With nurses planning to spend much of the day marching on information pickets at health care worksites throughout Alberta to protest the Kenney Government’s effort to cut back their wages and gut their collective agreement, Finance Minister Travis Toews issued a statement yesterday morning that appeared to double down on the government’s strategy.
It’s hard to see how declaring war on nurses and throwing the public health care system into chaos as the global COVID-19 pandemic stubbornly continues to make people sick is a good look for a government with popularity issues and half its mandate now completed.
But someone in the United Conservative Party’s strategic brain trust obviously thinks it’s a winning strategy.
Presumably it was the same advisors who decided it would be a bit of a coup to come out with a tough statement just before most of the nurses’ information pickets were scheduled to start.
In the event, Mr. Toews’ statement just riled up the nurses and their supporters, who turned out at about 40 sites across the province, more than organizers of the province-wide information pickets expected.
So there was Mr. Toews, insisting in his morning news release that the province’s finances are in such a mess that something’s gotta give – and that something is going to be health-care heroes’ wages and benefits now that United Conservative Party has prematurely declared the pandemic over.
Sure, he said, “our government is truly appreciative of the hard work and dedication that health care professionals – especially nurses – have shown over the last 18 months,” but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to be asked to cough up some dough.
This would have been a hard sell at the best of times, even without the pandemic through which nurses and other health care workers were hailed as heroes, or the Kenney Government’s truly mind-boggling prodigality with public funds on such follies as the notorious energy war room, its “public inquiry” to intimidate environmental groups, and the breathtaking $1.3-billion bet lost on the outcome of the last U.S. presidential election. (Not to mention vitamin showers for government advisors who happen to be friends of the premier on missions abroad.)
In the present circumstances, let’s just say it’s hard to see how the approach Mr. Toews took yesterday is going to help the UCP’s re-election chances in a year and a half.
Needless to say, no one on yesterday’s picket lines was inclined to believe the government’s ritual insistence it appreciates and respects health care workers and the work they did through the pandemic.
To make matters just a little worse, Mr. Toews or someone on his staff compounded the error by trying to pin the blame for the state of negotiations – technically with Alberta Health Services – on the nurses’ union by saying its bargaining team had refused to accept informal mediation to help reach a new Provincial Collective Agreement.
It’s hard to see how a mediator could help with the government instructing AHS to stick with a hard-line approach, but it wasn’t the union that scuttled the idea.
United Nurses of Alberta quickly issued a statement setting the record straight: “Mr. Toews was in error,” it said. “The UNA Bargaining Committee indicated to AHS negotiators they were free to apply if they wished and UNA would not object or view it as a provocation in negotiations. AHS chose not to do so.”
This approach, it is said here, is unlikely to improve either the UCP’s current dismal polling, or Premier Kenney’s sagging popularity.
Indeed, as people kept observing at the various information pickets yesterday, “Albertans love nurses. They don’t even like Mr. Kenney.”
Say what you will about the old Progressive Conservative dynasty – whose instincts served it well for about 42 of the nearly 44 years it spent in power – it paid attention to which way the wind was blowing and was always ready to pivot when circumstances demanded.
Its electoral record under six of seven PC premiers suggests this was a successful strategy.
They were a conservative party, at times willing to push quite hard for private approaches to public policies. But they weren’t fools. And when the public showed signs of rebelling, they knew how to back away from an unpopular idea.
And there was always smoothly diplomatic cabinet minister like Gene Zwozdesky waiting in the wings, ready to be sent in to pour oil on troubled waters when the waves of ministerial mismanagement threatened to swamp the Tory ship of state.
Not the UCP. They appear to have no ability or inclination to bend. They have no strategy but to double down. Tyler Shandro remains the minister of health.
Well, the next few weeks and months will be a test.
Sometimes even when you win, you lose.
Do Mr. Kenney and Mr. Toews have the ability to recognize that reality and govern themselves accordingly?
The UCP are sinking to the lowest levels possible. By flat out cheating, hypocrisy, lying, and not showing any sound fiscal judgement, from doing very pricey shenanigans, that have cost Albertans billions of dollars. The UCP doesn’t care how much their bad policies effect Albertans in any way.
The UCP clearly stated that they would not make any cutbacks to healthcare and education in Alberta. If this is is so, why have the UCP mentioned about laying off hundreds of RNs in Alberta, and gave 26,000 educational support workers pink slips in 2020? Why are the UCP asking that nurses take wage rollbacks? Why are the UCP fighting with doctors in Alberta?
What we are witnessing is a return to the dark and dreary days of Ralph Klein. Ralph Klein didn’t respect nurses, doctors, or other medical professionals in Alberta either. Nor did Ralph Klein respect teachers. Ralph Klein gave numerous nurses, as well as numerous teachers pink slips in Alberta. Very pricey shenanigans were done by Ralph Klein, and it was people in these professions, among others, who were made to suffer, in turn making Albertans suffer. Ralph Klein also made very powerful cuts to healthcare in, so he could make the claim that the system was broken, and he could usher in private for profit healthcare in Alberta. That is not a system we want to have, based on what the American user pay healthcare system is like.
The UCP also wants to put in private for profit healthcare in Alberta. It’s no surprise given that they appointed Janice MacKinnon on their Blue Ribbon Panel. Janice MacKinnon was an NDP MLA in Saskatchewan, under the Roy Romanow provincial government, and she closed down rural hospitals in Saskatchewan, when the NDP government was trying to repair the damage from Grant Devine’s PC government.
Having disrespect for nurses and doctors isn’t very smart, but these pretend Conservatives and Reformers simply don’t care.
Anonymous While Ralph Klein was closing hospitals, closing 1,500 hospital beds and cutting 5,000 nursing positions his father Phil said to me “ Al what in the hell is the matter with that son of mine, while he gives away billions in royalties he is forcing us to try to live without a proper health care system. This could cost some people their lives” Phil was right that’s what it did, one was almost my father”
I will never forget the nurses bawling their eyes out in my office when Klein destroyed their careers. I helped nine doctors and at least two dozen nurses relocate out of this province and not one wanted to go.
It’s no secret that these Reformers looked at Klein as a hero and are trying to follow him. While they continue to give away the people’s oil and tax wealth they try to force us into a lot more privatization and don’t give a damn who they hurt in the process. Sadly a lot of our fellow seniors are willing to believe every lie they feed them, totally ignorant of what they will do to them. As my retired doctor friends have pointed out they will kill some of their own followers with their stupid polices. They won’t be able to get medical help when they need it. We know Klein did and the law suits launched against him proved it.
We know Kenney’s buddy Erin O’Toole is already promising to gut our public health care system, like Harper promised he would do. It got him defeated. Want to be that stupid Albertans will support O’Toole ? We know they will. Kenney has the narrow minded fools convinced Ottawa is stealing all Alberta’s money. They aren’t smart enough to understand that these Reformers are helping their rich friends do it.
One of my American cousins says “For gods sake. Don’t let anyone destroy your Public Health Care System. Trust me you Don’t want ours”. I think he’s right.
ALAN K SPILLER: You sure got it right.
One thing the Used Car Party does very well, uniting the UNA membership.
Meanwhile, in other news, Red Deer MLA Jason Stephan seems to think its OK to spend $84 to have sidewalk chalk removed from the sidewalk in front of his constituency office.
https://twitter.com/DrAnneIrwin/status/1424052313078046720
These people are starting to seem more like a pathology than a government. Perhaps the time has come to analyze Jason Kenney himself rather than his policy decisions.
Thing that made tRumpublicanism so hard to analyze was the spotlight hog Donald J tRump himself. The irony is richer than he knows: he succeeded in getting the attention he always craved by way of maudlin stagecraft and the US presiduncy, the most powerful office in history, but he has jumped the shark, as he would brag, “better than anyone would ever believe,” and is now pathetically hanging on to his undoing. The soap opera is ending as he recedes into infamy.
The bigger question is about the USA, tRump being just a symptom of its many, accumulating problems.
At some point, Jason Kenney will also recede into infamy and Alberta’s many, accumulated problems will be easier to discern.
But, I have to admit to some rubbernecking on my own part: the persona Kenney is fascinating in its own rite. But, as DJC informs us, it’s still fundamentally about Alberta, its territory, its people, its nature, and its confederation with Canada.
The lesson we get from both leaders—one who praises and emulates the other who wouldn’t even recognize his name or find his province on a map—is that we should be able to recognize personal agendas disguised as public policies, and avoid them like the plague. At least within living memory. Remember, the people who voted for either of them were either very young or yet unborn when the dictators of the mid 20th century ran the world into so much suffering. We need our current examples of whom not to elect—the pitfall of democracy being that we can make mistakes; the saving grace is that we can correct them—so long’s dictators don’t take democracy away.
There must be a LOT of tactical thinking in labour negotiations—especially when the employer has an anti-union, anti-labour overseer breathing down their necks.
Let’s see…AHS tells UNA to ask for a mediator. UNA declines, says “go ahead yourself, we don’t mind.” AHS says, “Uh…no. No thanks.” And around they go in circles.
This looks like a case of “Who’s gonna blink first?” The party that asks for mediation is the weaker one…right? Jeez, they might as well get it over with, we all KNOW this is going to binding arbitration.
In 2015, facing a $7 million deficit inherited from the Old Tories of Jim Prentice et al, Notley’s NDP government imposed wage freezes. I was AUPE until this year. Our local, #061, had a wage re-opener in 2019. The employer (acting, I believe but can’t prove, on orders from the government) stonewalled for a year and a half, right through to binding arbitration. We got a retroactive 1% raise for 2019. (I got about $800 out of it.) There were about 200 people in our local. Clearly this settlement put the province in danger of bankruptcy and default.
The Unhinged Contrarian Party is blinded by their ideological (I’m tempted to say “religious”) belief that “Governments can’t do anything right and business can’t do anything wrong.” They utterly fail to realize, in their tunnel-vision view of the world, that they make this mantra into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yet, it’s never their fault. Travis Toews lied to the public when he said the UNA “refused” to ask for mediation. That he would say that and blandly expect NOT to be called on it shows that these guys are not out of touch with reality, they’re DENYING reality.
Mike: With respect, I don’t think this is going to binding arbitration. Indeed, I think the Kenney Government will avoid binding arbitration at all costs because it knows it won’t produce the results it wants. My personal belief is they will try to bully health care workers into accepting a rollback and, if that fails, allow a labour dispute to take place. In such an event, they will allow the public to be inconvenienced, then legislate the union back to work and call an election, accusing the NDP of being too close to unions. DJC
You have more experience with labour disputes than I ever wanted, so I’ll unhappily defer to your judgement. We’ll just have to wait and see whether Kenney’s rural Base blames Kenney, Shandro & Associates, or the nurses’ union.
It’s still a high-stakes gamble, and we can only hope Kenney’s bluffing and the UNA can call. Covid-19 is still a wild card, and if hospitals can handle the case loads, I hope Kenney will have to fold.
We’ll have to see if the current job action by nurses leads to a palace revolt among the UCP. But right now it appears that Premier Crying & Screaming Midget intends to buy the loyalty of anyone who is willing to fluff his easily damaged ego. Judging by Kenney’s recent statements, he seemed to go to some length to presenting Albertans with the dismal future that awaits them without his steady hands at the helm. Something about “impossible utopias” and “living in mud huts” … I’m not sure what he was getting at, as it sounded like a bigger word salad than we’re used to coming out of his mouth. In any case, he looked hungover, so I’ll call it baffle-gab from the after effects of another deep dive into his mountain of cough syrup.
As for Shandro, we all know that when he steps out to speak to the nurses’ job action, he’s going to blow his stack, start looking for a driveway to yell at, and start coughing up M&Ms as he froths at the mouth. Shandro will then let loose a litany of rants about everyone being “insane” as his face gets smaller in comparison to his ever swelling head. Maybe his head will explode? Could happen.
As for Toews, all he has to do is mention is that the province is broke, the finances are a mess, people are making too much money, it’s not his job to care, and tell everyone to please f#ck off. Of course, he could mention that Ottawa owes Alberta 90,000 ka-gillion dollars, but PMJT will just tell him to take it up with the “Younger Jason Kenney”, and please f#ck off.
Since healthcare workers are the ones that worked the hardest, endured the deepest risks to personal safety, and were subject to daily acclaim, Kenney is demanding deep and retroactive pay cuts, because he needs a few billion dollars to throw into another pipeline to nowhere. Or, maybe he’s take the whole wad down to the casino and bet on black? Alberta’s “Daddy Warbucks” loves the thrill of a bold risk.
Meanwhile, the “Greatest Summer Since Jesus Was Born” rolls along, unhindered but unloved. Oh, and please f#ck off.
While other jurisdictions worry about nurse burnout leading to staff shortages, here we are in Alberta. Aren’t we special?
The UCP is riding the fourth wave of the pandemic right into 2023.
On another front, school boards have been forced to take steps to protect students from Covid because our provincial government won’t. Can we expect parent fundraisers to pick up the tab?
Protests continue today at McDougall Centre in Calgary over the government’s decision to withdraw Covid testing, monitoring and prevention, putting unvaccinated children under 12 at risk. In Edmonton, protests are planned at Kaycee Madu’s office. Jason Stephan threatens to bill protestors for $84 chalk abatement at his office in Red Deer, while satirists offer his staff deep discounts on $50 buckets of water.
It’s the summer of smoky skies, drought, pestilence and protests. The Covid Delta variant is growing exponentially. Where is premier what’s-his-name? Hiding in the Sky Palace, downing budget spirits and catered suppers, waiting for all this to blow over?
Our government lost touch with reality some time ago. The tragedy unfolds. Best Summer Ever!!! Don’t forget the cake, Premier Marie.
I would certainly like to know what Peter Lougheed’s son is getting out of all this as a member of one of their Expert Panels, wouldn’t you? We know Peter wouldn’t stand for this brand of stupidity.
ALAN K. SPILLER: If Peter Lougheed were still around, I don’t think he would endorse what the UCP are doing. He would definitely tell his children to steer clear of the UCP, and these pretend conservatives and Reformers.
Now I am not resident in the formerly marginally sane province of Alberta. That’s a safe harbour disclaimer for what I am about to say. I did however grow to a decent size in the pall of conservatism there. I believe that service as a child captive deserves an acknowledged right to criticize! Here I go! Sycophancy? Core value! Superciliousness? All our juvenile libertarians should be tested to confirm it! Moral vacancy? A feature not a pathology! I rest my case with a song. https://youtu.be/_7G6twcUmCA?t=26
This was a very tough post to write, it’s stuff I’ve been thinking and feeling for months now but not wanting to say because it’s so unfair on so many levels. Please understand I’m not writing this to be a jerk or to vent my spleen, but out of a sense of obligation to provide some ‘tough love’ to a people I’ve been hurting for for quite some time now. Also please understand I am not pointing my finger at individuals, but attempting to sound the alarm over a societal trend.
RE: the quote “Albertans love nurses.” Do they? Certainly there are individuals in Alberta who love nurses, but I’ve seen no evidence that Albertans as a whole do. When we “love” people or things, we go beyond performative statements and make meaningful sacrifices. I would argue that far too many Albertans value their pickup truck more highly than their health care system. If I was a nurse in Alberta I’d be looking to move. If I was a parent in Alberta I’d be looking to move. If I was a teenager in Alberta I honestly don’t know how I would contain my anger and resentment, or the disrespect I would feel towards the “adults” sabotaging my future by claiming they have the “right” to act on whatever crazy nonsense they’ve proudly chosen to believe today. I was a waiter in Alberta… and I moved, and have no intention of returning anytime in the foreseeable future.
Among the various disasters that Albertans have voted to inflict upon themselves with the UCP is severe damage to the perception of who Albertans are, both inside and outside of the province. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe the worst of Albertans, I lived among them for 10 years and know better. There are many Albertans I know, respect and care about. This feeling of affection makes me feel obligated to point out that there is a growing pile of evidence to support the belief that the biggest problem with Alberta is the moral character of Albertans, because if I can’t say it in a way that Albertans might actually listen to, who can? I know people who believe that the rest of Canada should be egging the Wexiteers on because they think a Canada without Albertans would be addition by subtraction. Some of their arguments are spiteful, nasty, childish and ill-informed… but others are not, and being unable to refute them is quite distressing for me 🙁
Blaming the UCP or Jason Kenny ignores that Albertan voters had an effective government and the majority of them seemed to spend the whole mandate of that government impatiently waiting to gleefully dance on Rachel Notley’s grave. It ignores that Albertans consistently react to the increasingly brazen depredations of Neoliberals with a shrug and a “just so’s *I* get paid.” It ignores that Albertans are almost uniquely complicit in climate change, even among Canadians, who are ourselves almost uniquely complicit in climate change. It ignores that Albertans are not helpless victims, they have privilege and agency and they can choose to do better. It ignores that Albertans do not believe absurdities because they are unable to understand the truth, but because they simply want to believe whatever will justify them taking the actions they want to take and they believe they will never experience any consequences for their delinquent behaviour. It ignores that all too many Albertans get off on loudly and publicly lecturing poor people to “take some responsibility” while being utterly unwilling to take any themselves.
I can understand being surprised by Kenney’s incompetence, but not by his values or his ideology. This is not a guy whose beard grew longer overnight.
Anyways, please don’t let me make you feel like I’m saying these things about you personally or anybody in particular. I understand I’m being unfair, I know all too well what it’s like to be embarrassed by one’s own government, and I empathize. A lot. I know what it’s like to be drowned out by a voting public completely uninterested in putting in the work necessary in order to be able to find their own asses with both hands. In Alberta, as everywhere else in the West, the wrong people are in charge. Change has to come from us – it has to come from the bottom, because the people at the top like things just the way they are.
I apologize for the many unkind and unfair things I said here, I acknowledge that most of the criticisms I made could be fairly made (to a lesser extent) against any government or people in the West. I also acknowledge my own complicity in many of these problems, and that my responsibility to find a solution is no smaller than anyone else’s. I hope this post somehow came across as reasonable and well-intentioned while suspecting that I sound like the internet’s most cluelessly self-righteous, up-his-own-ass provocateur.
Mr Lore: I support your spleen-venting wholeheartedly. There’s a reason why, even after living in this benighted place for well-on 36 years, I & my wife both refuse to self-identify as “Albertans” — & I refuse on general principle to own a pickup trick, despite its inarguable utility when there is yard work to be done. We do not share the values of this place, and the only reason we haven’t decamped is that we have young grandchildren living here.
Well said Neil. A reasonable and I’m sure well-intentioned post which should be given real consideration by every Albertan. Albertans elected these clowns knowing exactly what they were voting out and surely with a good idea of who they were voting in. A wise man said “You get the govt you deserve” and now you’ve got it so deal with it…
I am “workshopping” this slogan:
“Jason Kenney and the UCP – All dollars; No sense”
I believe that encapsulates the UCP focus on the economy at all costs to every other aspect of good governance.
Attacking nurses, doctors, universities, and others is not good for Alberta.
None of this surprises me. Jason isn’t the brightest tool in the box and has an over inflated view of his capabilities. His attacks on nurses makes sense. He has never been female friendly. He is not progressive or even up to date on women’s positions in today’s society. He’s back in 2000 or some what earlier. He in my opinion, has taken a page out of el gordo’s book, former Premier of B.C. Upon becoming Premier, el gordo, fired 9K women from the work force, all members of the HEU, who cleaned the hospitals. He said it would reduce costs. It really didn’t and the death rate for il dificle went up and hospitals in B.C. haven’t been clean since. Jason won’t attack a male dominated occupation. Not only will he attempt to reduce nurses’s salaries, but fire many of them. He thinks that will send nurses a message. El gordo just wanted to flex his muscles and send a message. Jason wants to do the same.
If it was simply a case of money Jason could implement a 1/2% sales tax and explain it was to cover the rising costs of health care and then ensure the money was spent in health care.
I can’t decide on the best term to describe this ucp government. Is it sh#t show or is it cluster f#ck? Whatever it is, it is the worst government I have experienced!
Can nurses withstand a fourth wave and not blink? I don’t know. We’re burned out man, we’ve done 18 months of this gobshite, and now we’re told it’s over (Trust me. It’s not.) and that we have to take retroactive rollbacks (is that even legal? I’m sure it’s not!) and up to 10%pay cuts (For a night nurse) plus give up patient safety in the form of the charge nurse being an RN, LPN or RPN. (for those who don’t know? Charge is go if you have a problem too big for you and your colleagues to handle.) for a beancounter. Who I’m sure is well versed in nursing skills…….. to …express our issues with the MD. Yeah. Sure. That’s safe. No thanks. Me? I’m done. Packed my bags and moved 8 weeks ago and this year my CARNA registration will read ‘non-active’. My sask and bc licences? Active and in progress. Vote as if you may at some point need care, or have a loved one who may at some point need care, and the floor is running short. As we were even before this pandemic.
There are highlights and one of them for me is the folkfest. In memorium I leave what she would have wanted from those who didn’t know but heard her. https://youtu.be/DUqLleoZxtM?t=4