Wildrose Leader Brian Jean is claiming that the Progressive Conservative government is passing “secret laws, phony laws and bad laws.” Jean has exposed approximately $6 milliion in secret expense claims by members of the government. Jean produced an email from 2012 sent to senior officials in the government which shows that there was a category for expenses which was broadly defined as corporate events that was intended to be kept out of the expense disclosure portal kept by the government which can be searched. This portal has been called the gold standard when it comes to government transparency. Jean was critical and said “So the gold-standard of disclosure was actually the gold-standard of hiding. I thought the Liberals in Ottawa were bad. Albertans have been deceived by a government that pretended to be transparent, that pretends today to be transparent, while it is actually being secretive. This must end.”

The controversial expense category used by the Progressive Conservative government has been the source of much scorn from the Wildrose Leader. Another sore point is phony laws. Jean criticized the government over 66 laws that he called phony because these laws were past but they were not proclaimed. This caused Jean to comment that “legislation is nothing more than a public relations exercise for the PCs.” Premier Jim Prentice discussed the expense category and stated “I’m not sure what goes in it. It’s not something that’s used by my office, I can assure you of that. The Accountability Act from last fall means all of our expenses are available for public scrutiny. (The category) should be eliminated. I’m not sure where it came from. It pre-dated me as the premier and I don’t think we need it.”