Transparency is the buzz word today for politicians at many levels but does it also apply to the municipal level?
The federal government and its bureaucrats pretty much dismiss any suggestion of transparency as a meaningless whim by a few voters, so of course if it’s ignored it will go away and usually does.
At the provincial level transparency has become more meaningful and for reasons other than originally planned.
One of the great weapons in the transparency battle is the Freedom of Information Programs (FOIP) which means government and its bureaucrats must reveal the truth if asked.
It’s called FOIP and is becoming far more effective for a different reason that any suspected.
A request to FOIP an issue is received and now the provincial government and its people are releasing the requested information before they have to answer the FOIP request.
Apparently controlling the answer is better which makes no sense because facts are facts no matter when they come out.
Except then the government says we released those facts as an act of transparency rather than having to say we were forced into it by FOIP.
Some examples.
There was a FOIP request for the expenses of the Alberta Health Services chief financial officer and he was thrown under the bus as the government announced he scammed more than $300,000 in expenses.
Then we have the Olympic boondoggle which our provincial government called a trade mission.
Who does trade during the Olympics? I would suggest ‘ladies of the night’ did far more trade during the London Games than ever achieved by the Alberta government.
Then we have the premier’s expenses including her law society dues, paid by taxpayers, and that information was not released by government until — you guessed it, a FOIP request.
And not only government. Last week Doug Black resigned as the University of Calgary board of governors chairman. It was previously disclosed he submitted expenses of more than $28,000 in 18 months in office.
Black is a former executive of the provincial Tory party so we might forgive him for leaning towards entitlement rather than transparency.
But he came clean, resigned and paid back all the expense money.
But he did all that after — you guessed it — a FOIP request.
So FOIP is working but would it work here?
Let’s find out.
You submit a question you would like answered by town officials. Let me know what information you think should be public and, in fairness to town staff we’ll ask first but if we don’t get answers we’ll FOIP it for you.
If it works at the provincial level why not here?
Pool shark
The mighty pool player Bill Gibbons recently won a bronze in the 8-ball pool competition at the Canada 55-plus Games. He qualified by winning Zone 2 and also the Alberta finals.
“The tournament involved 13 players from all over Canada,” he says.
“The game format consisted of a preliminary round robin where everyone plays the other players once in the race to three. After the preliminary the top four players advance to the medal round in race to five wins.
“I ended up with nine wins and four losses which qualified me for the bronze medal round. The player from Nova Scotia had won against me in the preliminary round and I ended up playing the same player for the bronze medal. It was exciting and close all the way. We were tied at three games each and I closed the door on him winning the next two games to take home the bronze. I was proud to represent Alberta and we had a great time.”
