unsolicited in the mail a few weeks back. After reading about three quarters of it, I concluded it wouldn’t be knocking Harry Potter off any bestseller lists. It might not sell at all, given its fairly tacky and unattractive cover design. And that would be a shame because it does contain some interesting information and reasonable arguments for improving the system here in Alberta. Taft is a straight shooter. He mercifully keeps the self-righteous posturing (that is so tediously typical of opposition politicians) to a bare minimum. He’s an idea guy, and that’s what I like. For example: “In Alberta, freedom of information legislation is a contradiction in terms,” he writes. “For one thing, once you start scouting around for government information, you quickly discover that it’s anything but free. It’s carefully locked away, and it can cost you an arm and a leg to take the tiniest peek?” Taft takes shows how Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act in effect it works to keep government documents from the public instead of the other way around. He cites one example of a request for documents that took months and thousands of dollars in fees – only to find that all the pertinent stuff had been removed. Similar documents would be quickly and cheaply available under similar federal legislation, he argues, and from most other provinces as well. But not in Alberta. Then there’s the Public Accounts Committee, which according to Taft’s experience is, or can be, pretty much a charade. It’s the body that’s supposed to review the spend of all government departments. But it’s set up so that it never has time to do its job. And of course it’s controlled by Tories, who can shut down any opposition effort to get to the bottom of things any time they want. The charade impression was cemented in one memorable hearing when former premier Ralph Klein appeared for the first time in nine years before the committee to answer questions about his department’s spending. Sitting next to a Tory official, Taft noticed that every Tory question and every answer was on paper in front of the fellow. Only when a non-Tory asked a question was Klein forced to think on his feet, and of course he got through it with the usual bluster tactics. The point is, though, that the public interest is not well served by the way government spending is reviewed in Alberta. It should be open and accountable, and it’s not. Taft does not suggest that a gang of criminals are running the show and getting away with murder. He does show pretty convincingly, though, that the system works to allow the government to operate with a lack of genuine accountability. And, interestingly, much less accountability than is standard – or becoming so – in Canadian governments generally. In Alberta, Taft points out, the Adscam scandal would never have seen the light of day.

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