Having promised back in January that an interim report of the COVID-19 review panel for which former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning was to be paid $235,000 would be handed over to the Alberta government by the end of June, the UCP government had to say something.
In the event though, the only thing they had to say in response to an enterprising reporter who asked what had become of the interim report of the $2-million Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel was that it’s for their eyes only, and the rest of us won’t get to see it – not now and probably not ever.
Don’t worry, though, the office of Premier Danielle Smith told Edmonton Journal reporter Matthew Black yesterday, we’ll all still get to see the final report on Nov. 15 as promised.
Arguably, it’s not really an interim report if we don’t get to see it – it’s just a draft.
But it’s easy to speculate on the reasons why the government, which presumably has by now had the opportunity to take a first look at the 81-year-old former Reform Party leader’s doubtless herculean effort, felt it might need a little extra time to polish up the results.
There was always the risk, after all, that the interim report might just turn out to be a thinly self-plagiarized version of Mr. Manning’s May 2022 exercise in “bizarre speculative fiction” about the so-called “Freedom Convoy.”
That was when the superannuated godfather of the Canadian right took a not terribly effective stab at writing actual fiction. Reviews were bad for the turgid effort in which imaginary Convoy seditionists got to haul physicians, professors and journalists before drumhead courts to try them for conspiring with the Ottawa Liberals to use the pandemic as an excuse to steal our Charter rights.
There may have been a time when Premier Smith, a COVID vaccine skeptic and quack cure enthusiast herself, thought that would be a dandy idea. But now that the Convoy crowd has moved on from anti-vaxx hysterics to outright hatred for anyone associated with the colours of the rainbow, maybe not so much. Also, she may not want to remind us that so far 5,803 Albertans have lost their lives to COVID on the UCP’s watch.
In addition, as a FOIP request last spring revealed, when Albertans were invited to provide their input to the panel through the online portal set up on the government of Alberta website, too many of the 2,200 or so citizens who responded didn’t provide the answers Premier Smith and the United Conservative party were looking for.
Instead of the anti-vaxx policies the government clearly hoped respondents would demand, the most popular recommendations for changes to public health regulations were for more reliance on true medical expertise and more independence for the chief medical officer of health so the holder of that office could more sidestep interfering politicians to effectively control infectious diseases like COVID-19.
No doubt some heavy lifting and pretzel logic remains to justify a final report that calls for changes that will suit the anti-vaxx (and anti-gay) Take Back Alberta cadres who skidded former Premier Jason Kenney and put Ms. Smith in his office.
As a political ally of the UCP in general and Ms. Smith in particular, now closely associated with anti-vaxx extremists, Mr. Manning was a singularly inappropriate choice to author a government report on anything to do with the response to COVID-19.
He stepped back from his other anti-public-health project, the deceptively named National Citizens Inquiry, when he got the better paid gig with the UCP Government, although how far he stepped away is not clear.
That anti-vaxx dog and pony show led by right-wing agitators, which is not by any description an inquiry or truly national in scope, managed to gin up a certain amount of media interest from “witnesses” sob stories in April, but has been quite quiet of late. Perhaps its organizers are waiting for a lull in the port strike hysteria to start trying to own the Libs again.
Preston Manning has never had any sort of actual employment, outside of politics. He is now 81, and has a very substantial pension from being a politician, for all those years. He got $253,000, as well as a $2 million expense account, from Danielle Smith to come up with a report on how the UCP government responded to the Covid-19 pandemic in Alberta. The report is now delayed, but regardless of that, it will likely show that the UCP isn’t at fault for doing a botch job of managing the Covid-19 pandemic. The UCP didn’t handle things very well, and the records prove that, because of how bad Alberta was with Covid-19 cases in Canada, and even in North America. In addition, there were UCP MLAs, and party members who were dodging the Covid-19 pandemic rules they have created, with no real punishment in place. This is what happened. This payout to Preston Manning is absurd. There are many other seniors in Alberta who are not having an easy time surviving, and they could use money like that. So could those on the province’s Assured Income For The Severely Handicapped program, who endured big clawbacks to their meager monthly income, by the callous UCP government, only to have a measly $100 added to their income, just so the UCP could get back votes. There are others too, who have difficulty making ends meet, and they also could use that money. It just goes to show how out of touch Danielle Smith and the UCP really are.
Canadian conservative politicians are adept at leveraging short attention spans.
“pretzel logic”?: “They say the times are changing, but I just don’t know. These things are gone forever. Over a long time ago, oh yeah.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBxZFadp9Pw
“herculean”?: The Mighty Manning:
Alkyl: Only POGO is supposed to post things like this. DJC
Apologies all around, sensei.
Hey? I’m tryin’ to get banned! It’d be nice to have company! https://youtu.be/VaKhk5RFKRg?t=2
Well Sensei? I’ve waited for the chance to excoriate the deserving, before mocking them. Preston is a soft and yet a hard target. He may be a legacy mine manager in the shaft that leads to faux righteous hell, but these new bigots and manipulative worker zealots? I’ll ponder on it! For now? This is for the Manning legacy! https://youtu.be/mWF1v7W70wU?t=2
“That anti-vaxx dog and pony show led by right-wing agitators…has been quite quiet of late.” Maybe to keep the sharp edge they’re perfecting one of Premier Smith’s quack cures by dosing each other with coffee enemas.
First off? I’m not a bot. No one could make up a better expository lesson for understanding the addled loonies that are running our government. So. I’ll leave it up to the professionals. https://youtu.be/lL8_cfi-bCw
In paragraph 12 after Smith the i needs an n to make the word in.
OA: Fixed. Thanks. D
The regressive right were howling like a pack of hounds over David Johnston but we heard crickets from the right when old man Manning was picked to head up this bit of kabuki theatre.
IMO pointing out Conservative inconsistencies is less important than figuring out why Conservatives contradict themselves so often. Perhaps they are reluctant to say some of their reasons out loud?
The NCI held eight hearings from March to May. Supposedly the Commissioners will now issue a public report, but that’s a lot of work and who knows how long it will take?
And everyone will ignore it anyway, because it will probably be a biased worthless pile of nonsense.
https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/
“…Ms. Smith i particular…”
I’ll take a consonant for $100, David.
Lards: Fixed. Thanks. DJC
I wonder if they (Manning and Smith) had talks on what the conclusion is supposed to be and are now in the process of creative writing to get there.
PointedSticks: This seems like a novel, and we are waiting for the final manuscript to come out. It will be altered, alright, and the UCP won’t be found liable for botching their Covid-19 pandemic response. Preston Manning then is $253,000 wealthier. I also wouldn’t doubt that the report has been already done, or that the UCP are hiding something from Albertans. The postponement of this is very Steve Allen like.
Way back in high school chemistry lab in the 1970s, the terminology we used for this was “cooking the data”: working back from the result you knew the teacher wanted to see and manipulating the inputs to get them. It’s a form of cheating.
Presto Manning makes his one last swing at the public trough he derided so much over his life, before he throws off his mortal coil. That’s what this crazy public-financed lunacy must be for. Though Danielle Smith agreed to hand over about $30 M for First Nations drug rehabilitation — or the equivalent of less than 1/10th of a publicly-funded NHL arena — in an altruistic gesture seemingly meant to distract from Manning’s on going weirdness. And if that were not enough, TBA seems to be getting real about their reenactment of the the Night of the Long Knives. Smith really has never been concerned about the company she keeps and it shows.
And just to keep things going with an international flavour, Artur Pawlowski’s son, Nathaniel Pawlowski, went to the EU Parliament to plead his father’s case. Going to the EU Parliament these days brings one into the midst of every garden variety crazy nationalist that Europe has to offer. Nathaniel Pawlowski went on, denouncing the “tyranny” that has visited Canada, turning the once free land into a carbon copy of Poland behind the Iron Curtain. And taking an excellent dramatic turn, he called PMJT a modern day Caligula, a mad emperor. Wow! From an empty headed drama teacher with nice hair to the master of an empire — that’s quite the promotion. In a statement via video, the Elder Pawlowski declared himself a soldier of FreeDUMB, a warrior who has born the many arrows in defence of all that is free and true. Gee, I thought the summer was going to be boring, but it looks like it’s just heating up.
Does anyone know when The Pawlowskis came to Canada, or what their clan was up to from i dunno 1935-1945?
A little bird—- According to wiki, he was born in Poland, family moved to Greece in ’90, and to Canada in ’95….he became a Can.citizen in 2004(?) and IMHO has been making a mockery of that ceremony since. For example: “Get Out “- A time-line of hate preacher Artur Pawlowski’s Activities Across North America ……
from Antihate.ca , posted Aug 24/2021….. when hob-nobbing with the likes of Steve Bannon doesn’t give you pause in Canada, you’re in the wrong country to my way of thinking.
I’m totally behind the people who feel he should lose his citizenship and be deported. I can think of a few places that might take him.
As the saying goes, nice work if you can get it. On the surface, it seems Manning might have been a good choice to straddle between more conventional conservatives and the more extreme anti vax ones. However, that was probably even more tricky than it sounds.
So, this secret interim report is not a good sign that this succesfully happened. In fact it probably failed. Either Manning was too conventional to satisfy the crowd now running the show, or got too carried away with his creative writing inspired fantasy and what he submitted is not considered credible enough for public viewing.
I don’t know which it is, but I do suspect he will be given some firm direction to clean it up and submitt something more closely matching whatever his political masters want.
I suppose it is not a good sign that such interim work by someone of Manning’s experience would need editing, revision or whatever. However, perhaps it is some consolation to Manning, but less so to Alberta taxpayers, that while this happens he will no doubt continue to take his cheques to the bank.
“…the most popular recommendations for changes to public health regulations were for more reliance on true medical expertise and more independence for the chief medical officer of health so the holder of that office could more sidestep interfering politicians…”
There is a real irony of politicians needing time to figure out how to massage a message saying that people want politicians to be prevented from massaging the message from the Chief Medical Officer of Health.
I have been saying this and I will keep saying it, the majority of folks in this province, urban or rural, are good, reasonable people that don’t hate anyone. Why we have this conservative deadlock in rural Alberta is another discussion to have
Preston Manning hides behind a mask of integrity but is truly an ongoing sustainability harmer, the granddaddy of harm.
Manning might have “stepped back from his other anti-public health project,” but he’s probably steeping in his new one.
Last I checked, no Canadian lost a single right or freedom during the pandemic, they being reasonably limited even at the best of times.
Progress report? Heh, not unless Preston has been inoculated against any embarrassment that alls he found was a Sasquatch.