As the provincial government prepares its 2018 budget, Premier Rachel Notley, told the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties Nov. 16, she plans "compassionate cuts" to spending.
President George W. Bush didn't coin the phrase American political phrase "compassionate conservatism", it predated him by 10 years, but he took the concept into high office.
President Bush's compassionate conservatism was rooted in his reading of the New Testament.
What he meant by it in practical political terms was lost in the White House turmoil after 9/11.
The NDP philosophy of compassionate government dates back, in Canada, to the social gospel of Salem Bland, a Methodist minister who was a key inspiration to the formation of the Canadian Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner to the NDP.
There is a difference between socialist and conservative compassion in government decisions.
Conservatives, as a whole, believe in individual responsibility. Compassionate acts by government are driven by citizens who delegate to government their personal obligation to care for their neighbour.
When conservative governments put money into compassionate programs, they do so with the consent of the governed or at least that's the theory.
Canadian socialism was born when governments repressed ordinary citizens or stepped back and allowed others to do so.
The Winnipeg general strike of 1919, as well as the bloody end on the streets of Regina of the 1935 On to Ottawa trek by unemployed men from British Columbia work camps, are political milestones in the development of Canadian socialism.
The theory evolved that only socialists could be trusted to govern. They would ensure government acted responsibly for the welfare of the people, rather than repressing them.
However, right wing "slash and burn" and left wing "nanny government" are oversimplified clichés that don't get to the root of compassionate politics.
On either side of the political spectrum there is the moral imperative to live within the government's means.
In the 20th century, western democratic governments ran up deficits to stimulate the economy and end depression and recession – on behalf of the business and the people.
But the balance – which called for spending reductions in good times to pay off debt incurred in bad times – has been ignored.
In Alberta, successive Progressive Conservative governments lived beyond their means and created political expectations that could only be met with more annual deficits.
Even Ralph Klein's government, the great debt and deficit slayer of 1993, lived beyond its means in the second decade of Klein's regime.
Rachel Notley inherited this debt along with the worst oil-price recession in Alberta's history.
She responded with deficit budgets as a necessary evil.
She came to power with the support of the public service unions – teachers, nurses, bureaucrats – whose leadership who react to spending cuts now as if the thing that matters most is their turn at the trough.
In the election season that opened this winter, there will be finger-pointing on all sides of the province's four-party legislature and multi-union public service.
What the province really needs is for everyone to step back and set aside grasping, covetous, self-serving politics.
Alberta needs to rediscover the politics of compassion.
- Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.
