Finding His Way

p h oto by ti m s m ith /C P i mag es
Unlike his predecessor, Ralph Klein, Premier Ed Stelmach lacks the knack for “giving good quote.”
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feature report
Finding
His Way
Ralph Klein was a master of media relations.
It’s a hard act to follow.
By Darcy Henton
p h oto by ti m s m ith /C P i mag es
T
The upbeat strains of James Brown’s “I Feel Good”
bleed out of Room 512 and echo through the five floors of
the Alberta Legislature. It’s early March, and the Progressive
Conservative team is preparing for the spring sitting of the
Legislature with its annual pep rally on the top floor. But as
ministerial assistants and communications directors mingle
with government secretaries in the cavernous committee
room, for the first time in 14 years of tradition there’s a marked
difference. The premier who enters through the dark-stained
oak sliding doors is not Ralph Klein.
Steady Eddie Stelmach looks a bit startled as he strides into
the packed hall, like he didn’t really expect all this. Brown’s
lyrics blare as Alberta’s 13th premier makes his way across
the ornate chamber, shaking hands with the civil servants and
political staff in his path. His media relations director, Tom
Olsen, a shaggy-haired former Calgary Herald columnist and
rock singer, warms up the crowd with a few words. Ron Glen,
Stelmach’s former executive assistant turned chief of staff,
follows with expressions of gratitude for the hard work of the
staff. At the back of the room, several veteran communications
directors look up from their BlackBerries in amusement. One
catches the attention of a colleague and rolls his eyes.
Stelmach, a four-term MLA and veteran cabinet minister,
offers a few words of thanks and encouragement. He tells
everyone to remember that in the midst of the chaos and
hard work of the coming sitting they should remember to
have fun. There’s more hand-shaking and the room clears. It’s
all over less than 15 minutes after it began.
The annual pre-sitting pep rally was the brainchild of Klein’s
chief of staff, Rod Love. Like much of what Klein and Love
started together, it has survived into the fourth coming of the
Alberta Tories. Edward Michael Stelmach, 56, was sworn in
on December 14 after a surprising come-from-behind victory
Steady Eddie Stelmach looks a bit
startled as he strides into the packed
hall, like he didn’t really expect all this.
in the Tory leadership race. He campaigned on a promise to
do “What’s Right For Alberta,” and has vowed to bring more
openness and accountability to government. He has backed
up his campaign pledges with the introduction of a bill to
create a lobbyist registry, and another to toughen up conflictof-interest rules for members of the Legislature and top aides.
The premier’s relationship with the media, however, is
still a work in progress. Although he’s been the MLA for Fort
Saskatchewan-Vegreville since 1993, the soft-spoken Ukrainian
farmer seldom sought or held the spotlight in his four cabinet
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“The fact he hired Tom Olsen and Paul Stanway just attests to the
seamless relationship between the Tory government and too many
reporters. It’s a real threat to democracy.” –Kevin Taft
posts—agriculture, transportation, infrastructure and intergovernmental affairs. He cut his teeth in municipal politics
as a county reeve, school board trustee and hospital board
member, where his gentlemanly manner and beaming smile
assured him of office as long as he desired it.
Even during last fall’s leadership campaign, Stelmach ran
for the most part under the media radar. When he drew more
than 1,000 people to a $45-per-person breakfast at Edmonton’s
Northlands AgriCom early in the campaign, media reported
upon it after the fact—no one had been there to witness the
event. After shocking Albertans with his December 2 secondballot victory over front-runners Jim Dinning and Ted Morton,
Stelmach was swept into the premier’s office without anyone
waiting in the wings to handle his communications. He relied
on Klein’s staff, and particularly Klein’s key spokeswoman,
Marisa Etmanski, to speak on his own behalf for several
months until he could select his own personnel and get them
up to speed.
The transition plowed into turbulence within mere weeks
when the media got wind of the premier’s plans to hold $5,000
private sessions with anyone who wanted to help him pay off
his campaign debts. Facing a storm of criticism, Stelmach
immediately cancelled the sessions, but went ahead with
social fundraisers that supporters paid $500 each to attend.
Etmanski says she was impressed with Stelmach’s handling of
the situation—his first real media test. “He wanted to deal with
it right away,” she says. “There was no question in his mind
about what had to happen.”
Stelmach finally chose his communications team in January,
shocking the Legislature press gallery by snatching up two of
the three political columnists covering the Legislature: Olsen
as his media relations officer, and Edmonton Sun columnist
Paul Stanway as his communications director.
Liberal Leader Kevin Taft found the choices appalling. “The
fact he hired Tom Olsen and Paul Stanway just attests to the
seamless relationship between the Tory government and too
many news outlets and too many reporters. It’s a real threat to
democracy when an independent media gets so close to the
government that they can step back and forth from one side to
the other. It makes a mockery of journalistic independence.”
Both Olsen and Stanway point out that many provincial
governments and even federal governments have hired political journalists to handle their communications. Both adamantly
reject allegations they were using their columns to audition for
their jobs. “I was not angling for a job in government,” says
Olsen. “I had a great job with the Calgary Herald. I never
thought I would leave journalism. I think what the premier’s
office was looking for was people who knew the media from
the other side.” Stanway, a self-described small-c conservative,
boasts that he often “whacked” the Alberta Tories for not being
conservative enough. He says the job offer from Stelmach
came out of the blue and that he had been pursued by two
other leadership candidates to work on their campaigns but
had turned them down. “It’s fair to say there’s some animosity
because of Tom and I both joining the premier’s office. Some
of our colleagues managed the transition better than others.
Obviously that was quite a surprise to see two members of the
press gallery go in one fell swoop, but I think it’s settling down
and I am hoping people get used to the new set-up.”
One of the new communications team’s first steps was to
reduce media access to Stelmach from what had been the norm
under Klein. The daily 3 p.m. press conferences following the
Legislature’s question period were cut back to just two a week.
And they were much shorter. Stanway says the change stems
from the Premier’s decision to eliminate evening sittings at the
Legislature. The shorter days mean the sittings will last weeks
longer than under the Klein regime. “The concern is if you
make the premier available every single day from February
through June, that’s an enormous chunk of his calendar,” says
Stanway. “Quite frankly, he’s got a government to run.” He
suggests reporters could, in the long run, get more access to
Stelmach than they did to Klein, because the Legislature sits
three to four weeks longer. Reporters are skeptical.
T
The Klein regime placed a lot of emphasis on communications. Rod Love says it was the top priority. “Every
morning for the 14 years Klein was premier, job one for his
staff was the media briefing—not an economics briefing, not a
price-of-oil briefing, not a what-are-the-Liberals-doing briefing. It was what are the current stories out there today, so we
can effectively say to the people of Alberta ‘Relax, I know what’s
going on. Here’s what your government is doing.’ ”
Klein’s communications director also sent out a daily bulletin advising ministers what they should say, if asked, about
the issues of the day, Love says. “Nobody had any excuse to be
out there saying different things about the issues.”
It became apparent that Stelmach’s communications
team wasn’t doing that when Finance Minister Lyle Oberg,
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Guy Boutilier and the
Premier sent out different messages about what they wanted
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Finding His Way
“He’s still establishing his personality with voters… If you can’t
deliver stories in the form that the media can easily use, you’re not
going to control the media as much as Klein could.” –Mark Lisac
to see in the March 19 federal budget concerning the national
equalization program. During question period, the opposition
parties grilled the Tories on the “confusion” and “mixed messages,” and the Premier had to assure the media that there was
no rift in his cabinet.
Some reporters have not been impressed with Stelmach’s
new communications team. “They are still finding their way
and I don’t think hiring ex-reporters was the way to go,”
laments CKUA news supervisor Ian Gray, a veteran member
of the press gallery. Stelmach often leaves press conferences
with questions still being fired at his back. Sometimes he hasn’t
been briefed on current issues and frequently the sessions are
so short and the answers so vague that reporters can’t find a
sliver of new information to warrant a story. Recently, a Calgary
columnist was seen heading home just as the premier’s end-ofweek press conference was about to start—a move that would
have been risky when Klein was around because journalists
never knew what headlines would spill out. “I guess we were
spoiled under Ralph,” sighs Gray. “He set the bar pretty high.”
Mark Lisac, who has written two books about the Klein government and now publishes a Legislature newsletter called
Insight into Government, says it probably isn’t fair to compare
the media abilities of the two premiers, because Klein, as the
former mayor of Calgary, was not only a veteran at handling
media, but was also well known in the province when he
stepped into the premier’s office. “Stelmach has been here since
1993, but he’s quiet and he’s still establishing his personality
with voters. He’s seen as honest, but he has to establish his
credibility. But if you can’t deliver stories in the form that the
media can easily use, you’re not going to control the media as
much as Klein could.”
Stelmach often appears to be thinking as he speaks, says
Lisac. “He has a tendency to stop and start and drift off. He
seems to have difficulty encapsulating a thought in a few
words.” In the media vernacular, it’s called “giving good quote.”
Stelmach doesn’t have the knack. Lisac says that rather than
relying on speeches and press conferences to boost his stature with Albertans, Stelmach will have to deliver on programs
and policy—areas in which Klein admitted being weak.
Lisac says Stelmach also shouldn’t be criticized too much for
reducing his exposure to the media, since it’s unlikely that any
other political leader devotes as much time to the media as
Klein did during his years in power.
Stanway contends the previous Tory regime morphed into
“the Ralph show.” “There was a lot of off-the-cuff policymaking, which is not the way this premier wants to operate,”
he says. “It was hugely entertaining and great for the media. Is
it necessarily the best way to run a government? Probably not.”
While Klein would often blurt out government plans before
they had gone through the process of committees, caucus
and cabinet, Stelmach will be more respectful of the process,
says Stanway. “It will make it less entertaining for the media,
but it will provide Albertans with co-ordinated, thoughtful
government.”
While Klein had a genuine gift of gab, what irked rival party
leaders most was his structuring of the massive, $14-million,
115-member Public Affairs Bureau (PAB) into what they claim
has become a propaganda arm of the Progressive Conservative
Party. Queen’s University political science professor Jonathan
Rose says Alberta was among the first provinces to create a
centralized public relations organization that reported to a
premier. “Government always wants to control the way they
are framed in the media,” he says. “That’s not new. What was
new was the degree the provincial government had centralized
and institutionalized that control in the office of the premier.”
When Klein reorganized the PAB to report directly to him, he
created a sophisticated communications network that enabled
him to know what the media were planning to write about
him or his government even before they wrote it, says Lisac.
“No reporter can call any civil servant—and there are more
than 20,000 of them—without the call having to be reported
to communications staff and all the PAB reporting it on to
the premier’s office,” explains Lisac. “The whole organization
in government became a spider web where every vibration is
being felt in the premier’s office.”
In Alberta, each ministry has a communications director
and a staff of public affairs officers. But the director reports
to PAB head Leanne Stangeland, who reports to the premier’s
office through executive council deputy minister Ron Hicks.
Whenever there’s a cabinet shuffle, the PAB director shuffles
the communications directors as well. Sometimes they stay
with their minister and go to his new department; sometimes
they stay with the department; sometimes they are sent to a
new department with a new minister. All communications directors are civil servants hired through open competitions—as
opposed to Stanway and Olsen, political appointees whose jobs
hang on Stelmach’s political coattails. While Stanway and Olsen are expected to respond to political issues, communications
directors are theoretically only responsible for explaining the
policies and programs to Albertans through the media.
But opposition parties view the PAB as a Tory propaganda
machine and don’t see much difference between what the
premier’s communications staff does and what the PAB communications directors do. Liberal Leader Kevin Taft has
often referred to Alberta’s public affairs bureau as being the
equivalent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ TASS
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“We obtained copies of briefing notes… The Public Affairs Bureau
is crafting messages to attack other parties, and that clearly crosses
the line into political involvement.” –Brian Mason
news agency. He says he would break up the PAB—which he
calls “an insidious organization”—or build a wall between it
and the politics of government. “I think it’s inappropriate
that the entire communications system be politicized. Those
people are supposed to be public servants, not servants of the
Progressive Conservative Party.”
N
New Democratic Party leader Brian Mason too has
been critical of the PAB. He accuses bureau writers of authoring attack lines for former Deputy Premier Shirley McClellan
to use to assault his party during the mad-cow crisis. “We obtained copies of briefing notes for Shirley McClellan, produced
by the PAB, that gave her lines to attack the NDP. The Public
Affairs Bureau is crafting messages to attack other parties and
that clearly crosses the line into political involvement.”
PAB boss Stangeland and Stelmach’s communications director Stanway both deny that political lines are crossed. They
contend that while the premier’s communications office can
and does make political statements, the PAB is limited solely
to communicating the business of government to Albertans.
“Kevin Taft says there’s no demarcation, but there is clearly one
and it comes up all the time,” says Stanway. “I have only been
on the job less than two months but it’s a constant theme. They
don’t want to be politicized. Nobody asks the communications
directors how they voted. If there was a change in government,
they would be doing the same stuff for somebody else.” He
suggests it is only because the Tories have been in power for 36
years that the PAB has been branded an agency of the party.
But here’s where the picture gets murky. Communications
directors also often speak for their ministers when they
are unavailable—even in defence of contentious policy or
programs. Lisac recalls that under previous premiers Peter
Lougheed and Don Getty, reporters were directed to ministers’
executive assistants for comment when a minister wasn’t
available. Executive assistants (EAs) are political appointees
and not members of the civil service, although they are also
paid out of the taxpayers’ purse. Lisac blames the media in part
for allowing communications directors to speak on behalf of
ministers. “I thought the media were always a little too accepting of this. I would have been happier to see them refrain from
accepting political statements from communications directors.” Some reporters refuse to quote the directors, but it often
means they have to hold their stories until they can catch up
with a cabinet minister in person—some ministers don’t return
phone calls from reporters.
Love says it was always the plan to shift the burden of handling media from the political strategists to the communications
experts. “It wasn’t written down, but it was certainly the plan,”
Love says. “We tried to let the EAs concentrate on the politics
in the department, in the constituency, and in the province and
not worry about the 20 calls a day from media.”
He also candidly admits the communication director’s job is
political. “We expected members of the PAB who were going
to be directors of communications in a political office were
going to have to understand the political side of the ledger. If
you aren’t comfortable with that, stay in the PAB and go write
news releases for Safe Highway Week. But it was understood
that if you were going to be a director of communications in
a minister’s office, there was going to be a political element to
it.” Opposition parties are deluding themselves if they think it
can be any other way, says Love. “The Alberta Legislature is a
purely political environment. If the opposition thinks there are
clear distinctions and lines that are simple to follow, it shows
their naïveté.”
Although the government maintains that the PAB is apolitical, some communications directors showed their Tory stripes
during the recent leadership race when they took vacation
time to work as volunteers on campaigns, and one even spoke
publicly on behalf of a candidate. To confuse the situation even
further, the Premier’s communications office has seconded a
member of the PAB to speak on behalf of the Premier when
Olsen and Stanway are not available. So where is the line?
And why do out-of-town reporters who dial into press conferences with the premier or cabinet ministers discover that the
phone connection operated by the PAB goes dead before the
opposition party leaders get up to the podium to respond?
Ironically, some government MLAs may despise the PAB
even more than opposition MLAs do, but for the opposite
reason. Tory MLAs don’t understand why the PAB hasn’t taken
a more political stance, particularly during the 2004 election
when their party lost seats. They wonder why the PAB won’t
provide them with speeches and materials for their political
battles in their own constituencies. They would like the public
affairs bureau to be much more politicized.
A three-member panel chaired by former Lougheed press
secretary Ron Liepert, now a Calgary MLA, reviewed the
operation of the PAB in 2005, but its never released recommendations met with so much resistance from Klein and his
cabinet that they never made it off the page. Insiders said the
report recommended the PAB be broken up into ministerial
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Finding His Way
departments, or “silos,” with the communications directors
reporting to their ministers rather than the PAB director. They
say such a move would inevitably have created an even more
politicized communications regime. “It just didn’t make sense
to split up all these people into 23 different departments instead
of one that works together as a team,” said one opponent of the
plan. “That was the thing that killed it.”
Despite the criticisms of the PAB, both Stanway and Stangeland contend there are no immediate plans to change the way
it does business. “Premier Stelmach said when he came in that
he valued the communications function,” says Stangeland, who
has held her post since 2005. “I don’t think he intends to make
any significant changes.”
While the PAB will continue to be a target for the opposition,
some people, both inside and outside government, suggest the
power of the PAB as a political tool of government has been
exaggerated. Former Alberta NDP communications director
Simon Kiss, who has been studying the PAB and the Alberta
Progressive Conservative government’s communications for
his doctorate in political studies at Queen’s University, says he
launched his investigation expecting to prove Taft’s assertions
that the bureau has become a party propaganda machine, but
he is discovering that the politicization of the civil service is
not unique to Alberta and probably has had significantly less
impact on media coverage of the Alberta government than the
considerable media savvy of Klein did.
“My own sense is that Kevin Taft is making a bit of a
bogeyman out of the PAB,” says Kiss. “I don’t know if it’s as allpowerful and able to manipulate communications and news
media as he feels it is. I’m starting to find out that the story of
Klein’s relationship with the media is more about Klein’s ability
and willingness to be accessible to the media on a daily basis.”
Stelmach has not attempted to emulate Klein on the public
relations front. He opted not to continue Klein’s tradition of
making an annual state-of-Alberta TV address in January. But
his pledge to operate his government with integrity and transparency could come back to haunt him, says Love. “Whenever
you hang a lantern on what your top priorities are, there’s a
great blowback if you fall down on one of those issues.” It has
already started. The opposition already cries hypocrisy every
time the Stelmach government refuses to immediately release
a report or respond to a question period query.
But Stelmach’s communications team insists the new premier can walk the talk. “You’re really putting your reputation
on the line when you highlight accountability and transparency,
but he’s fully aware of that and he’s prepared to live with it,” says
Stanway.
Olsen warns people not to be so quick to judge Stelmach’s
communications prowess. “He is a good guy and an honest
guy—but more importantly, he is a guy with ideas. People
underestimated him during the leadership and people are still
underestimating him.” #
Darcy Henton has been covering Alberta politics since 1994 and is
a past president of the Alberta Legislature press gallery.
Public Office/Public Eye
How three past premiers mastered media.
Ernest Manning
As a teenager, Saskatchewan farm boy Ernest Manning
became transfixed by “Bible Bill” Aberhart’s radio program,
Back to the Bible Hour. At 18, he set out for Calgary and
enrolled in Aberhart’s Prophetic Bible Institute, becoming its
first graduate in 1930. When Aberhart swept into political
office in 1935, Manning was on board, and ascended to
the premier’s office in 1943. Even then, Manning devoted
his Sundays to the radio show, preaching on such topics
as unemployment and how to keep one’s faith in times of
adversity. After Manning retired from politics, he continued
to host the program, which eventually went national, carried
by 90 radio stations across Canada. Upon retiring as premier,
Manning stated, “I abhor the word ‘politician.’ I would much
rather concentrate on my Bible work.”
Peter Lougheed
Lougheed—a great admirer of Manning—was the first
Alberta premier to take full advantage of the medium of
television. For the 1971 election campaign, Lougheed’s
communication committee decided to devote two-thirds of its
budget to television commercials. Lougheed worked hard to
cultivate his powerful on-camera presence. Starting in 1973,
he began a tradition of what his staff called “the Premier’s
specials,” televised speeches updating the public on significant
events, such as the incorporation of the Alberta Energy
Company. Ingeniously, his team built up such anticipation for
these addresses that they became “news”: even though CBC
TV refused to sell air time for political broadcasts, the station
was compelled to cover these much-hyped events. Another
notable development under Lougheed was the establishment
of the Public Affairs Bureau.
Ralph Klein
A former TV reporter for CFCN, Calgary, Klein knew how
to broadcast charisma. He knew how to package info and
quotes to make life easier for reporters. Media availability was
a top priority; his informal scrums proved a more abundant
resource for reporters than actual sittings of the Legislature.
It was under Klein that the Public Affairs Bureau ballooned
into a huge and sophisticated operation—also a well-funded
one, at a time when the government was slashing funding to
most services. A tidy confluence of events fed this growth:
while media outlets converged (a consolidation which,
coincidentally, seemed to result in fewer stories critical of
the government), journalists were laid off, providing the PAB
with a rich talent pool from which to lure personnel. Critics
charge the PAB was nothing more than a propaganda arm of
the Klein government.
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