If we are truly running more efficiently we wouldn't need one manager for every four employees.
One of the challenges of the current trend to contracting-out services is that you still tend to maintain the originanal manager to employee ratio even though the staff now work for another organization. In this situation, managers aren't supervising employees but setting policy, authorising payments/ budgets -- stuff that is usually beyond the paygrade of a clerk.
For example, there are managers responsible for highway maintenance that have no employees reporting to them but they are responsible for the actions/ budget / priorities of the contractors. Similarly, as AHS contracts out more services, the person overseeing budget, policies and contract compliance still tends to be of certain experience, knowledge, paygrade to make contractors stay on course.
Funny I thought we wanted to run a more efficient government with the brightest and the best? Are government workers not recruited from the same labour pool as private ones?
Nope. There's a special pool of lazy, time killing and wasteful people who's only goal is to score a plush lifetime government job and just take money from hard working tax payers.
Nope. There's a special pool of lazy, time killing and wasteful people who's only goal is to score a plush lifetime government job and just take money from hard working tax payers.
Nope. There's a special pool of lazy, time killing and wasteful people who's only goal is to score a plush lifetime government job and just take money from hard working tax payers.
I couldn't find a government site that had the statistics. This is what I have found though.
Quote:
Liberal Leader Raj Sherman said that his party has long said the government has "too many managers managing managers."
Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith said the plan to cut managers by 10 per cent does not go far enough. Smith noted the ratio of staff to managers in government is four to one, compared to a private-sector ratio of more than 10 to one. "You'd need to cut management by 50 per cent if you're actually serious about reforming the way the public service works," she said.
I know she (and other parties) have stated this in the Legislature too and have never been challenged on it.
I checked with a senior WRP adviser and the ratio came out a few years ago when the government confirmed there were about 6000 senior managers who either qualified for or received management bonuses.
Quote:
The bonuses--which range from zero to 30 per cent of salary--were paid out to about 6,000 senior government managers.
I too am DONE with Redford and the PCs. There is no excuse for that kind of deficit in a province as strong and prosperous as ours.
The conversation needs to change when talking about cuts to government departments - instead of "look how much was cut" the real focus should be "look how much money they still get despite the cuts".
Among other things, we need an overhaul of how we operate health care in this province.
I think the numbers demonstrate exactly why we dont need a sales tax in this province.
Link please? (to be clear, I'm being incredulous, not asking you to provide a link!) It is stated explicitly in the link you provided. WRP states that Alberta's per capita income tax revenue is x% higher than the national average. Ok, fine, I will take that number at face value (even though no source is cited.) However, from that statistic, the WRP draws the absurd conclusion that Alberta does not have a revenue problem. The obvious problem with that conclusion is that income tax is only one of many possible sources of revenue. For example, all other provinces rely heavily on sales taxes for revenue whereas Alberta does not. The conclusion drawn in the link you provided is therefore either disingenuous or incompetent.
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It's really interesting. The budget has been out for a couple of days and the only thing we've heard from the Wildrose supporters here is that its "bad". No specific examples, no actual factual points on anything, its just not good. Allowing the CTF into the lock-up really showed its worth as well....wait, what did he say again? Right, basically nothing that he didn't say prior to the budgets release and certainly nothing off any great value.
I have some definite misgivings with what the government has done in this budget. The cuts to seniors and the fact that they've targeted them and post-secondary education ahead of the corporate welfare programs (outlined in an excellent manner in the Wildrose plan) is atrocious! I am definitely sad to see things like the Community Spirit Grant be eliminated. I realise that this is probably an unknown to a lot of people, but basically those grants are given to nonprofits who use them to better our communities; you have to apply, but they gave community groups a chance to get a little bit of money to do some pretty important things. I am not 100% sure, but I think the funds came from lottery revenue, and in all honesty that money should be redistributed.
What I am most displeased about though is that we have a government with a huge majority and they are too scared to use any political capital to do the right thing. While I applaud them for saying they'll save $5B in resource revenue in coming years, I want that somewhat locked away so it can't be used for pet projects and Dani-dollars, Ralph-bucks or whatever stupid election buying scheme these politicians come up with next! More importantly, Redford and the PC's have a one-time chance to reconfigure our revenue system. Implement a pure consumption tax and eliminate or deeply slash our income taxes. They can do this and its painfully obvious that its the right thing to do; they could implement it, and have nearly three full years to sell it before the next election...but they're too scared.
Who would have thought the provinces largest employer would require a large management structure.
It doesn't need to be this large. For some reason, the Stelmach government thought it was a good idea to abolish the decentralized health regions and create a massive top-down bureaucracy (PEI is the only other province with a single health authority). I don't think it's a coincidence that health spending has increased at the rate it has since AHS was created.
Redford sold the budget hard in the days leading up, and by herself. Caucus did not see it. Rumours have swirled for a while of a caucus revolt, with as many as 18 mlas approaching the speaker about becoming independents (I have also heard 11, and I have heard its all crap and untrue)
The other possibility is they still (Horner and Redford and the inner circle) think the Calvary is coming in the form of oil and gas revenues and they are simply pushing the problems down the road. Not scared but calculating. (Not that I am a fan at all of this idea).
It doesn't need to be this large. For some reason, the Stelmach government thought it was a good idea to abolish the decentralized health regions and create a massive top-down bureaucracy (PEI is the only other province with a single health authority). I don't think it's a coincidence that health spending has increased at the rate it has since AHS was created.
You replace X small bureaucracies to create one massive one, hard to say whether you're better off: BC has six CEOs, six CFOs, six CIOs, dozens and dozens of VPs and regional directors etc. I guess you could look at one sixth of the list of "Executive Directors, VPs and yadda yaddas" and claim it is better but you're still only looking at one sixth of the province's cost on healthcare bureaucracy.
It's hard to blame the increased health costs on the creation of a superboard when the superboard's creation merely coincided with some of the largest construction and expansion projects the province has seen. The South Medical Centre only just got underway when AHS was created. Foothills was in the middle of it's ~$2B expansion and now we're in the position of needing to staff and supply these things. So in Calgary alone there was essentially $4B worth of projects (in only two of the hospitals) that were given the go ahead before AHS was created but now AHS is taking the heat for because their budget is increasing to accommodate the running of such facilities province wide.
Satya Das, a shrewd commentator from Cambridge Strategies in Edmonton, observes in a postbudget commentary: “Do Albertans really feel entitled to the best of everything, without reckoning we need to fund the cost of all the societal benefits we receive? Until citizens are ready to pay for our needs and wants out of our earnings, we shouldn’t blame politicians for selling off the resources that are our children’s birthright in order to indulge our lifestyle.” Yes, Mr. Das, but who’s listening?
Year after year, Albertans counted on the least reliable source of revenues – fossil fuel production – to give themselves low taxes and munificent public services. By doing so, they resisted each year putting aside chunks of those revenues from fossil fuels in the Heritage Fund. As a consequence, they kept little aside for tomorrow’s uncertainties, and spent extensively today – while keeping taxes low.
They rejected a sales tax, the most reliable source of government revenue. They drove down corporate taxes. They gave the oil and gas sector the lowest royalty rates around, according to the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. They gave themselves a low flat tax personal income tax system. And when times were really good, their premier – Ralph Klein in those days – cut them each $200 cheques to share in the good fortune.
So like good conservative people, they kept taxes low, lower and lowest. But they spent in the past decade unlike faithful conservatives – beyond population growth and inflation year after year, presuming that the fossil fuel boom would continue to cover the gap between how they were willing to tax themselves and what they wanted from government.
It’s said that those who ignore history are consigned to repeat its mistakes – which might apply to Alberta governments, since if there’s one lesson from their province’s history, it’s that natural resource revenues of all kinds are volatile. The boom-and-bust cycle is an exaggeration to describe fossil fuel revenues these days, but the cycle of ups and downs is not.
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