What Albertan's Want The Next Election To Be About - Part 2.

My post yesterday dealt with the relative importance of the top and bottom issues in our conjoint study on 15 key policy issues done in the fall of 2006 during the Alberta PC Leadership campaign. We noted the management of environmental issues around water, land and air quality was the #1 issue on the minds of Albertans who participated in the study.

Environment has been #1 before but historically gets bumped when election time happens and other issues take control of the political agenda. That is not likely to be the case in the next Alberta election, presuming it is held in the spring of 2008. This because of how dominant the management of the environment is to the value concerns of Albertans now and for the future.

The posting identified the low end issues too but here are some results from the middle of the field. They were issues that were getting lots of news coverage but they were not the dominant concerns on the minds of influential Albertans last fall. They included creating a diversified value added economy (7th), maintaining public infrastructure like schools and roads (8th), addressing labour and skills shortages (9th), safe communities (10th) and quality and access to post-secondary education in at 11th place.

All of these are important issues but the ranking and intensity of the concern of Albertans means they are not most important issues for government to deal immediately with if they want to have a policy and political that satisfies the concerns of the majority of citizens.

Next we asked about how Albertans felt their government was performing in each issue area. The overall average performance rating of all issues was only 28.60 percent. Nothing to write home about but not unexpected given that government had been drifting for about 7 years up to that time.

The best performance by government at 51% was in the area of having safe communities, the 10th ranked issue. This is not too surprising since we only asked influentials who are very connected and involved in their communities and would naturally feel safe in them. A statistically random survey that did not focus on engaged citizens and opinion leaders may show different results.

As for the most important issues, like the environment, the performance rating was only 18%. Lots of room for improvement there! Health ranked at #2 performance ranking was well above average at 38%, not bad at all. Reducing poverty the 3rd most important issue saw a performance rating of only 16%. Lots of work to do there! Managing growth was the 5th ranked priority and only had a performance rating of 12%. That is some of the low hanging fruit for Ed Stelmach and one of his five key principles.

In fact Premier Stelmach’ Five Priorities fit very well with the concerns of Albertans that we identified. Why then is he having trouble connecting with Albertans? It is not his policy agenda or his political capacity. It is summed up in 2 words, communications and execution. That is where improvements have to be made and time is a-wastin.’

What Albertan's Want The Next Election To Be About.

What will it take to reassure Albertan’ that their government policy agenda is on the right track and focused on what is important? That is the big question facing the Stelmach government and anyone who looks to replace it come the spring of 2008 and a much anticipated provincial election.

I did a conjoint study on 15 key issues on the minds of some 350 influential Albertans last fall during the PC leadership. By influential, I mean people who are involved in their communities and whose opinions matter to other people. We did not just involve the rich, famous and powerful and we did not just reach out to Tories.

The findings are fascinating. We knew at the end of September, long before the traditional pollsters and mainstream media, that managing the environment issues of water, land and air quality had replaced health care as the #1 issue on the minds of Albertans. Not only was environmental management the most important factor it was well over twice as important as health care quality and access. Equally as fascinating was the need to reduce poverty coming in at #3, topping concerns over education quality, which was in fourth place. Managing growth and providing open and transparent government rounded out the top 6 issues.

The remaining 9 issues were of little importance, relatively speaking, with managing oil and gas royalties (12th) lowering taxes (13th) dealing with resource revenue surpluses (14th). The least important issue on the minds of Albertans was resolving problems facing Aboriginal Albertans.

This study shows the environmental and social agendas facing Alberta today are trumping the economic issues. These top six issues are the key drivers determining what is important to Albertans, and while it represented only 40% of the issues we studied it accounted for 70% of the overall relative importance ranking of concerns on the minds of Albertans.

So Premier Stelmach, there you have it. If you are seen by Albertans as the authoritative, authentic, informed and knowledgeable leader on those six issues you can expect to win with a landslide.

Later in the week I will do another posting on this research and show how Albertans thought their government was actually performing in each issue area. More fascinating results to come.

Are the Feds Ignoring the Mountain Pine Beetle Impact in Alberta?

The Harper government is big into Mountain Pine Beetle spending in BC but seriously lagging in doing anything about the Alberta infestation. The recent conference on the impact of MPB infestation in Grande Prairie pointed out the damages is already done to the forests in BC and the real need for help there is to assist communities and industry to adapt to the post-beetle reality. I will post on these MPB conference comments from the Grande Prairie conference in the near future once the video tapes of the speeches are on DVD and I have them in hand.

If we do not stop it in Alberta, the experts are suggesting it then spreads and reaches out across the boreal forest throughout the entire country. That is devastation that has impacts beyond forest industry and communities, important as those are, but also in the negative effect on the balance of the planet’s entire ecosystem.

The Alberta Forest Products Association has already complained about the political nature of BC pre-election spending by the Harper government on railway upgrades in the name of MPB action.

I have been working with Glenn Taylor, Mayor of Hinton and the Chair of the Grande Alberta Economic Region, (GAER) on some strategic approaches to help the west central Alberta communities adapt to the reality of MPB on their communities. They are very proactive and we have done a video on Policy Channel explaining what the MPB infestation means and what needs to be done. Local governments need the feds and the province to step up and damn quickly if we are to do anythings effective in dealing with the infestation impacts.

No doubt the BC industry and affected communities need help but the Fed response is reactionary at best. The also need to get proactive in Alberta and start putting some of their efforts and funds in here too. Albertans are Canadians too.

Toffler's Magnificant Metaphor for Institutional Change

Every now and then you get a great writer who gives you a metaphor that is intriguing as well as instructive. This is how I see the comparison of institutional change metaphor of Alvin and Heide Toffler in their new book “Revolutionary Wealth.” The chapter on “Clash of Speeds” deals with institutional “leaders and laggards.” This post is a paraphrase of what they say in terms of what is happening to key institutions in America (likely Canada too) and the rate of change they are “driving” as we move to a 21st century economy.

The Tofflers ask you to consider nine key institutions like cars “speeding” down the highway of change and to consider their capacity and experience and their rate of change.

First at 100 mph, the fastest change agents are companies and business, which Toffler says “actually drive many of the transformations of the rest of society.” They use technology to blast ahead and force suppliers and distributors to make parallel changes all due to intense competition.

At 90 mph we have civil society who they “consider collectively, and packed like circus clowns into that second car.” This is a burgeoning sector of thousands of groups “churning and changing” in pro and anti business ways, includes NGOs, professional groups, coalitions and even sports federations. “Because NGO led movements tend to be small, fast, flexible units organized into networks they run rings around large corporate and government institutions.

At 60 mph is the “American” family that has morphed in the face of industrialization where it shrank and abandoned the old style nuclear model of a dad, a stay-at-home mom and 2 kids under 18…fewer than 25% of North American homes fit that designation today. Family is now embracing single parents, unmarried couples, multiple remarriages and blended families, geriatric families, gay unions either civil or marriages. Now the home is more than a castle or a sanctuary and it is about to “in source” as tele-workers stay home and work from the family environment.

Clocking at 30 mph is the labour movement slowed by the change of “muscle work to mind work, from interchangeable skills to non-interchangeable skills and form blindly reputational to innovational tasks.” Temporary teams and projects dominate the new work groupings while unions languish in 1930s organizational models and expectations.

“Sputtering along in the slow lane are government bureaucracies and regulatory agencies” running at 25 mph. “Skilled at deflecting criticism and delaying change…the pyramidal bureaucracies run the day-to-day affair of government…slowing the pace of change for government and business.”

Coming along at ten mph even bureaucrats can see these folks in their rear view mirror…the schools systems. Toffler bemoans the lack of competition and an educational institutional culture persisting that was designed to serve an outmoded factory-style industrial age. He asks, “Can a ten mile per hour education system prepare students for jobs in companies moving at a 100 mph?” Hummm?

Chugging along at 5 mph are the big scale world based dysfunctional international global governance inter-governmental institutions like the UN, NATO, IMF, WTO to name a few. Perhaps the challenges to national sovereignty that are now in play will emphasize how dysfunctional these institutions really are.

Next a 3 mph Toffler tags political structures in rich countries, earmarking (sic) Congress and the White House to political parties themselves. No reason to believe that this designation would not apply equally to Canada to my mind. Designed for a more relaxed and leisurely debating society, they are hard pressed to respond to the faster action and high complexity and the new world reality of knowledge based globalized societies.

Lastly, the tortoise time change magic of 1 mph is captured by the slowest changing institution in modern society, todays the legal system. While law firms are quick to adapt with new responsive specialties and technologies, the pace at which the system operates is still glacial, that is pre-climate change glacial by the way. Toffler says “The body of law is said to be ‘living’ –but only barely so.” Sure the law needs to change slowly and to act as measure of predictability and an application of a judicious brake on overly rapid economic and social change. Toffler rightly asks, “But how slow is slow?”

Something to chew on for sure.

Will There be Big Changes in the Alberta Health System?

The over-arching political and policy question facing the Stelmach government around hospital safety standards is how Alberta got into this situation in the first place. The facts are starting to come out and more will emerge over time no doubt. The resignation of the East Central Health Board is a start; media reports say more changes of people in positions of authority will be forthcoming. Hancock has ordered all other RHAs to review their situation on infection control and sterilization practices and to report to HIM in a month.

This is clearly a situation where we must fix the problem but I also think we need to fix the blame too. I have not yet read the Health Quality Council of Alberta report or the GOA response but I will. I may have more to say on the subject then too. In the meantime I think there is some blame to be fixed on the old policy around the political reasons behind the decision to decentralize health care into regional authorities in Alberta.

Personally I think the idea of regional health care authorities has merit. It can help inform and design policy that can better understand and respond to local differences and realities in the province. That said it has not always worked that way and until the recent leadership change and Hancock taking over Health and Wellness the unique health care needs of the people Wood Buffalo were blithely ignored. Hancock almost immediately upon his swearing in put a couple of hundred million into health care needs into Wood Buffalo…and acknowledged that was just a start.

The problem of the good idea of RHAs is that they had some serious political flaws from the get go. Those flaws were the unspoken political motives behind the policy decision. First they were supposed to save money in the system by getting the system out of the hands of bureaucrats and into local people who would be “right thinking” about serving the health care needs of their region. It did not save money, it tended to starve the local systems instead. Once the debt and deficit was done we ended up paying a lot more just to catch up to the infrastructure deficit and the need to respond to growth.

The second flaw was the governance issue of the relationship between the RHAs and the GOA politically. The stated reason for RHAs was to get the decision making power closer to the people and “out of the dome.” That did not really happen. Instead the RHAs became a buffer to protect the politicians from having to deal directly with citizen concerns. That was (and is?) true of may other regional boards in other areas from Children's Services to Persons with Developmental Disabilities just name a couple.,

So when we fix blame, it is not just the board members and the problem with professionals meeting standards…it is the governance and politics that motivated the RHAs in the original instances that must carry some of the blame load.

I’ll bet the accountability and governance concerns are what Hancock is looking at when he says he will work with the RHAs “…to work towards a more cohesive provincial system.” Or when he says “this is not about reorganizing the health authorities again, at this stage. That is not to say it wouldn’t be an outcome of the whole process.”

Good government is always good politics. Rarely is the reverse true and we are seeing the consequences of that in this major health safety issue in Alberta today.