My dream job was to become a radio talk show hostess, a high profile and powerful opinion-influencer. No budgets to manage, no employees and little prep or skill—just the gift of gab and an opinionated self. No requirement for facts as long as one didn’t cross the legal line into slander.
Then there is the premier’s job that oversees an organization with a $60 billion dollar expense budget, fluctuating multi-billion dollars revenues annually, 290,000 direct employees and 300 agencies, boards and commissions representing another 70,000 employees. In contrast to an opinion-influencer, this job comes with loads of responsibility and a reckoning every four years.
Now we have a new premier, Danielle Smith, who has made the big leap from opinion-influencer into the premier’s chair. She isn’t the first one in the conservative world to make this leap.
Preston Manning spent his entire life as an opinion-influencer. He was a ‘consultant’ before successfully becoming the father of the reform movement and setting in place the demise of a hundred-year-old progressive conservative party. After politics, he continued his highly successful influence through the Manning Foundation and was instrumental in the rise of both Pierre Poilievre and Danielle Smith.
Stephen Harper’s only job before politics was an opinion-influencer with the right-wing think tank, the National Citizens Coalition. Since leaving office, he’s become a ‘consultant’!
Jason Kenney’s life before politics was an opinion-influencer with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a single-issue, right-wing lobby group.
Pierre Poilievre had no real-life employment experience. He first worked as a staffer for Alliance Party leader Stockwell Day and then as a ‘consultant’ with former PC cabinet minister, Jonathan Denis.
Granted, no one is qualified to become premier or prime minister, but life experiences, critical thinking and developed leadership skills are essential. Regretfully, these are qualities that life-time, opinion-influencers get little practice at perfecting.
One doesn’t learn management skills as an opinion-influencer. Everyone they’ve ever worked with, or for, has the same worldview. Usually, they have the same religious background, values and ethnicity. Their work has kept them from having any meaningful contact or experiences with ‘the others’. They are in a bubble and are easily jaded into believing they are superior and entitled, and ‘the others’ are the enemy who have negatively impacted their lives.
Given the job of opinion-influencers, once in power the quality of truth takes a dive. Moving from the world of ‘spin’ to real life is too big a leap. Opinion-influencers’ lifework is spin. Spin the facts so that fund-raising letters are more successful. Spin the facts to keep tribe members angry at ‘the others’. Spin the facts, to push ideological-driven government policies, rather than public policies good for everyone.
Opinion-influencers aren’t the ones working jobs in our society that raise food, teach students, invent, heal the sick, produce electricity and gasoline, save lives, build and maintain critical infrastructure. They do not create wealth nor add to a country’s gross domestic output. They just opine.
So, it should come as no surprise how unceremoniously Manning and Kenney were kicked out of their respective parties, or the thrashing that Harper took in a general election when he lost to Justin Trudeau. Sad indeed, Stephen Harper was an exceptionally good Prime Minister while leading a minority parliament, but once gaining a majority, Harper quickly turned his attention to governing for his tribe which became unpalatable to the majority of Canadians.
A new Alberta premier, who really wanted to save public health care, would have met with AHS management and the Chief Medical Officer to discuss why they made the decisions they did during the pandemic. She would have asked them whether they made their decisions alone or were they acting on the direction of the UCP government and the health minister? An unwise premier just picks and fires scapegoats.
A wise leader understands the importance of experience, history, wisdom, continuity and makes changes only after gaining a better understanding of facts and reality. A wise leader would have consulted with stakeholders, looked at options, considered the benefits and pitfalls of each option then made a decision. An unwise leader charges ahead with ‘her’ decision because she ‘knows best’.
The UCP government under Kenney and now under Smith are clear examples of unwise leadership. Take for example Kenney’s non-consultative decisions that were all reversed within three years or less.
Placing a cap on doctor services in 2020 (maximum number of patients per doctor), only to reverse it in 2022 when it became obvious this change had triggered even worse odds for Albertans to find a family doctor.
Tearing up the Master agreement with doctors in 2020, then reversing it in 2021 after it became clear this decision caused many physicians to take early retirement or move to another province, adding to Alberta’s already critical doctor shortages.
Getting rid of the NDP’s funding grants to the film and television industry, and replacing it with an industry tax credit program with a cap offering much less money than the NDP grant program. Reversing the cap a year later, after losing major projects to other provinces.
Announcing ‘coal-mining in the Rockies’ after inking deals with foreign coal companies, then reversing course after finding out ranchers and the Agri-industry in southern Alberta actually consider clean water more important than coal revenue.
De-indexing tax rate brackets, disability payments for severely handicapped Albertans and seniors benefits, effectively increasing personal tax rates and reducing income and benefits to seniors and the most vulnerable in the middle of a 100-year pandemic event. Today they are all being re-indexed.
When you think about it, why would we expect opinion-influencers to be any different?
Opinion-influencers don’t consult, they know what they and their insiders want. Opinion-influencers don’t seek all the facts before making a decision, they already know what ‘facts’ they believe. Opinion-influencers don’t compromise, they work for their tribe only. Opinion-influencers don’t build trust with the whole, they only seek trust and obedience from their followers. Opinion-influencers never work with competing ideas or experts, their decisions are pre-set.
So, no one in Alberta should be surprised how poorly Jason Kenney performed as premier and absolutely no one should expect anything but more chaos and poor management to continue under Danielle Smith. Management is a skill learned and developed in a world of competing priorities, values and ideas—alas, a skill completely foreign to life-long opinion-influencers.
Brenda Schimke
ECA Review
