After the passing of Peter Lougheed last year, another Alberta PC titan is gone, with Ralph Klein passing away at the age of 70.
Although it is customary to offer tributes and praise at times like this, many of my motivations for getting involved in politics grew from a strong dislike of the way Klein was governing Alberta. Over the years, I haven’t been shy about criticizing the man on this blog.
What I will say is that Ralph was, hands down, one of the best Canadian politicians of his generation. He single-handedly saved the PC dynasty in 1993, and stayed popular with the public, in spite of (or because of) his colourful antics. He remains the gold standard of the folksy “every day man” politician – someone voters felt they could relate to and trust.
In a world of cookie-cutter politicians, Ralph Klein was special. He will be missed.
4 responses to “Ralph’s World”
While it is right and customary to have sympathies for Ralph’s family at his passing as well as to have some sympathies for the illnesses that Ralph had to face up until the end of his life. That being said, I am not going to give a gushing tributes that I have seen in the past 24 hours(I had to turn the channel because I felt like I was going to vomit). Apart from his policies on education, health care, and the environment was that everyone said how they admired him because they would have a beer with him. Personlly, I don’t really give a shit whether I can have a beer with someone because what matters is the vision of government they present–which Ralph clearly lacked. While those who knew Ralph said he was a nice guy, the affect of the policies weren’t. I was unemployed during that the 90s and I didn’t see the kindness in his policies or for that matter with his supporters. Ralph’s government and his supporters referred to those people having a hard enough time surviving in this tough province as “lazy” and the “scum of the earth”. That isn’t something that as an Albertan that makes me feel any pride at all. So while I can understand people wanting to say nice things about this guy on his departure from this world, I would hope that people don’t get let their judgments getting clouded so they don’t see the possible negative effects of his government. Fortunately, I think the historians will evaluate his record and I think the judgments will be more informed.
I believe the historians will understand Ralph’s policies to be ultimately more kind to citizens than any of the Liberal governments I can name. Saddling people with billions of dollars in debt does serious damage to the most vulnerable members of our society.
Klein’s critics tend to take one of two tracks – either Klein had heartless/bad policies, or he was successful only because of oil prices. Neither position holds up.
Not only does Alberta have stable finances and low taxes, it delivers public goods effectively. If you look at the PISA standardized tests, Albertans outperform students from the rest of Canada (and Canada has one of the best education systems in the world). For all the talk of heartlessness, Alberta spends the second-most per capita on healthcare of any province (behind Newfoundland). Alberta has below average child poverty rates as well.
Nor can we simply attribute Alberta’s success to oil. When Klein took power, oil prices were relatively depressed. Even as revenues went up later in the 90s, transfer payments from Ottawa were slashed (how the same people can praise Chretien for balancing the budget, and curse Harris/Klein for cuts in the same breath is beyond me).
I still stand by my earlier comments of those policies as being quite heartless. It wasn’t just the cuts in benefits it was the attitude that people on the dole were lazy–which wasn’t completely true. I work at a public university and see the problems that we are facing everyday as part of his mismanagement. While you blame the Chretien Liberals for cutting transfer payments, there is still a lot to blame his administration for. The biggest determining factor is the opening up of the tar sands which has lead to an increase in CO2 leads to climate change. This legacy will doom us all if we are not careful and we won’t a civilization and a history to write about.