Lukaszuk's letter an opportunity, or else

Advanced education minister Thomas Lukaszuk has sent a heavy-handed, non-negotiable edict to the province's 26 colleges and universities. It came like a thunderbolt out of the Tory blue — and it will precipitously change the way all of them operate.

It will certainly change the way students make choices for post-secondary education.

And I find myself in agreement with a good part of what's being done. Or at least, the stated intent.

As university commentators on news reports and radio talk shows have already said: the devil is in the details. Stating government intentions in a five-page letter to all college and university boards is one thing; the actual work is in the follow-up, which we have yet to see.

But if the Red Deer College board of governors can finesse its way through what will be two weeks of chaotic discussion, and if the blunt force of government handles this right, families in Central Alberta can come out big winners in Lukaszuk's proposed revamp.

"It's time we rethink how we deliver education. This will not be mandated from my office. It will be collaborative," said the minister. Or else.

"What we arrive at is negotiable but the fact is there will be change and change has to occur — and that is not negotiable."

The boards of governors have until April 11 to draft a reply to Lukaszuk's “letter of expectation.” For “expectation” insert “the reason we give you all this money.”

Here's one expectation. The province wants to establish a “Campus Alberta” wherein students in any academic program anywhere in Alberta will have full transferability to the same programs in other institutions.

That could be a Godsend to Red Deer College — if things are handled right.

Why have we been fighting for years for Red Deer College to have full university status? It's because not having one means that any student in our area who wants a degree has to leave our region to get one.

The college, as well as Red Deer taxpayers and business groups have been complaining for years that once we send our students away for higher education, they seldom come back. We've been paying for that “brain drain” for decades.

If students in Red Deer can get the first three years of an academic program here, and finish their final year at a university which would grant them their degree, they and their families would save tens of thousands of dollars.

And it becomes more likely the student would begin career planning here, rather than in Edmonton or Calgary.

So the universities must first review all their programs, to see if they are really “in demand by employers and students." More, Luaszuk's letter tells them to "enhance your work with business and industry to maximize the responsiveness to community and regional economic and social needs."

All of this is right up RDC's alley. It's been the college's bread and butter for a long time. What's missing is the completion of the college's mission to offer a full menu of both academic and trade options. RDC has transfer contracts for a limited number of programs with universities, but Lukaszuk wants more.

So do we. For instance, a student could begin a bachelor of science program in Red Deer, and study here three years, living at home. Upon completing the program's final year at the University of Alberta with full transferability, that student would become eligible to enter the U of A's masters-level program in occupational therapy. Now there's a program with a future.

That's just one example. There could be a dozen others.

The U of A has responded, saying they don't want to be a cookie-cutter institution. But they have been increasing their institutional emphasis on post-graduate programs and research (at the cost of excellence in undergrad instruction) for years.

Smaller regional colleges like RDC can make better cookies, cheaper — and in the places that employers and taxpayers want them.

Sit down quickly with the devil, and work out the details. Or else.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at readersadvocate.blogspot.ca

Are Canadians less loyal to their universities?

Watching March Madness over the weekend, a Canadian viewer of the NCAA men's basketball championship simply can't miss the cultural difference between our two nations, in how we relate to our colleges and universities.

One can't help but wonder: why are Americans so much more devoted to their universities than we are? What's the source of this fanatical fandom — the almost religious zeal — that alumni in the U.S. seem to have for their alma mater?

It's an order of magnitude so much higher than the Canadian experience; surely someone must have studied the phenomenon to try to explain it.

Here's an story I picked up at a social gathering over the weekend.

A friend, just returned from their regular winter vacation in Arizona, told of a golf date he had at their resort. Members arrive at the clubhouse and are mixed for tee times with the other members, to go out as random foursomes.

My friend was wearing a hat with a large letter M, and a a golf mate asked if it meant my friend was from Michigan, or was a graduate of the state university. Why? Because the companion was from Ohio. He owed his loyalty to Ohio State — and there was no way he was ever going to even share a tee box with anyone connected to the University of Michigan.

These are gents of retirement age at a winter resort, not hot-blooded young university students who found themselves in the wrong pub.

We don't get that kind of loyalty in Canada. We don't pay for it, either.

The alumni associations of Canadian universities and colleges must look across the border with envy at the captive crowds of graduates who can be relied upon for regular financial support.

There are quiet corners on some U.S. campuses, well-treed (or ivy-covered, depending on climate) with well-appointed chapels so that alumni (or their children) can be married under the university logo.

Lord knows what might happen in a mixed marriage, should a lass from Georgetown meet a lad from Gonzaga. Under whose colours would the children be christened?

In our family, between parents and children we have collectively paid tuition and fees for 25 years of post-secondary education (not counting the academic enslavement of one as a sessional instructor working on a doctorate). Those years were spent at seven different institutions.

The alumni association letters arrive quite regularly, asking for our grateful support. Where should our loyalties lie?

Cost of education doesn't seem to explain the differences in alumni loyalty.

American students pay a lot more out of pocket for their educations, but student debt per graduate is similar between our two countries.

Just the same, there is a trillion-dollar U.S. student loan bill outstanding, and millions of students are in default. You can't use private-versus-public support of tuition costs to explain why U.S. grads are so much more fanatically loyal than Canadian grads.

I'm going to suggest the differences are part of cultural history.

America gained nationhood with a violent revolution against Britain, but retained part of its class system.

America saw itself as just as good as Britain, and to prove it, built ivy-league schools that are just as class-based, and resemble the exclusivity of Oxford and Cambridge.

A working-class student who qualifies can enter both, but on acceptance takes on a different (higher) status. In equal-opportunity U.S., status is determined in part by where one gets one's professional credentials.

Thus, it is important for alumni to promote the status of their alma mater.

In Canada, we retained the British tradition in legal and public institutions, but rejected the rigid class system. We try to rank our universities (Macleans magazine makes an heroic effort every year to do just that), but a degree is more of a degree here, regardless of the appended “from the U of ....”

Instead of ranking class size, or the happiness of second-year students, perhaps Macleans should try to rank the per-graduate donations and loyalty of alumni.

Which schools do best in retaining loyalty of their grads? Which schools have more grads showing up to cheer at sports events years later, and which can count on cash gifts or large endowments?

Not quite at the level of U.S. schools, I would imagine. But reviewing that would give a better measurement of our personal connection to the institutions that opened doors for us to achieve our dreams.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at readersadvocate.blogspot.ca

Satisfaction: the new pay benchmark?

There is no easy way for elected officials to set their own pay scale. One probably needs a full term in office to really know if the benefits of trying to do what's best for the city is compensated by a $55,000 city council salary, considering the hours worked, the responsibility and the public grief that comes with the office.

We know that in the business world, CEOs and board members of corporations similar in size and scope to that of a Red Deer-sized city generally earn a whole lot more than elected councillor.

But they are tasked with making a profit for shareholders, not spending money appropriated from people by force of law. But even when they create losses, we've seen plenty of news stories of outrageous bonus plans that enrich the makers of decisions that don't pan out.

How are their salaries calculated? For many corporations, it's done using a system similar to the one our city council adopted this week. There are committees, and even other corporations, that are given the task of answering the question of “what's fair?”

The pressure on these committees or hired consultants, is to reply with ever-increasing salary results. If your own living depends on giving favourable replies, and if you'd like to be called back and increase your clientele, you'd say to top business administrators something like: “Well, yes indeed, your contribution is as valuable as the above-average group to which your company is benchmarked.”

And thus the top-average benchmark becomes the new average, which must be topped by others in the same group of companies who obviously consider themselves above average in worthiness. You can see where this is headed, and that's precisely what often happens in corporate boardrooms.

That's the danger of third-party assessments of salaries. But absent a market-force supply/demand equation for pay, or a negotiated contract with a union, it's probably the best method we can hope for.

When the next mayor and council are elected this fall, their pay package will be set by a third party, who will compare our mayor's total package to that of other Western Canadian cities our size. They will attempt to factor in that Red Deer is growing more rapidly than most other cities our size (and it is), and their relative expected workloads.

Councillors will get 55 per cent of the dollar result of that. And two years hence (mid-term for the next council) and every four years after that, the third-party process of asking “what's fair?” will be renewed.

Does anyone want to bet that Red Deer will not be placed just a little bit above the average benchmark? And that other committees in other cities will not look at Red Deer and readjust their average just a little bit?

For myself, I believe the current mayor and council do indeed earn their pay. And so does the vast majority of Red Deerians.

The city engages regular satisfaction surveys, and though the questions mostly relate to satisfaction with services versus tax load, if there were widespread unhappiness with council pay, that sentiment would show up on the survey.

It never does. It bears repeating that almost all Red Deerians who are asked by a survey that is scientifically balanced to reflect the entire community, are happy with what we get for our taxes. That holds true, survey after survey.

That's the best reflection on council pay that I can think of.

I will tell you here, not to disregard the whining of editorial columnists or the letters to the editor you see roaring on these pages, but to put it all in context.

What are we complaining most about (me included)? Bike lanes? 

Even our snow removal problems are being tackled well. Ask anyone who's driven through pot-holed and snow-drifted Edmonton in the last few days.

That, you must agree, is the sound of a relatively happy city. That is the measure of whether our city council is worth its pay.

Red Deer has indeed taken on a significant infrastructure debt. That's part of the burden of a city that is growing quickly.

Self-appointed watchdogs (newspaper columnists included) engage the public discussion over how much debt we should reasonably be able to handle.

But we do not engage a whole lot of discussion of what a councillor or mayor ought to be paid. Why not?

I say it's because, when we look at the whole picture of Red Deer and look into the future a little, the overwhelming majority of us are happy with what we get for our taxes.

That should be the benchmarked average, for all cities.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at readersadvocate.blogspot.ca

Canada's labour force needs a shakeup

I'm supporting prime minister Stephen Harper when he says he wants to remake the Canadian labour force.

We've misled a whole lot of Canadian youth when we told them — almost as a tenet of faith — that if they went to university and got a degree, that they would find rewarding careers to keep them employed longer, and pay them higher incomes than for someone who didn't.

The million-dollar bonus, it was called.

That tenet of faith holds true in lifetime employment studies (read: pre-2008 economic crash) that university presidents like to quote, but it doesn't seem to hold up under the more rigid test that asks: what would happen if everybody did that?

What happens when everyone pursues the degree instead of the trade, is you get a whole lot of disillusioned young people with student debt loads serving coffee to people who picked up skilled trades.

We taught our youth that “higher education” only meant a full degree.

We said that it was attainable by all, and solidified that by making basic programs practically failure-proof.

We convinced them that the university degree is more to be valued than a tradesman's ticket.

Today, we find ourselves in a country among world leaders for the percentage of people who have university education, but with high unemployment among people under 30, high levels of personal debt — and hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs going begging for people with the right skills.

That lack of trained labour is hurting the economy, and is holding back the recovery which all of our governments depend upon to balance their budgets.

CBC News, quoting unnamed sources within the federal Conservative Party, says the prime minister is “mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.”

If that isn't a sound bite for a planned leak to a select reporter just prior to releasing the federal budget, then the government must have given up doing that kind of thing.

The federal government spends more than $2 billion a year — mostly in transfers to the provinces — for job training. CBC's national affairs specialist Greg Weston reports Harper is more than just a little upset with the lack of results.

Personally, I'm loving it when the highest office in the land wants to kick down some pressure on the provinces, who took the money.

I liked it on the issue of health care, when the feds unilaterally told the provinces: “Here's your money for health care, there's no more to come, now solve the problem amongst yourselves.”

That's the kind of stress that leads to creative problem solving.

That kind of tactic won't work as well with higher education and employment. People choose their own career and education paths; it's not like government can put a quota on so many new pipefitters or electricians per year.

But Harper does have room to make changes. And if government can't set quotas, industries can.

Canada already has apprenticeship programs all over the country, which are both government- and industry-funded. If a certain large company needs a boost in heavy duty mechanics, for instance, and is willing to pony up part of the cost of training just in that area for just one period of time, there's no impediment to government covering the rest.

Once the local shortage is met, the special program can be dropped.

It's better than spending money going abroad for workers.

Another change could be to eliminate the waiting period for EI benefits, for people enrolled in federally-funded training courses in skilled trades.

But the biggest adjustment I believe we need, is between our ears.

We need to adjust the messages we give to students at the time when they are choosing their education paths. There's a reason our universities are overflowing with students, many of whom would quite probably be more successful and happier, five years after graduating from a non-academic or trades program.

But we have told students that only the degree has value. The result is that we have devalued the basic arts and science degrees by making them so accessible as to be fail-proof. The basic credential of “higher education” has since become having two degrees.

And still, for thousands of highly-educated young people, no job.

We can't blame young people for choosing the path we told them to prefer. But if Stephen Harper has a plan to remake that, I'm for it.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at readersadvocate.blogspot.ca

Future of Michener key to the future of Red Deer

Red Deer now has a legitimate leading issue to drive the civic elections this October.

It's not the formation of Red Deer First (a candidates group with a common platform, not a party — you guess the difference). It's interesting enough that a corps of fiscal conservatives wants to hold every seat on council, but the real prime issue will affect Red Deer's future long past the time anyone remembers Red Deer First.

The 300-odd acres of Michener Centre land just above the escarpment of the Gaetz Lakes Sanctuary are as vital to our future as the reclaimed land of Edmonton's former (or soon to be) municipal airport is to that city.

Couple this with the redevelopment of the Riverlands area on the other side of downtown, and it gives Red Deer the opportunity to re-invent itself in a way no other city in Canada will ever have.

And we will only have one chance to do this right.

The first order of business is for this city to see that the 125 aging, frail and vulnerable residents remaining at Michener find secure, comfortable and supported places to live.

That won't be easy. Just recall the growing pains in relocating 200 seniors in long term care. This job will be harder; I really cannot see the government accomplishing this task in one year.

No doubt a vigorous, detailed plan has already been set.

A whole string of government ministers and MLAs swore on stacks of Bibles that the remaining Michener residents would be able to finish their years where they were, in an environment they could understand and cope with. That alone would indicate the writing was on the wall for Michener.

But no government minister would abruptly announce the centre's closure in a year's timeframe without having a complete, detailed plan for the residents. Right?

Even so, unless they have been secretly building community capacity for people who need an awful lot of personal car and support, I can't see how they can be adequately relocated under the announced timeline.

Very little that government does happens on time. So that gives us some breathing space, and time for community groups to organize, and  to assure that people we have sworn to take care of, are indeed properly cared for.

Only after that will anything change on the landscape. But those changes need to be planned, and planning requires policy.

For instance, will a new city council, with a majority vote of hard-core fiscal conservatives, decide the city will not exercise its option of first refusal and buy the land? Will a new council decide the entire area should simply  left to the mercies of a free market?

Will we then fill the Central Alberta's most parklike urban area with homes on scenic closes with nearby shopping centres?

Or will we take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to include ideas that can create a legacy, something other cities will envy and even copy?

For instance, early on, a future city council could designate space for the cultural centre that Red Deer's Native Friendship Society is planning to build. If it's in the plan, potential neighbouring home buyers will be able to make decisions based on the plan.

Early on, the city may wish to designate a supported housing project for homeless people, which is away from the downtown core, but still easily accessible to the downtown services this group of people needs.

Red Deer also needs a new major performance centre. There are parts of the Michener grounds that would be an excellent environment for that. Would that be a priority for a new city council?

Rethink Red Deer already has plans for an urban homestead at the old cottage-style home sitting on about six acres of land between the north and south campuses of the Michener Centre.

They have already begun training people in techniques of sustainable urban agriculture and natural landscaping, which will be demonstrated at the Michener property for all to come and see.

They plan to refurbish the house, with its wrap-around veranda, for which I can foresee no sweeter place on earth for an afternoon coffee or tea. I plan on taking their 2.5-day course myself, which is being offered at the end every month until August.

If this plan is derailed by the minister's closure of Michener, it would be grounds for revolt.

The whole Michener Centre area is ripe for building a community with close physical ties to the downtown. There is room for thousands of new residents who will not have to drive a car for every conceivable family errand — some of whom may not need (or could afford) a car at all.

It also has proximity to the proposed ring road, making travel in an out of Red Deer very simple indeed.

But we have decide what it is we want our city to be generations from now, over and above a commendable place to live and to work.

And we have a sacred commitment to fill, to 125 current Michener residents, their families and their caregivers.

That should be meat for any number of election forums.

Don't be stupid, exercise!

Science and technology have already done so much to improve both the length and quality of our lives that we sometimes take their advances for granted. We baby boomers are the healthiest, wealthiest and longest-lived generation of all that have preceded us, yet we often ignore the wisdom that all our knowledge has to offer.

And if we don't smarten up, we're going to end up . . . well. . . not smart.

We already know that stroke and heart disease are the top causes of death for our generation. We already know the risk factors, the conditions that increase our statistical chances of falling to these top killers.

But as a group, we smoke in high numbers, we are overweight and sedentary, we cope with high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol through drugs. We prefer the stress of overwork to the worry about not having enough money.

So, for far too many of us, the result is the onset of serious illness, years of suffering and expense, and an early death. And so much of it is easily and inexpensively preventable — through regular exercise.

This is not news. We already know this.

But now, we are learning that another scourge of aging that we boomers will all eventually have to face — the onset of senility — can be pushed back easily and inexpensively through exercise. But will we be smart enough to take advantage of it?

Last week, the Ontario Brain Institute released a report that compiled the lessons learned in 55 medical studies on the effects of exercise. The process is called data mining; it's the latest scientific method to avoid the expense of re-inventing the wheel.

Their researchers strongly recommend that the Public Health Agency of Canada's guidelines maintain the standard of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week. That comes to half an hour of exercise, five times a week. They define “moderate to vigorous” as something that makes breathing harder while still allowing a person to sing. If you can't sing, just call it vigorous.

That's the minimum, not the full prescription. And yet, 85 per cent of Canada's adults don't meet that minimum.

Now, this would not be news if the call were made to prevent heart disease and stroke. We already know that a program of regular exercise can do this.

This study recommends exercise to push back the onset of senility. 

If you asked people of a certain age which they feared more, having a heart condition, or losing their entire identity to Alzheimer's, what's the answer you're most likely to get?

As a society, we spend an awful lot of money building more continuous care beds for seniors with dementia (which can begin as early as the mid-50s). If we realize that one in seven of those beds would not be needed if people just exercised more, would we as a generation exercise more? Would 85 per cent of us still not get the minimum prescription? How smart would that be?

If you're like me, and don't spend your free time reading the scientific reports of data miners, allow me to recommend a good book. The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain by Barbara Strauch makes you feel positively grand about being middle-aged.

If you study the data, she says, there is no such thing as a mid-life crisis or the empty nest syndrome for the vast majority of people in their middle years. Rather, middle age is the happiest, least-stressed, most productive time of life. The first third of the book alone is worth buying it.

But it's the last third of the book that will make you want to keep it on your e-reader so you can refer to it again and again.

Strauch interviewed the people who discovered that our brains do not need to decay as we age. Contrary to a century of medical belief, we really do grow new brain cells all through our lives. Especially in that part of the brain associated with memory, the dentate gyrus.

What's the trigger that produces these new brain cells? Exercise. Regular, moderate to vigorous exercise.

The mechanism that accomplishes this is not known, but it's convincing enough that Strauch reports the hallways leading to the labs where this research continues is strewn with bicycles. Everyone involved in the studies bikes, runs or plays squash, and seem to easily defeat fellow players 20 years their junior.

Plus, they're smarter than their sedentary, overweight peers.

As a generation, what do we do with this information? Well, one thing we shouldn't do is put up barriers to getting our participation numbers up. Swimming pools, recreation paths, ski trails — and yes, even bike lanes, where needed — are far cheaper than long-term care beds. And more fun to have.

Change is normal; adapt or die

Three articles in Wednesday's Advocate paint an interesting picture of the near future for this province. Between the front page (Like it or lump it: province reneges on sewer funding) and the Comment page (No spending cuts means tax hikes are coming) lies the real observation (Disruptive innovation a boon to some business, a bane to others).

On the Comments page, we can already see that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation didn't get it completely right. There will indeed be spending cuts, and these cuts affect municipalities (and therefore taxpayers). But their logical conclusion is probably correct: we're being softened up to accept tax hikes.

But if we take the message of Jim Harris to heart — that disruptive change creates a need to adapt or die — we can conclude that what's happening in Alberta's economy is perfectly normal.

The South Red Deer Regional Wastewater Commission is a partnership with board membership from six municipalities, all of them growing, and all of them needing newer, more sustainable infrastructure to handle their growth.

You can't grow your towns and counties without the ability to flush and drain wastewater for treatment. All the partners agree that the most efficient way to protect fresh water resources is to co-operate and have one large, modern wastewater treatment plant.

They realize it's better for all to build a sewage pipeline to one large plant, than to build six small ones, and have local inefficiencies add up to more pollution in the Red Deer River.

This is a result of the kind of disruptive innovation that Harris talked about, in his City Centre Stage address to the Donald School of Business.

A societal agreement that we need to take the best care possible of our water resources, plus an economic need to support growth means that towns, cities and counties need to co-operate to manage growth.

Managing growth costs money. The municipalities have already spent a lot of resources over eight years now, on a plan for a wastewater line from Olds, to Bowden, to Innisfail, to Penhold, to Red Deer, and including the counties in between. The province, realizing the benefits of such a plan, promised to put up 90 per cent of the construction costs.

Now, with economic disruption on Alberta's agenda, the provincial government decided 80 per cent funding would be enough.

That's a $10 million shortfall the municipalities will have to either tax for, or transfer from other needed projects. As a result, some commission members are asking themselves if this is all worth the frustration and cost. Without the province's full commitment, the chain will likely be broken.

The disruptive innovation that Harris mentions is the fact that municipalities can agree to co-operate on major projects that have wider benefits for the whole province than for each of their own ratepayers.

The adaptation we need is from the province — it must honour its funding agreement, even if it hurts politically.

Some adaptation is also needed from the opposition in the legislature. This obviously beneficial project cuts through municipalities that are all represented by Wildrose Party MLAs.

Wildrose has done nothing but scream for infrastructure funding delays or outright cuts, ever since last year's election. With the growth of economic problems in the province, these demands have only gotten more strident.

Yet the very cuts Wildrose demands threaten the ability of a huge area of their ridings to grow in a sustainable way.

Alberta is still adding population at a rate of about 80,000 people a year. Those people have to live somewhere — and they would prefer to live in a place where the toilets flush, without polluting their drinking water.

If this co-operative project is abandoned, new Albertans will tend to settle in places not represented by Wildrose — because infrastructure growth along the hotbed Hwy 2 corridor south of Red Deer will have been set back by a decade.

Winners and losers. Disruptive innovation, change and adaptation.

The main thesis of the Alberta Taxpayers Federation article is true: Albertans are being softened up for a tax hike.

The disruption in our economy demands it. Or, alternatively, we can just proceed with the old, inefficient solutions, and put up with more pollution.

Service partners share a glass half full

When it comes from government, the not-so-good news is always released toward the end of the week. In the context of a cutback provincial budget, the announced new Social Policy Framework suggesting the province wants to reduce its role as a provider of social services, is not good news.

So Albertans are told about it on a Thursday, with reaction coming in the next news cycle Friday, and by the following Monday, it's on its way to being forgotten.

Actually, the new framework is a good-news-bad-news report. But the government has already fostered so much anxiety about how communities are going to help their poorest and most vulnerable citizens, it's the bad news that grabs you most.

“Absolutely reprehensible” is how Red Deer Food Bank executive director Fred Scaife sees it. Talk of government becoming “influencer, convener and partner” rather than “provider,” to his way of thinking, is simply double-speak for giving poor people less.

Red Deer mayor Morris Flewwelling sees the glass as being half full. In his experience, local agencies acting as partners with provincial funders can be more efficient and effective than having government employees provide services directly.

The success of this new policy framework won't be known for at least a couple of years, when changes in statistics on crime rates, court appearances, ambulance rides and emergency ward crowding can be compared. These are the hidden costs of failing to help people when they need it.

But a glass half full pretty well describes what community agencies get, when they enter service provision contracts with the province. I know, because I've helped create one of them.

A case manager working for a non-profit agency, being paid under contract with the province, earns $20,000-$30,000 a year less than someone doing the same work directly on the government payroll. The vacation and benefits package is smaller, and so is the retirement package.

Plus, the non-profit worker is expected to fundraise for services the agency provides, but which are not part of the contract.

In some cases, a non-profit case manager assisting a disabled person receiving the maximum AISH allowance — with a degree or diploma behind her — might earn about the same as her client. And the case manager does not get rent-controlled housing or her medical prescriptions for free.

Would such a worker wish to trade places with her client? Obviously not, but you can see why government would rather be an “influencer, convener and partner” in this scenario, than a service provider.

Fred Scaife sees the new policy framework as dumping part of its budget problems onto the poorest of Albertans. When you're serving on the front lines of poverty and hunger, it might look that way.

When you're serving on the front lines of social assistance — mental illness, addictions, homelessness or disability — it might look like the province is dumping its budget problems on you or your agency.

Robert Mitchell is CEO of United Way of Central Alberta. He has already seen the kind of worry that United Way agencies feel when policies like this come out at the end of the week, a few days before a cutback budget.

But he's prepared to watch and see what government actually does, as opposed to trying to interpret a broadly-stated new policy document.

The goals contained in the government document actually mirror the goals of the United Way — and most other non-profits.

They wish to reduce inequality between people; not inequality of income or lifestyle (that's effectively impossible), but inequality of security, opportunity and potential. They want to protect the vulnerable — in too many cases, children and frail seniors. The want to centre services onto people (rather than on the definition of their disability) and to improve the way local agencies and government collaborate in making communities stronger.

Everybody I know would vote for that, and people who would vote against it, I don't want to know.

The provincial service network I worked on years ago — along with government, professional service providers and families of people needing services — is vastly cheaper than equivalent services provided by PDD, for instance.

Part of that efficiency comes from paying staff vastly less, and having them volunteer to fundraise while they work.

Does the new Alberta Social Policy Framework foresee more of this? Chances are good we won't see any less.

The question for both optimists and pessimists is: will the glass remain half full?