The Background
Alberta Health Services is run by a Board. The Board in turn delegates their responsibility to a President and a number of other executives. The Board falls under the jurisdiction of the Health Minister.
The Board had previously negotiated contracts with its senior executives that involved something called "pay at risk." This means a portion of their compensation was dependent on their meeting certain performance measurements. It has been characterized by the provincial government as a bonus program. I'm not sure if that's fair.
For me, the dividing line between a bonus program and a pay-at-risk program is whether the system a) takes what is a reasonable salary, and then augments it in response to performace above expectations, or b) takes a reasonable salary, and then reduces it in response to performance below expectations. If performance above expectations is not rewarded, it's not a bonus, it's a penalty. I don't have enough information to know which side of that line these payments would fall on.
What we do know is that these pay at risk are provided for certain objectives, such as, in the example of the President, reducing staff disabling injuries, reducing time to treatment in ERs, staying within budgeted expenditures, and things of that nature. In the most recent report, the President earned only 60% of the at-risk pay (bonuses) that he might have.
The Story
The provincial government has said it's a bonus. And it has said that it is inappropriate for AHS executives to be getting bonuses when there have been massive budget cuts and the doctors, among others, are accepting wage freezes.
As such, Health Minister Fred Horne asked the board to "reconsider" its decision with regard to these "bonuses." It did. It reconsidered them, and decided that for the time being it was more important to keep its promises to its executives than to bend to the political will of the Minister of Health.
They Board chairman also made some less-than-veiled comments about the fact that the Alberta Health Services Board is supposed to act independently of the Health Minister. Though the lie was put to that idea when Stephen Duckett was fired as CEO at the insistence of the Health Minister and three board members resigned over the decision.
So this morning, the Health Minister, to much praise from the assembled masses, has fired the entire board of Alberta Health Services.
My Take
Taking money away from better-paid people is always popular. Economists have studied this trait, and point to it when refuting the assumption that people act rationally when making decisions about money. So let's not be surprised that this move is popular, but let's also not think that because it's popular it's good.
Also, others have studied the effectiveness of pay for performance schemes, and found that where the tasks being rewarded require any degree of creativity, there is no benefit to them. So the Minister and AHS are on solid ground deciding that they will not use them for their executives going forward.
That said, the Board is right to have refused to reconsider the payment changes. The Board, in order to be effective, must have a single person to whom they delegate all of their authority, and whom they instruct on how that power is to be used. In the case of AHS, that person is the President. In order for that relationship to work properly, there has to be a relationship of trust between the Board and the President. If there is not, the Board loses control of the President, and in turn the province loses control of its own health care system. The same goes for the relationship between the President and the various other high-level executives.
Violating the terms of an agreed-to contract is an excellent way to eliminate trust and damage that relationship. If the Board is left with a single employee who they have been forced to screw over against their will, how confident can they be in the strength of that relationship? How honest can they expect that President to be with them? How well will that President receive their criticism and direction?
So when the Board says "let us keep our promises to our only employee," I agree that the strength of that relationship is worth more than the relatively small amount of money on the table, and worth more even than the political quagmire it creates for the Health Minister and the Premier.
And the quagmire could have been handled differently by the Health Minister. When challenged by the opposition parties about unions and doctors agreeing to wage freezes, while executives get bonuses, he could easily have replied that he would rather that Alberta Health Services had a reputation for abiding by contracts negotiated in good faith. Otherwise, those contracts to feeze wages would be meaningless, and the doctors and such could have no certainty about what they were actually going to get.
Taken in the context of the negotiations with the doctors and the teachers in this province, what the government has said instead is that if you are a unionized employee, we will impose contracts on you. If you are an executive, we will let you negotiate them until we don't like them any more, and then we'll fire anyone who refuses to breach them for us when we like.
All of which is not to point out what seems exceedingly obvious to me: that any of these executives who have their bonuses refused will likely be in a position to sue for them, and get back not only their bonuses but also their legal expenses.
Does the Board have control of AHS? No. Because the Board doesn't have control of the President. The Minister does, now. Does the Minister have control of AHS? No. The Minister doesn't know what's going on. He can't. That's not his job. So who has control of AHS? The President, for the time being. And Albertans had better hope and pray that he's not the vindictive type. Because we're in his hands, and there is no one to hold him accountable.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Sunday, June 09, 2013
Ed Snowden Interview
It is, to put it mildly, remarkable.
He's remarkably well-spoken, and intelligent. He also seems in remarkably good spirits. It's also remarkable that he isn't more consistent or clear about what the NSA is doing. He says that data is being collected on everyone by default and held for "periods of time." He doesn't say what periods of time. Then he says that when an analyst targets a person their communications "will be picked up," as in future-tense, as though their communications have not already been intercepted and stored. He could mean that it will pick up what has been stored for whatever period of time, but it seems a strange way to say that. I would have used words like "will be available to the analyst." And he never says that these are the things that PRISM does. These are just the things that the NSA does, which I accept that it does, but I'm particularly interested in PRISM.
The most logical explanation that I have for what PRISM actually is, the explanation that would mean that all of the carefully worded statements coming from the corporations and the US government are actually true, if not complete, is that PRISM is an attempt by the NSA to negotiate an automated process for the submission and response to legal requests for information. That's what I suggested to my wife when we were talking about it tonight, and it turns out that's what the New York Times has reported. From the corporate side, they wouldn't need to know that the system applies to more than one corporation, no need to know that it's a program at all. It also explains how Twitter can get away with refusing to participate.
The only inconsistency then would be that the slide deck claiming that it allowed direct access to corporate servers fails to mention there is nothing on those servers until after a request is sent, approved, and responded to. Not sure why the person making those slides would want to make the system sound like a bigger deal than it actually is, but there you go.
All of which means that for the users of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and others, we are in the same position we were yesterday. As a foreigner, if the US government wants your data, they can get it. We already knew that.
Friday, June 07, 2013
NSA Has Access to Non-US data on Us-hosted cloud providers?
This is huge.
As a lawyer, I have a responsibility to protect the confidentiality of my clients. What steps I take to accomplish that depends on how I assess the risk.
The Washington Post is reporting that there is a US government program called PRISM that allows the NSA access to the data of non-US citizens held on US-based servers owned by major corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple.
This is on the heels of a report yesterday that Verizon has been providing the NSA with the call records of all of its customers in the United States.
Needless to say, my assessment of the risk has increased.
The solution to this problem is probably to make sure that my clients are better informed about the risk that they're taking by hiring a lawyer who uses servers located in United States.
This is not the problem I wanted to be dealing with today, but today's the day to deal with it.
[Image from the Washington Post]
 |
| Virtually All Internet Traffic Goes through the US and Canada. |
The Washington Post is reporting that there is a US government program called PRISM that allows the NSA access to the data of non-US citizens held on US-based servers owned by major corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple.
This is on the heels of a report yesterday that Verizon has been providing the NSA with the call records of all of its customers in the United States.
Needless to say, my assessment of the risk has increased.
The solution to this problem is probably to make sure that my clients are better informed about the risk that they're taking by hiring a lawyer who uses servers located in United States.
This is not the problem I wanted to be dealing with today, but today's the day to deal with it.
[Image from the Washington Post]
Thursday, June 06, 2013
Mr. Rathgeber Resigns
I heard about this first from the Edmonton Journal last night, and didn't believe it. It seemed more likely to me that someone had hacked the twitter account than that a Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber had actually resigned from caucus over transparency issues.
I was wrong.
What strikes me as extremely strange is that he says that now that he has quit the Conservative caucus, he will be able to decide for himself whether to vote for government legislation, and do what is best for his riding.
He's right, of course. Legislators only need half the votes to have total control in the House of Commons. Achieving ad-hoc alliances on an issue-by-issue basis is politically difficult. Game theory suggests that your best strategy, as a legislator, is to get yourself into the smallest possible group that is larger than half, and agree to decide amongst yourselves what legislation will pass, and what won't, then vote as a bloc. You may not like all the decisions that your team makes, but you'll have twice as much power in the decision-making. The trade-off is cooperation. You be a team player, or you don't get the benefits. So when you're in a caucus you can't vote the way you think is right, and you can't do what is best for your riding.
Eventually, for some people, the bargain seems no longer worth it. At that point, they sacrifice what little power they held in caucus, and go independent. That's what Mr. Rathgeber has done.
So that's not what strikes me as extremely strange.
Stranger than that is the fact that in reality backbench MPs have absolutely no power within the caucus. They don't get to contribute in any meaningful way to the conversations about what pieces of legislation will be passed. Only the government gets to propose the legislation, which means if you're not in Cabinet, you're there to vote with Cabinet and keep quiet. I find that stranger.
But that's not what strikes me as extremely strange.
What's extremely strange is the fact that all of the conversation about this, including the very true things Mr. Rathgeber is saying about the mismatch of power between the executive and the legislature, is done within the context of an apparent assumption that it can be no other way. That's extremely strange, because it's so false.
There are things that we could do, if we wanted to, that would change the amount of control the executive has over the legislature in this country. Electoral reform, campaign finance reform, eliminating the leader's veto over nominations, basically put political parties in a position where kicking someone out of caucus at the first sign of dissent would not be in their own interests. But no one is mentioning those things.
The entire thing strikes me as like a debate about whether a battered wife should leave the relationship or stay for the benefit of the kids, without any suggestion that perhaps we should put the abusive husband behind bars.
[Image courtesy parl.gc.ca]
What strikes me as extremely strange is that he says that now that he has quit the Conservative caucus, he will be able to decide for himself whether to vote for government legislation, and do what is best for his riding.
He's right, of course. Legislators only need half the votes to have total control in the House of Commons. Achieving ad-hoc alliances on an issue-by-issue basis is politically difficult. Game theory suggests that your best strategy, as a legislator, is to get yourself into the smallest possible group that is larger than half, and agree to decide amongst yourselves what legislation will pass, and what won't, then vote as a bloc. You may not like all the decisions that your team makes, but you'll have twice as much power in the decision-making. The trade-off is cooperation. You be a team player, or you don't get the benefits. So when you're in a caucus you can't vote the way you think is right, and you can't do what is best for your riding.
Eventually, for some people, the bargain seems no longer worth it. At that point, they sacrifice what little power they held in caucus, and go independent. That's what Mr. Rathgeber has done.
So that's not what strikes me as extremely strange.
Stranger than that is the fact that in reality backbench MPs have absolutely no power within the caucus. They don't get to contribute in any meaningful way to the conversations about what pieces of legislation will be passed. Only the government gets to propose the legislation, which means if you're not in Cabinet, you're there to vote with Cabinet and keep quiet. I find that stranger.
But that's not what strikes me as extremely strange.
What's extremely strange is the fact that all of the conversation about this, including the very true things Mr. Rathgeber is saying about the mismatch of power between the executive and the legislature, is done within the context of an apparent assumption that it can be no other way. That's extremely strange, because it's so false.
There are things that we could do, if we wanted to, that would change the amount of control the executive has over the legislature in this country. Electoral reform, campaign finance reform, eliminating the leader's veto over nominations, basically put political parties in a position where kicking someone out of caucus at the first sign of dissent would not be in their own interests. But no one is mentioning those things.
The entire thing strikes me as like a debate about whether a battered wife should leave the relationship or stay for the benefit of the kids, without any suggestion that perhaps we should put the abusive husband behind bars.
[Image courtesy parl.gc.ca]
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
A Chat with Greg Clark
I had the opportunity to sit down with Greg Clark, who is running for the leadership of the Alberta Party.
I signed his nomination papers, and I wish him the best of luck in the election campaign. I told him what I would tell anyone running for the leadership of the party: the Alberta Party has an opportunity that is easily missed.
My impression of the party in the last election was that it did not have an identity in the minds of Albertans. Part of that had to do with its relative novelty. But the "Alberta-Saskatchewan Merger Party" would also have been novel, but people would have known what it stood for.
The larger problem is that one of the Alberta Party's strengths, its willingness to go out and talk to people and build consensus, is also a weakness. Because there is no time for building consensus when new issues arise. Apart from a nice-guy or nice-girl image, the Alberta Party didn't have any first principles from which to build responses to the things that were happening around it. If you asked an Alberta Party candidate what they thought, you got what they thought, not what the party thought, because the party didn't think anything.
The party has some principles, clearly. I helped draft them, though I'm not fully satisfied with the result. I'm not satisfied with them, because they do not serve to say what the Alberta Party is against, and why, and they do not give the Alberta Party a unique identity.
I told Greg that people running for the leadership of the Alberta Party have a problem that people running for the leadership of other parties don't. The leader of the Alberta Party is the only person who has any legitimacy to push the party toward taking a side. And it needs to take a side. The party cannot offer moderation as a virtue, and expect to get any traction. It's unrealistic. It cannot pretend to be a replacement for any of the other parties less those parties' baggage. Between the original and a copy, voters will always go for the original. And no one is going to give the Alberta Party the benefit of the doubt with regard to cronyism just because they're new.
What the party needs is a leader who will say "under me, these are the sides that we will be taking. People on the other side of that question should vote for another party." To be clear, I'm not talking about issues, or policy planks. I'm talking about ideological positions. And I'm not talking about middle-of-the-road, I'm talking about taking a side, and saying that the correct balance for the province is further to that side.
Ideology is a bad word for some people in the Alberta Party, but it shouldn't be. The Alberta Party cannot be the place that all Albertans go to to hash out their differences and come to a mutually-agreeable result. That's supposed to be the legislature, though the way we elect MLAs prevents it from operating that way. Political parties are not governments, they are factions. Ideology just means guideposts to thinking. It is a shorthand. And it's crucially important, because there is only enough time between now and the next election to explain to Albertans what the Alberta Party's shorthand actually is.
So the candidates running for the leadership of the Alberta Party must, in my view, offer an ideological view. They must explain what the Alberta Party identity will be under their leadership. They must win election on that promise, and then spend three years indoctrinating the party with those ideas, fundraising for their own salary, and sharing the ideas with Albertans. It's brutal. The leadership candidates for other parties don't have to start from scratch in that way.
What do I think it should be? My ideal Alberta Party would believe these things: First, that democracy - giving the greatest possible equitable access to legislative power to all Albertans (as opposed to organizations) - should be the first priority. We need an overhaul of campaign finance, election methods, and nomination procedures so as to mitigate, as far as possible, the powers of incumbency and wealth. If you think that a company should be able to buy the government it wants, vote for someone else. Second, sustainability - the idea that a society, economy, environment, system that lasts, either by withstanding or adapting to change, is better than one that collapses and needs to be replaced - should be a guiding principle of everything the government does. If you think it's OK to take the benefit of natural resources now and leave the costs of their extraction to our children, vote for someone else. Third, prosperity - the idea that all Albertans should have the opportunity to have a great quality of life, however they define it - should be the government's objective. If you want Alberta to stop taking advantage of its resources to save the trees, vote for someone else. Sustainability trumps prosperity, and democracy trumps all.
That's what I think the Alberta party should stand for. And when the time comes, it should propose some policies that are extreme on those ideological grounds. Like real, guaranteed electoral reform, changes to royalties and taxes, and a whole-life educational system that prepares people not just for employment, but also for employing others.
What the specific ideas proposed by the candidates are, however, aren't as important as the requirement that the party pick a corner to fight from. No one scores any goals from the neutral zone. And if the party goes through another election where Albertans don't know what the party stands for - with a popular vote of less than 2% - the party will simply cease to exist, and all the opportunity that has been gained thus far will be lost.
So yeah. No pressure.
[Images from greg-clark.ca and albertaparty.ca]
My impression of the party in the last election was that it did not have an identity in the minds of Albertans. Part of that had to do with its relative novelty. But the "Alberta-Saskatchewan Merger Party" would also have been novel, but people would have known what it stood for.
The larger problem is that one of the Alberta Party's strengths, its willingness to go out and talk to people and build consensus, is also a weakness. Because there is no time for building consensus when new issues arise. Apart from a nice-guy or nice-girl image, the Alberta Party didn't have any first principles from which to build responses to the things that were happening around it. If you asked an Alberta Party candidate what they thought, you got what they thought, not what the party thought, because the party didn't think anything.
The party has some principles, clearly. I helped draft them, though I'm not fully satisfied with the result. I'm not satisfied with them, because they do not serve to say what the Alberta Party is against, and why, and they do not give the Alberta Party a unique identity.
I told Greg that people running for the leadership of the Alberta Party have a problem that people running for the leadership of other parties don't. The leader of the Alberta Party is the only person who has any legitimacy to push the party toward taking a side. And it needs to take a side. The party cannot offer moderation as a virtue, and expect to get any traction. It's unrealistic. It cannot pretend to be a replacement for any of the other parties less those parties' baggage. Between the original and a copy, voters will always go for the original. And no one is going to give the Alberta Party the benefit of the doubt with regard to cronyism just because they're new.
What the party needs is a leader who will say "under me, these are the sides that we will be taking. People on the other side of that question should vote for another party." To be clear, I'm not talking about issues, or policy planks. I'm talking about ideological positions. And I'm not talking about middle-of-the-road, I'm talking about taking a side, and saying that the correct balance for the province is further to that side.
Ideology is a bad word for some people in the Alberta Party, but it shouldn't be. The Alberta Party cannot be the place that all Albertans go to to hash out their differences and come to a mutually-agreeable result. That's supposed to be the legislature, though the way we elect MLAs prevents it from operating that way. Political parties are not governments, they are factions. Ideology just means guideposts to thinking. It is a shorthand. And it's crucially important, because there is only enough time between now and the next election to explain to Albertans what the Alberta Party's shorthand actually is.
So the candidates running for the leadership of the Alberta Party must, in my view, offer an ideological view. They must explain what the Alberta Party identity will be under their leadership. They must win election on that promise, and then spend three years indoctrinating the party with those ideas, fundraising for their own salary, and sharing the ideas with Albertans. It's brutal. The leadership candidates for other parties don't have to start from scratch in that way.
What do I think it should be? My ideal Alberta Party would believe these things: First, that democracy - giving the greatest possible equitable access to legislative power to all Albertans (as opposed to organizations) - should be the first priority. We need an overhaul of campaign finance, election methods, and nomination procedures so as to mitigate, as far as possible, the powers of incumbency and wealth. If you think that a company should be able to buy the government it wants, vote for someone else. Second, sustainability - the idea that a society, economy, environment, system that lasts, either by withstanding or adapting to change, is better than one that collapses and needs to be replaced - should be a guiding principle of everything the government does. If you think it's OK to take the benefit of natural resources now and leave the costs of their extraction to our children, vote for someone else. Third, prosperity - the idea that all Albertans should have the opportunity to have a great quality of life, however they define it - should be the government's objective. If you want Alberta to stop taking advantage of its resources to save the trees, vote for someone else. Sustainability trumps prosperity, and democracy trumps all.
That's what I think the Alberta party should stand for. And when the time comes, it should propose some policies that are extreme on those ideological grounds. Like real, guaranteed electoral reform, changes to royalties and taxes, and a whole-life educational system that prepares people not just for employment, but also for employing others.
What the specific ideas proposed by the candidates are, however, aren't as important as the requirement that the party pick a corner to fight from. No one scores any goals from the neutral zone. And if the party goes through another election where Albertans don't know what the party stands for - with a popular vote of less than 2% - the party will simply cease to exist, and all the opportunity that has been gained thus far will be lost.
So yeah. No pressure.
[Images from greg-clark.ca and albertaparty.ca]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)