It's not just the retailer, it's the consumer

A thousand or so workers were caught in the five garment factories operating in an illegal 8-storey complex that collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They were being paid their $38 a month by contractors working for middlemen occupying a supply chain for some of the world's largest retailers — including JC Penney, Cato Fashions, Benetton, Primark and others, such as Canadian retailer Loblaws.

But as we are told in workplaces right here in Red Deer, they and we all ultimately work for the consumer.

It's human nature to assign blame in a disaster such as this. We blame Mohammed Sohel Rama, who owns Rama Plaza, the 8-storey factory complex that was only designed to reach five storeys.

We blame the engineering firms that drew up the blueprints for the three storeys added — against building codes.

We blame the factory operators in a $20-billion Bangladesh garment industry based on inhuman working conditions imposed on 14-year-old girls. We blame global retailers who obviously know what these sweatshops are like, yet constantly squeeze their suppliers for discounts that make conditions worse.

But who can resist a T-shirt on sale for $5? Or a pair of jeans for $30? Obviously, not us.

But even some top-end brands that sell for much more come from factories not far unlike the ones in Rama Plaza.

Aman Singh is editorial director of CSRWire, a website for corporate social responsibility news. He studies and reports on issues around consumer choices, the supply chain blame game, and standards for global garment production.

He himself admits it's difficult for consumers to track through the supply chain labyrinth and to determine if items on store shelves were ethically produced. Even at our conscientious best, the workers of the world cannot rely on us to vote with our purchases for a fair global workplace.

He told The Christian Science Monitor that only the top of the command chain — huge retailers like Walmart and others — can enforce ethical standards for their suppliers. Only they are powerful enough to say “my way or the highway” to their suppliers, and mean it.

The United Nations is attempting to document standards that suppliers can enforce globally.

These would include global definition of child labour. In many countries, you're an adult worker at 14. There's also an hours-of-work standard, health and safety standards and other benchmarks that would create a globally-recognized seal for ethical business standards. Create a label and put it on products consumers could look for.

Right now, it's up to individual companies to do this on their own. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op, for instance, is one retailer that insists on factory inspections to guarantee their products were ethically sourced.

But even that is difficult. You can inspect a factory where shirts are made, and everyone is paid a reasonable wage, in acceptable working conditions. But who made the fabric? For shoes, the uppers may be made in one country, the soles in another, to be assembled in yet another.

And these companies operate in a global consumer market where price trumps all other considerations.

Yet, if we believe in a capitalist, consumer-driven ethic, consumers cannot distance themselves from the supply chain. To know, is to be responsible.

Here's what we know. About 350 people are known to be dead in the factory collapse. About 650 survived, and the on-site amputations needed to remove crushed limbs made the clinics look like abattoirs.

Just five months ago, 111 people died in a Bangladesh garment factory fire, where the fire escapes were bolted shut.

These are the kinds of places where much of our clothing is made.

If consumers cannot easily determine the sourcing of items, we can at least insist that retailers respect our demands to act ethically, and sign on to an enforceable standard, whose seal can appear on the stuff we buy.

Aman Singh, for one, suggests prices may rise as a result, but the retail price of a pair of sneakers you buy for even one full day's wages represents a factory worker's full wages for two or three months.

Global retailers cannot claim they didn't know Rama Plaza was unsafe. In places where workers earn less than $2.00 a day, they're probably all unsafe.

But neither can we. Knowing that makes us responsible, too.

Global media bombed in Boston

Some time has passed since the bombing of the Boston Marathon on April 15. There is a suspect in custody (in hospital) — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19 — and he has formally been charged in the atrocity.

The city of Boston is already moving on, although many of the 180 wounded will need extensive medical assistance and therapy in their recovery. I can only imagine how difficult it will be for them to move on.

But that's what the world does. In that light, it's fair now to look back at how the world first learned about the bombing, and how millions — perhaps even billions — of people followed the story as it unfolded.

The picture of that is not flattering to the global news media. In the non-stop coverage of what transpired after the two explosions went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring 180, media we all rely on for factual coverage and thoughtful analysis provided little of either.

Network TV coverage was 24-hours-a-day. But because of the way information surfaces in an unfolding story, what we mostly got was 30-minute coverage, repeated 48 times a day.

The public appetite for news was so widespread, and the competition to be the first bearer of news was so strong, a lot of information was presented that was just plain wrong.

On April 17, CNN reported there had been an arrest of a suspect. It wasn't true. Social media picked up the fuzzy photos FBI released of the two suspects, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan and identified others as being the suspects — which was reported on mainstream network news. One person identified that way may not even exist.

Experts were called in to provide perspective (and to fill air time), but in the absence of facts, there can be little of it.

One commentator, Matthew Kupfer, made an interesting observation on his blog Registan.

CNN at one point reported they had discovered Dzhohar Tsarnaev had posted a Tweet way back last August. It said: “boston marathon isn’t a good place to smoke tho.” CNN's announcer read this as “breaking news” and then, looking into the camera for emphasis declared: “It may mean something. It may mean nothing. We don’t know.”

Neither will anyone else, but it filled time. Probably more than once.

One could add more examples of plain bad coverage, but here's my main beef with the media in this.

While the universe was revolving around Boston, there was another explosion in the U.S. In the small town of West, Texas, an anhydrous ammonia plant exploded and burned on April 17.

It destroyed a five-block radius of the town, including a seniors residence. Fourteen people died, including 10 who were first responders to the scene. Some 2,800 people were displaced.

Talk about a town on lockdown. Only now are some of the people being allowed home. But there is a 7 p.m. curfew, no vehicles larger than a pickup are allowed in the area and only people 18 and over can go back there (assuming they still have a home).

One CBC Radio report that I heard quoted a man shivering in the morning chill with his aging mother. They had only the clothes they wore when they fled; they had lost everything else.

The man said something like: “Well, we're kind of cold right now, so we'll have to get some clothes and start over.”

That was the drop line to the story. The announcer quickly took us back to Boston where . . . nothing new had happened in the last 30 minutes.

I was dumbfounded by that. As news coverage, that was shameful.

Here in Red Deer, you will very seldom read a news story about a house fire, without mention of some sort of community effort to support the people affected. That kind of thing engages even as the ashes cool.

On our national news network, we were left with the mental image of a man and his aging mother standing in the cold, with nothing along with probably more than 1,000 others. So we could hear the same expert on terrorism or whatever repeat the same uninformed comments we heard 30 minutes ago, about people who were known only by a name and a fuzzy FBI surveillance photo.

I am part of the global system that produces this. I have been reporter, photographer, editor and designer of the media that brings you the news. I am also a consumer who left the TV on all day (something I almost never do), and I listened to the same pap repeating all day long, for reasons I cannot now fully explain.

Looking back, it looks like a colossal waste of time. Not a great result for a global media effort around two globally-important news stories.

Time to jump into the pension plan pool

The federal government likes the idea of all small and medium businesses offering their employees a pension plan. They could pool the funds with many other businesses into a big, well-managed, low-cost general fund, allowing more people a more secure retirement.

The C.D. Howe Institute says the feds like the idea because they crunched the numbers — and the numbers seem to favour the federal government.

Nationally, almost half of workers aged 55-64 are reported to have never saved anything at all for their retirement. No company plan, no RSP, no TFSA, nothing.

If that's really the case, then millions of workers will be coming out of the full-time workforce over the next 20 years, with only their Canada Pension, plus the Old Age Security benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement to live on. That's a pretty modest income base for individuals, but a big total expense for government.

The C.D. Howe people say if more workers had personal savings plans, like the Pooled Retirement Pension Plan (PRPP) being suggested, they would have better incomes in retirement, but their total dollars received would be less. That's even considering the income tax rebates people get over the years for contributing.

How so? The clawbacks on supplement benefits for seniors come at a higher rate than the income tax refunds people get for retirement saving. The government would save more money clawing back seniors' benefits than it paid in tax incentives to savers, who won't get the benefit.

In my opinion, having more Canadians self-reliant in retirement is a better goal than carping that the government will save money by not having to bring their incomes to the lowest-possible base-survival level.

The Alberta government thinks so, too.

Last week, they introduced a plan to give Alberta businesses the option of offering their workers a PRPP as a workplace benefit. It won't do much for those Alberta workers aged 55-64, one of six of whom has no workplace pension plan now. (Call that the Howe drawback: there's not enough years left to them to see real savings growth — maybe they're better off trying to survive on OAS and GIS.)

But it would mean a lot for hundreds of thousands of younger Alberta workers. They could begin saving for retirement at a low cost to them (employers would contribute a portion of the plan as a workplace benefit), receive a tax refund on their contributions through their working lives, and see savings grow with professional fund management provided at a low individual cost.

If you ask C.D. Howe, they'd be stupid to do this. But if you asked the workers, I think they'd gladly sign on. So would their employers, who would have a low-cost incentive to attract and keep staff.

The plan is also mobile. Workers today switch jobs much more frequently than in the past. With the Alberta plan, workers can move from one employer registered with the plan to another, and keep their plan intact.

If you move from one employer in the plan, to an employer who opted not to offer it — well, that's part of the incentive for employers register.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and the Chamber of Commerce both endorse Alberta becoming the third province to introduce the PRPP. Quebec has a mandatory plan, while B.C.'s plan is optional for employers. Alberta's plan would be optional as well.

From a worker's standpoint, this seems like a no-brainer. Why do so few workers save for retirement?

I'll bet declining real incomes play a big factor, along with high personal debt levels. Add the complexity of RSPs, TFSAs and other savings options — plus their obvious costs — and a whole lot of people getting by on tighter and tighter incomes just opt to forget the future.

But if your employer assisted with the cost, if you got a tax refund for your share, if the options were made simple, and if forced savings are just part of your employment agreement anyway, you'll find the percentage of people with active savings plans will rise dramatically.

The C.D. Howe Institute recommends some legal changes before they will give their approval to pooled pension plans.

• They want people to be able to remove their savings on retirement, tax-free, for low and middle-income earners. That means no taxes on the interest for this group of workers.

• They want PRPPs to offer lifetime payout plans, just like a government worker would get. That means if you live a really long time in retirement, you may get more out of the plan than you contributed, plus interest.

• They want a lifetime accumulation limit set, to level the playing field with people who have defined benefit plans. How that would work, I don't know.

• And they want people to be able to contribute extra to their plans, above what their employer offers, which is something government workers can do.

Sounds reasonable. But first you have to get the employers in the pool.

Alberta is doing the right thing with this, though the greatest benefits may not be counted for many years.

Let's focus on the goal, not just the bike lanes

I agree with the people disappointed by some of the changes city council made to our bike lane pilot project — there hasn't yet been one complete summer season upon which to judge the project's merits, and major links along the route have now been removed.

But politics — especially civic politics — is the art of the possible. From my seat on the bike, I'd rather our pilot project with bike lanes ended with tangible successes, than have the entire experiment condemned out of hand and abandoned, with not even one season of use to measure its value.

I'm writing now as president of the Red Deer Association for Bicycle Commuting and as a volunteer on the steering committee that came up with the suggested changes council adopted Monday.

Everyone in council chambers Monday agrees that the biggest disappointment in this whole process has been the way it evolved into a contest of wins and losses.

You won't find anyone on council or among city staff who is against seeing more people using their bikes as a regular means of getting around the city — something beyond going out to ride for fitness or to tour our parks. I see no dispute anywhere that putting more bikes on our streets, as traffic, is a desirable goal.

The unhappiness comes from an ever-growing population of cyclists (and many more would-be cyclists) who see their right to the road being made unsafe.

The habits of drivers — the vast majority of whom are courteous and accommodating — do not always include looking out for human-powered traffic on the streets. The habits of cyclists — some of whom obey one set of regulations when they drive and another when they ride — can infuriate drivers.

And our city infrastructure is simply not designed to accommodate arterial traffic that moves at two widely different speeds.

Yet we all seem to agree that more cycling in our transportation mix is a very good idea.

I don't hear any reasonable voice that disagrees with any of that.

So a group of concerned citizens used their democratic right to convince council that we ought to seriously explore ways to match our goal with reality. Nobody disagrees with that, either.

Contrary to what some are saying, there was indeed a period of public consultation. The people who paid attention came to broad consensus that some arterial roads should contain separate bike lanes, to keep cycle traffic from mixing with vehicular traffic in places where connecting regions of the city is important, and where those connections can be dangerous.

Routes were argued, and eventually lines were drawn on a map. Council then put money into seeing how it would work.

This is a process identical to that followed with great success in cities all around the world.

This includes something that happens when large groups try to match new goals with existing reality: a resistance to change.

So now the lines are being altered in some places. But the goal remains — and I still see no evidence that people disagree with the goal.

For myself, I never liked riding a bike on 55^th Street. The feeling of safety improved for the few days there was a bike lane on that section, but I use alternate routes that are far more pleasant, safer, and efficient enough to get me where I want to go.

Likewise the route along 40^th Ave. I've ridden it for many years, and with or without a bike lane on it, it's never been fun. I like to think I'm a hard-core urban rider, but I'm not so hard-core that I would insist on depriving other citizens of their safe passage, just to ensure mine.

So I use alternate routes on residential streets that make my commute a few blocks longer. But I appreciate the exercise and there are many pretty yards and houses to see along the way.

This is in contravention of the stated goal of RDABC, which is that major arterial traffic routes ought to have separate lanes for bikes. That's still a reasonable goal, and I do not think RDABC should set it aside. Especially since there are big changes coming in infrastructure, like the ring road from the north entrance to the city to the south.

If safe passage is not planned for bikes along that route, with safe, separate crossings east and west, then we can talk about losers.

For now, we push our pedals toward success. The sun will eventually shine here. Get your bike tuned up and show the city that there needs to be room for everyone to get around safely. You'll have lots of friends along the way.

You also can join a national challenge to record your distance as a bike commuter during Environment Week June 2-8. Go to www.commuterchallenge.ca and see how you can register yourself, and your workplace for a national contest on sustainable commuting.

There will be more information on that, coming soon. I'm on that committee, too.

Fixed election dates give voters a double-edged sword

British Columbia was the first Canadian province to pass fixed election dates into law. That was back in 2001. But as premier Christie Clark attempts to climb a 20-point gap in opinion polls in their campaign, it's likely that on the whole, she'd rather have had the opportunity to pick another time than now to face voters.

B.C. voters go to the polls May 14.

Since 2001, all provinces and territories have embraced fixed election dates — except Nova Scotia and Nunavut. Alberta (in 2011) and Quebec (in 2012) have passed the concept into law, but have yet to fight an election under it.

Would being able to call a snap election at a propitious moment, or having the ability to delay an election until the political climate gets better, have benefitted the beleaguered B.C. premier?

Perhaps, but those considerations are now beside the point.

Election dates fixed by law is now a means by which voters can enforce accountability on a government, on a timeline outside the government's control. It is a double-edged sword that cuts into an incumbent government's power to control the political agenda.

It cuts the ability of government to use short-term swings in the economy as proof of good management. It means that government must keep faith with the electorate through good times and bad — which is a lot harder.

It also means that opposition parties have a more equal chance to present their long-term platforms as alternatives to going with the flavour of the day (because tomorrow, the flavour will probably be different.)

For instance, Clark is promising a balanced budget within one year. You'd think a premier leading a party 12 years in office would be able to propose credible numbers to prove it. That would be a big boost to a campaign, wouldn't you say?

But it doesn't seem to be working. Polls report that NDP challenger Adrian Dix leads Clark on every important campaign issue — including economic management.

What are those issues? Top of mind is climate change. Who ever thought a government could fall over fears of rising sea levels and bug-eaten forests drying out and burning up? And who would think that the NDP, not the Greens, would be the chief beneficiary of those fears?

But that must be a quirk of B.C. politics.

Clark says she'll freeze their carbon tax — Canada's first — at $30 per tonne of fossil fuels burned. Knowing the power of a major energy play (as is occurring in the northeastern part of the province now), she's reluctant to put the brakes on that development.

But the NDP doesn't trump that with a raise, just a pledge to turn the carbon tax revenue over to cities to enhance public transit. And it's enough to win approval of big-city voters.

But rather than trying to dissect a B.C. election from Alberta, let's look for lessons that could be applied here, in the spring of 2015.

Our premier, Alison Redford, has but two years to see our province back on an upswing. A balanced budget “next year” may not be enough.

That means a lot of things for the energy industry, which is out of Redford's control, but there are a lot of other economic issues she can control. Economic inequity is one of them.

After 12 years of a Liberal government in B.C. (which acts in a manner indistinguishable from a Progressive Conservative one), B.C. voters don't seem willing to give the government credit for anything.

Stephen Smart, the West Coast columnist for the CBC, quipped that Clark could sing the praises of the blue sky in B.C., and people would just accuse her of ignoring the clouds.

How much does that sound like Alberta to you? We have Canada's highest levels of income inequity, and the demographic that sees the government as favouring its richest minority above them grows larger every year.

Will they believe it when Redford tells people their lives have been made better under her government?

Clark's promise of a Prosperity Fund, to be built on newfound energy wealth, isn't gaining much electoral traction. How much hope do jaded Albertans have, after almost 30 years, that our Heritage Fund can do anything to help our present, or our future?

Next election, Redford will not be able to decide when the gate opens to start the race. There's no option for the backroom guys to decide “the right time.”

Watching her next-door-neighbour premier lose to the NDP ought to get her thinking about 2015.

It's CBC vs the tax cheats — and the federal government

Should the CBC be compelled to release the information it has on Canadians who hold secret offshore bank accounts?

As a taxpayer currently filing my own annual annual income statements for tax purposes, I really do want to say yes.

But as a journalist — and looking at the global picture — I also conclude that a greater measure of justice will likely be done if we maintain our tradition of journalistic integrity to our sources. Besides, when it comes to matters touching on the most wealthy, the most privileged and the best-connected of people, I trust the CBC more to deal with the matter in a way that's fair to me, than I trust the federal government right now.

In time, I expect the world will have rather much fewer super-wealthy tax cheats in it, and governments everywhere will have rather more incentive to be diligent in pursuing tax cheats when they don't know exactly how much information the media has on hand to reveal.

By all reports, there's a lot of information involved. It's 30 years worth of data involving 130,000 people worldwide. In volume alone, it's said to be 162 times more data than was contained in the blockbuster WikkiLeaks release of U.S. government secrets in 2010.

CBC was the only Canadian recipient of the 2.5 million files leaked to 38 members of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Canada publishes no estimate of the tax revenue lost when wealthy individuals secretly sock their billions into offshore accounts. But if the super-rich in Canada are tax cheats in the same proportion as in other countries, the loss to the Canadian treasury would be about $7 billion a year, according to the think tank Tax Justice Network.

That's about a quarter of the government's annual budget deficit.

So Revenue Minister Gail Shea says the federal government will use all legal means available — including taking the CBC to court — to get access to the documents the CBC has on some 450 Canadians.

So far, the CBC has only reported one case from among its files. Regina lawyer Tony Merchant, noted as the “King of Class Action Suits,” and spouse of Liberal senator Pana Merchant, was reported to have about $1.7 million in offshore in accounts where Pana and the couple's three sons are listed as beneficiaries. The money was transferred while Merchant was involved in a battle with Revenue Canada over taxes owed.

That's about all we know for now — and that's far from a legal conviction. But in an editorial published by the CBC's Jennifer McGuire, more information will be published in coming months as they sift through the horde of data.

Just the same, Canada's most wealthy do keep good company. So far, a smattering of reports in 37 other countries has revealed these tidbits:

• In the UK, statements have been found about a property tycoon already in jail for hiding $600 million offshore during divorce proceedings;

• In Russia, the deputy premier's wife has been named publicly, as have managers of top military contractors;

• In Germany, the former husband of movie star Brigitte Bardot was revealed to keep a network of accounts in tax havens;

• In France, the treasurer of president Francois Holland's election campaign has come under tax scrutiny;

• In Italy, the former head of information security for Telecom Italia (who was arrested in 2007 for illegally obtaining information on 4,000 people, including politicians and journalists) is once more in the news;

• In Greece, the government is said to have little clue about the offshore accounts of Greek citizens.

Who knows, maybe somebody at cash-strapped CBC is working a dodge. In delivering Canada's Action Plan, finance minister Jim Flaherty announced that anyone blowing the whistle on major tax cheats can expect up to 15 per cent of taxes recovered as a reward, if the recovery is over $100,000.

Around the same time, the Canada Revenue Agency announced a $300 million budget cut, to take place over three years, killing about 3,000 jobs. $100 million of that was in the department that works on compliance programs.

As I said, I trust the CBC to ensure that tax cheats are named and prosecuted more than I trust the federal government. That may be a failing on my part, exacerbated while my own federal tax bill is being tallied.

For now, up to 450 Canadians with offshore accounts have some space to come clean and work a deal with Revenue Canada, before the headlines hit the fan.

RBC sold its reputation to foreign workers

One of the facts of life in today's minute-by-minute news cycle is that once a story leaps into the social network's parallel universe, all control of the message is lost.

CBC News broke the story Friday that RBC — Canada's largest bank — was laying off Canadian IT staff to hire foreign workers. By the time the bank's spin doctors could respond for mainstream media, CBC had already aired an interview with bank staff who said they were assigned to train the foreign workers who would replace them.

By then, the Facebook/Twitter-verse was already calling for a boycott of RBC. Once that digital divide is crossed, no quarter will be given for a restatement of the facts. Very little room is made on discussion threads for unpopular analysis.

In that realm, trolls lay in ambush, hiding behind as many assumed names as can be imagined.

Greg Grice, RBC’s head of Enterprise Services and chief procurement officer will not get much of a hearing in that forum. But never mind, he's got federal officials to worry about.

Last week, the feds had to announce Canada had shed 54,500 jobs in March. In February, RBC announced a first-quarter profit of $2.07 billion.

Which stat do you think the federal government worries most about?

Especially since the government took some heat for bragging out of one side of its mouth about the strength of the Canadian banking system through the global financial crisis, while assuring the banks of $144 billion in loans and cash infusions through the other.

That figure represented fully seven per cent of Canada's GDP; $3,400 for every Canadian.

RBC certainly got its share of that tax-backed bonanza. Their “support” came to 63 per cent of the banking giant's value at the time: $25 billion.

Twenty-five billion ought to buy you some loyalty. Especially when it was given while the government put a lot of its credibility chips into assuring Canadians (and the world) that Canada's banking system was as sound as a Canadian dollar.

The bank's disloyalty is all the more galling because it appears RBC and its subcontractor iGate Corp seem to have gotten a fast track around the rules of foreign employment.

Go ahead, Red Deer business owners, try and bring foreign information technology workers into Canada, as a prelude to outsourcing your IT services overseas, which is what RBC is doing.

Convince your local MP that it's a good idea. Good luck.

The paperwork will kill you. You have to prove there is not a living, breathing qualified Canadian around willing to do the job. You'll find that there are lots of living, breathing, well-trained (and tax-paying) Canadian IT specialists, who are more than willing to work.

Red Deer College graduates a whole busload of them, every year — paid for in large measure by our tax dollars.

So how does RBC and iGate get around that? Good question.

A mining company in B.C. managed to get around that by making fluency in Mandarin a job requirement. But that door has since been closed.

Canada does need to import workers in a variety of skilled trades. But I really doubt IT support is one of them.

Companies with resources to skirt the spirit of Canadian law should not be bringing in low-paid foreign workers on temporary visas, with the intention of displacing Canadians, and the plan of laying them off again, without benefits, when doing so becomes convenient.

We call that exploitation. There is no partnership in this between the workers and the employers.

Doing so as a prelude to outsourcing the entire department overseas is to sell out a very profitable (and very much tax-supported) bank's reputation.

Let's think about those Canadian RBC workers for a moment. Dave Moreau told CBC that he and others are being made to train the new workers who will be taking their jobs. In a whole lot of work places, talking to the media that way is disloyalty, a firing offense.

That would make Moreau ineligible for the outplacement services of RBC who says they are “working diligently to find suitable roles for those affected.”

So it took some courage and personal integrity for that Canadian to blow the whistle.

No such courage or integrity is needed on the part of RBC; only a ton of brass.

Such brass is the legitimate meat of online activists who want you to outsource your RBC account to a bank that's more loyal to Canada.

Manning, Lougheed, Klein: we are who our leaders made us

Suggested head: We are who our leaders have made us

Our identity as a province — how we work, how we play, how we see ourselves within Canada — carries qualities we have adopted from our leaders. Unique in Canada (and probably unique in the world), Alberta has been shaped by three strong leaders that we chose and kept in office for what adds up to most of our history.

And it is also unique that in the past few months, two of the strongest leaders in our history have passed away. With the passing of Peter Lougheed last December and Ralph Klein last week, ends an era of leadership that modern times may not ever repeat.

We've had 14 premiers since Alberta gained provincial status in 1905, but three — Ernest Manning, Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein — together held the lion's share of our history.

At one point, Manning, who was premier from 1943 to 1968 was the longest-serving democratically-elected leader in the world. Think of the changes that took place, from the time Canada was still engaged in the Second World War, to the beginning of the Apollo Space program that sent astronauts to the moon.

When Manning started his life in politics, much of Alberta's grain harvest was taken in by horses. He ended it with agriculture becoming a mechanized, international industry.

Manning won seven consecutive elections, and it was his hand on the tiller during the time Alberta changed from being a collection of small agrarian communities tied to two minor cities, and found its destiny as an energy producer.

All but eight years of the great Social Credit dynasty (begun in 1935 in the depths of the Great Depression) were led by Ernest Manning, who himself changed the party from a right-wing religious revolution into a modern, pragmatic political party.

That dynasty began to crumble in 1965, when a young lawyer, Peter Lougheed, became leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party. In 1967, Canada's Centennial, Lougheed became leader of the opposition with six members, all elected in either Edmonton or Calgary.

It was the signal of change. The 1971 election brought Lougheed to the premier's post, and Alberta would never again be chiefly agricultural in character.

Lougheed would serve as premier until 1985, ushering in the era of Alberta's ascendance on the national agenda. The Heritage Fund was begun by Lougheed, as was the Alberta Bill of Rights.

Lougheed invested hundreds of millions in direct investment, plus tax and royalty incentives to get the oilsands industry on its feet. Remember the Alberta Opportunity Company? It had its headquarters in Ponoka, and many an Alberta family got in for $10 a share in 1972. A pretty good investment, looking back.

Don Getty served almost as an interim premier upon Lougheed's retirement, when Alberta's third great leader — Ralph Klein — took up the mantle of securing a Tory dynasty that has outlasted even the historic Social Credit run of power.

Gregarious where Lougheed was austere, Klein seized popular consent to address a recurring problem for us: the cycle of energy prices that drives our economy.

Alberta was $23 billion in debt by the time the cycle bottomed out. Klein convinced us that we were not the “blue-eyed sheiks” of the Lougheed boom years. Or, at least that we could not live like we were all the time.

Klein campaigned on severe — almost punitive — cutbacks. No opposition could slow the tidal wave of salary and pension cuts, hospital closures, layoffs in health care and rises in service fees of all kinds. In fact, we lauded Klein for them.

Klein was mayor of Calgary for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, and he topped that by being premier for Alberta's Centennial party in 2005. It was punctuated by showcasing Alberta as the lowest-taxed region in the industrialized world, and the only one with no debt.

That we also have almost no savings to show for the billions earned selling non-renewable resources, would be a problem for leaders to come after him.

Under Klein's tenure, our energy industry changed in character. Where once Albertans were characterized as local risk-taking mavericks who could parlay small exploration startups into multi-million-dollar profits, the oil and gas industry has become international in scope.

Where Alberta and Canada have no indigenous, government-owned energy firms of any kind, the nationally-owned corporations of other countries have billions invested in our borders.

Syncrude, begun under Peter Lougheed using technology developed in household washing machines, is now run by Imperial Oil Limited, which is in turn owned by international giant Exxon Mobil, out of Irving, Texas.

During a single lifetime, Alberta has changed from being inward-looking, small-town, family-farm-based to discovering our potential as Canada's national economic engine, to finding ourselves a place on the world stage of energy supply.

And it was accomplished under three leaders, whose ambition, acumen and personal qualities matched the spirit of their times.

You won't find another district anywhere where three such leaders could be democratically elected in such close succession, without violence. And where each leader's legacy paved the way for the next.

Alberta's political and social character is to follow a strong leader, and to follow that person for many years at a stretch.

Can we get used to a rotating leadership, such as the rest of the world has, or will someone with the right mix of vision and common touch rise to carry on for decades longer?

Whatever happens in the future, we can say for now that we are who our leaders made us.

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