Alta Liberals call for new conflict rules over old contract

[Lurch]

True. Have assistants getting paid might be more technically legit, but it would still be a shameless grab of public funds.

Today's Herald has an article by Archie McClean (Pg A4) that says Maskell indicated that the 50 hour day actually took place over a 3 day period. This still works out to 17 hours per day, in other words every waking hour. Not sure how he figures even this is legitimate, but I guess if the your buddy is paying the bill with public $$ it's not a problem (at least in AB).

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Snakeeye

While I agree with the contract not being tendered being a major concern, I am curious if Taft can actually show a "pattern".

Does he need to show that this happened more than once?

Its a valid concern, and if this is the only time it evevr happened its too often!

[killer_carlson]

People are talking about two seperate issues here:

1) Is there a conflict of interest over him getting the contract (I would suggest No, given the ethics commissioner cleared him)
2) Is there an issue of over-billing or padded bills? (This seems to have more merit given the materials in the news story).

Taft should be focusing in on that however, he is selling out because "conflict of interest" is more likely to get media play. Good for Taft to catch the situation, bad for him to spin it in this way.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Slava

Does he need to show that this happened more than once?

Its a valid concern, and if this is the only time it evevr happened its too often!

If he wishes to claim a pattern, then yes, he has to show it happened more than once.

[Lurch]

The pattern is being established - last week, the Liberals were going on about grants (some to PC insiders) that were not awarded according to the standards in place. The pattern is that the gov't is sloppy with how it awards money/contracts, and that the potential for serious corruption is in place, if not done in practice. Stelmach's leadership campaign implicitly stated the same thing - transparent and accountable leadership was his promise, suggesting that this has been lacking under Klein.