The Alberta government spends $23 million on communications staff each year – an amount the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) says is far too high.
The province employs 214 full-time equivalent positions in communications at an average of $108,000 per employee in salary and benefits, according to a document released in response to a freedom of information request by the CTF.
“Government needs well-paid and qualified communications staff do its job, but Alberta’s government has gone a little overboard,” CTF Alberta Director Derek Fildebrandt told Global News.
Average employee costs for the Public Affair Bureau (PAB) and the Tourism, Health and Municipal Affairs ministries sit at $121,000 or more.
The PAB and nine ministries each have between 10 and 27 communications staff.
The Health Services ministry has the largest communications team, employing 25 full-time staff.
The PAB Central Office employs 27 staff members.
“They could assign one spin doctor to every political journalist in the province and still have enough left over to handle the mail,” Fildebrandt told the Calgary Sun.
Government spokesman David Sands told the Calgary Herald many communications staff deal directly with the public and that staffing levels are determined by how many employees are needed to maintain efficient and effective communication with the media and public.
The government assigns cross-ministry tasks to many employees to take advantage of specialized skills, such as social media, speech writing and graphic design, Sands told the Calgary Sun.
“Albertans expect and deserve important information from government promptly and efficiently and that’s what we’re all about,” he said.
The communications staff are a small faction of the government’s 30,000 employees, he told the Calgary Sun.
Opposition MLA Rob Anderson said that if the Wildrose Party became government it would cut communications staff spending by at least 75 per cent.
“There’s no reason that we couldn’t do the same job — frankly that we couldn’t do a better job than is being done now — for $5 million a year on staff,” he told the Calgary Herald.
Also concerning, he said, is the fact the government also contracts out communications services to private firms and consultants.
According to the National Post, last year the government spent $240,000 in contracted work to help with communications efforts during the Alberta floods.
"You’d think with all these highly paid communications experts on the government payroll, they wouldn’t have to contract out these kinds of projects," said Anderson.
"If these people aren’t doing the jobs taxpayers are paying them handsomely to do, what exactly are they doing?"
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