Mental Health and Addictions Minister Dan Williams has issued a directive to Alberta Health Services giving the provincial agency 90 days to consolidate all of its mental health and addiction programs, services, and operations under a single administrative silo, the government announced yesterday.
On July 20, Premier Danielle Smith told the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce AHS needed to be decentralized to put “more management closer to home at each individual hospital” so that services would match community needs.
But never mind. That was just so two weeks ago!
As I pointed out at the time, Alberta’s premier often doesn’t mean what she says, especially when she’s trying to pull a fast one.
So we can be confident that health care decision making in Alberta is always going to be made at the provincial level, except when it’s always going to be made at the local level.
Say what you will about Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government, at least it had the wit not to quote the premier in its wordy and likely intentionally murky press release about its plans to consolidate mental health services to, in words attributed to Mr. Williams, “ensure that no matter what part of the province is called home, individuals can access the best mental health care and addiction treatment we have to offer.”
If you’re wondering what this policy change is really about, look no farther than this line in the press release: “AHS will also align these services with the government’s recovery-oriented approach. …”
So while the press release says nothing more about this point, the reasonable interpretation of yesterday’s announcement is that it is intended to set the stage for the UCP’s plan to implement punitive and coercive involuntary drug treatment programs under its tendentiously named “compassionate intervention” legislation.
If you doubt this, consider the toadying stenography published earlier yesterday by Postmedia’s Calgary tabloid in which Mr. Williams blames North America’s deadly drug poisoning crisis on “the radical progressive left.” This and other articles like it popping up like noxious weeds in the increasingly right-wing media have the feeling of a co-ordinated campaign.
“Don’t get Williams going and talk about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and providing addicts with ‘a so-called safe supply of drugs,’” columnist Rick Bell obsequiously bloviated. “‘I don’t care if it’s a drug dealer handing out the hard drugs or Justin Trudeau handing out the drugs.’ For Williams, it is all wrong.”
So never mind those crazy lefty concerns about human rights, due process, and the constitution. “I’m not blinking,” Mr. Williams vows in Mr. Bell’s account. And the scribbler promises to advise him on what to do about the services to drug users provided at downtown Calgary’s Sheldon Chumir Health Centre.
If he only knew, Sheldon Chumir – the passionate Calgary human rights activist, public education supporter, civil liberties lawyer, MLA, and scholar who died in 1992 – would be spinning in his grave!
Plus, Alberta halts renewable energy project approvals
The statement by Mr. Williams, hitherto best known as one of the anti-reproductive-rights extremists in the UCP Caucus and the guy who chugged a beer in the Legislature, wasn’t the only government announcement yesterday that dripped with irony.
Consider the press release from Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf announcing that, starting immediately, the Alberta Utilities Commission would pause approvals of new renewable electricity-generation projects over one megawatt for seven months to respond to “concerns raised from municipalities and landowners related to responsible land use and the rapid pace of renewables development.”
The goal of the government’s purported concern about renewable energy, according to the presser, is “maintaining responsible environmental stewardship and preserving Alberta’s reliable electricity supply.”
This from a government that has no viable plan to clean up the 170,000 or so filthy abandoned or orphaned oil and gas wells that dot the province and also opposes any caps on production of high-carbon bitumen from the oil sands.
Unsurprisingly, despite claims to the contrary, the government doesn’t appear to have consulted anyone in the renewables industry about its mandated work stoppage.
This is one way, I suppose, to ensure that Premier Smith’s dubious claim a net-zero electricity grid by 2035 is impossible comes true.
What’s next, one Internet wag wondered, a six-month ban on eating vegetables to help Alberta’s cattle industry?
Hello DJC,
The idea of locking up drug users raises many questions. First, on what grounds, and is it legal? For example, does it violate Charter rights? Wouldn’t providing housing and other services be more useful and a better use of money? Where will people be placed? Who will decide and on what basis will they decide to place people in institutions? There are many other questions, but these are some that immediately spring to mind.
I would think that this is not a useful strategy, even if it would work. And I highly doubt that it will be successful.
And a question I have long wondered about is whether there are studies as to the reasons individuals become addicted to drugs and how to prevent it, if possible. It would seem to me that strong social supports for everyone, for example a good housing policy, adequate food not dependent on luck and charity etc. would be appropriate. As you recently discussed, an end to neoliberalism is a very good place to start.
There is indeed research in the professional literature on root causes of addiction, and childhood trauma has been implicated as a significant factor. It’s not my field, so I don’t have the citations readily at hand, but this is what I’ve been told by trusted colleagues who practise in that area.
So many adults living with an addiction have been set up for it years, or even decades beforehand. Forcibly imposing treatment on them — treatment which is doomed to failure by virtue of being involuntary — is inhumane and unjust.
Jerry: It is also, I am quite confident, unconstitutional, on the grounds of fundamental rights and jurisdiction. The former because the treatment is known to be ineffective, and can therefore hardly be justified as a violation of fundamental rights; the latter because the intention is to punish, not to treat, drug dependency. Perhaps the UCP will finally use its “Sovereignty Act” to get around those objections, however. DJC
There is not a shred of evidence that these clowns know what they’re doing. Sure, they know (or at least think they know) what they want but not a clue about how to make it happen.
Incompetence. Hallmark of the Klien cabal of goofballs, it’s back with a vengeance.
How can something that is conspicuously absent and noticeably missing be back, or anywhere, you might ask. Ahh well, this is Alberta.
My crystal ball indicates privatization of the problematic addiction & mental illness service sector, then privatization of corrections operations. The future looks grim: participate in the Alberta recovery model or get fitted for an ankle bracelet. Hunger Games here we come.
Re: pausing renewable development
I rolled my eyes when I read that announcement yesterday. Danielle Smith has been adamantly opposed to Justin Trudeau’s directive that Canada develop a carbon neutral power grid by 2035; she maintains that Alberta cannot meet that goal. I guess if her government refuses to allow new renewable power projects, come 2035 she can say ‘I told you so.’
The government is suggesting they don’t want solar/wind farms to become another abandoned well fiasco; I would argue that is comparing apples and oranges.
First, the landowner that allows a renewable development project on his land does so voluntarily, having negotiated a satisfactory deal with the developer. By comparison, provincial legislation prevents landowners from denying access to oil companies wanting to drill on their land.
The second difference is that when an oil company drills for oil, they know that any resulting well will have an end date, as soon as the oil is extracted, so they know there will be a defunct well site to be remediated. By comparison, a renewable site could work in perpetuity; replacing worn out/obsolete infrastructure with new ones on the same site.
Finally, if a renewable company does go out of business, the landowner can put a claim on the infrastructure left on his land, which has much more value than a defunct pump jack.
Bob: Such an excellent point. I have added a line to this morning’s blog to reflect it. DJC
Just to add some background to Mr. Raynard’s succinct observations:
Minister Neudorf blames renewables for the cost of electrical lines. However, those costs are because the Klein administration gave a government-guaranteed return on any investment made in building electrical transmission lines. Anyone with an electrical meter pays handsomely to the foreign owners of electrical lines whether those lines carry any electricity of not.
The Redford administration’s over-building of big transmission lines to service the coal plants west of Edmonton was just one of the consequences of that foolish policy. Those two 500 kV DC lines cost well over $5 billion to construct and go from old coal plants west of Edmonton to substations near Calgary. Thanks to government regulation each of us pays the transmission line owners a guaranteed return of nearly nine percent. Little wonder these line companies told the compliant Alberta regulators they need more lines. It was all expensive BS to build lines that I and many others said at the time would be obsolete thanks to renewables.
How about reclamation costs? More BS. Unlike reclaiming the toxic waste sites of abandoned oil and gas facilities, solar farms will likely not be abandoned as long as the sun shines. The worn-out panels themselves have a substantial recycling value because of the rare metals used in them. Steel mounting posts and the like are not toxic and have a recycled value as well. Properly designed, solar farms still allow some agricultural production and do not contaminate the neighbourhood with toxic emissions and toxic waste as oil and gas do. The government forces farmers and ranchers to accept oil and gas facilities, not so with solar farms.
Ironically, the intermittency of renewables supports the natural gas industry. Right now, much of our natural gas fired electricity comes from waste heat from petrochemical plants being recycled to generate electricity. Until grid-scale batteries become readily available, those co-generation plants have a guaranteed customer base when the renewables are offline and they can supply it cheaper than any other fossil generators.
While visions of nuclear reactors dance in his head, the Minister has been paying too much attention to those captured by the fossil fuel sector and fossil electrical generators trying to avoid having their assets rendered obsolete.
The fact that the UCP’s Catch and Release drug treatment program will have so many repeat customers, it is considered a feature of the program.
If Danielle is so concerned with renewable cleanup at the end of the day, she can give the wind and solar people 20 Billion dollars to clean up. You know, like what she is going to give the boys over in the O&G sector.
JE: Catch and release. This is a very good point. Friends of the UCP, perhaps even family of the UCP, will make big money from this goldmine. DJC
What do you know, if the UCP isn’t a petro political party and job killer after all? Can you imagine if the NDP was in power and did this? Postmedia would be screaming “JOB KILLERS” in their headlines and airwaves. Instead, we get “… put on pause …”.
Isn’t it just wonderful being controlled by the corporate class?
Of course they didn’t consult anyone in the renewables industry. This is a case of ideology above all else, including the economy and the environment. What further proof does anyone need that this government is nothing but a petrostate?
As for any forward-thinking oil workers who self-transitioned to the renewables industry, or young people who opted to train in this industry instead of choosing oil and gas, what do you think of this government intentionally setting out to kill your jobs? Fancy living in a forward-looking place without regressive attitudes towards its workers? That place is not Alberta.
Rick Bell and Dan Williams make quite a pair. Rick quoting the Minister, …”or Justin Trudeau handing out the drugs.” Abortion pills? Yes, it’s a metaphor and politicians say dumb things but that one is up there with the best. What do those guys eat for breakfast?
For some reason, rural Alberta voters eat this obvious nonsense up.
Thanks for posting a photo of Don Braid in yesterday’s column. I wasn’t sure if he had been “terminated” by Post Media and replaced by a right wing AI bot (aren’t they all?).
YYCLefty: Terminations of all sorts can happen quickly. That photo was taken in 2019. As for Rick Bell, I don’t think AI would be capable of imitating his writing style. Artificial Unintelligence would be required for that! DJC
Where AI goes to die? Postmedia!
My beautiful son has been dodging the drug infested mine fields because he is disabled. UCP will be his undoing after I can no longer protect him. Maybe the drug problem can be fixed with Ivermectin also?
One word to you UCP devotees: stupid!
So far the whole debate over global warming and green renewable energy has been dominated by a cabal of politicians and activists working hand in hand to stir up public emotions. Perhaps we should hear more from the engineers. Are windmills and solar panels really going to replace fossil fuels in 30 years or whatever? Or is just pie-in-the-sky? Some of the engineering scuttlebug out there are expressing doubts.
Especialy the petroleum engineers. (Eyeroll)
Cabal, you use such nonsensical words to describe normal things.
*clears throat*
ONCE AGAIN what we now refer to as climate change was initially discovered by Exxon Mobil, who pioneered research into the field more than 50 years ago and concluded that emissions from fossil fuels were causing unprecedented warming and in fact would lead to doom
for either Exxon Mobil or planet earth. They chose themselves, and then spent the next decades bringing up the kind of nonsensical points you just brought up.
Are renewables at parity with fossil fuels ? No, not yet. But they get closer every day. A better question is a failing system already not meeting its energy needs, also based on naked exploitation, really something we benefit from perpetuating. Finally, as the rest of the world embarks on ambitious projects of green energy, you know, like China, what are we doing but intentionally hamstringing future development for the benefit of oil and gas oligarchs.
Maybe instead of putting our heads in the sand and hoping the problem will go away we should be asking some of THOSE questions.
ronmac: you must remember your grade 10 physics class. When we burn stuff to make energy to do things, two-thirds of the energy in the raw fuel whether it is oil or uranium, is thrown away as waste heat. Using electricity to do stuff, like moving a car, converts better than 80% of the raw electrical energy into useful work. If the electricity comes from solar and wind, so much the better since the raw energy of sun and wind is free for the taking and the mechanisms to harvest that energy and convert it into electricity are now much cheaper than any other source including nuclear (it is called “Levelized cost of electricity”).
According to a study by Lazard, one of the European investment banks, nuclear is 14 times the capital cost per kW of grid scale solar with battery storage. The only sort of good news for Alberta in their latest study is that grid scale solar with battery storage is just a fraction more expensive than combined cycle natural gas. Next year that will change as batteries become even cheaper. Grid scale solar with battery storage will then be the cheapest source of electricity to build, bar none. Solar also avoids the grid costs of centralized generators since it can be placed near customers.
So, it is all over for fossil Alberta and all the huffing and puffing from Queen Dani cannot change the technological tide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
In true Reform Party Fashion these fools continue to destroy jobs, like Poilievre is promising to do if elected. Making certain that Albertans cannot reap the benefits of green energy while destroying jobs in the process. Dad was a Power Plant Engineer employed at S.A.I.T. and was promoting solar panels on every roof in southern Alberta and of course got laughed at by fools who didn’t believe him. Those that did take his advice said it was the smartest thing they ever did. Not only did they make money from it they were saved from paying the stupid fees Klein allowed the industry to add to our power bills. Oddly enough dad never bothered to do it himself and put them on our roof in Calgary. He knew some neighbours would make him the laughing stock of the neighborhood.
While oil executives have stated that Trudeau’s targets can be met using green power these reformers are trying to make certain they can’t. They can’t stand to see anyone succeed, being sure great failures is all they know.
I sometimes work with an environmental scientist who has banned the word “ensure.” You can “make certain” of very little in life, he says, and he’s right.
As a result, I wince whenever I see or hear it used for aspirational goals with little chance of fulfillment. Politicians are the worst abusers. “Ensure…mental health care and addiction treatment” for all Albertans? Hah!
For the record, Merriam-Webster has some advice that will not be heeded:
We define ensure as “to make sure, certain, or safe” and one sense of insure, “to make certain especially by taking necessary measures and precautions,” is quite similar. But insure has the additional meaning “to provide or obtain insurance on or for,” which is not shared by ensure. Some usage guides recommend using insure in financial contexts (as in “she insured her book collection for a million dollars”) and ensure in the general sense “to make certain” (as in “she ensured that the book collection was packed well”).
Yes. Certainly.
At this point, the expectation from the weird world that the UCP/TBA inhabits is those who suffer from addiction(s) are the fallen. So, pull up your bootstraps and get more Jesus in your life.
This world-view is pretty rich coming from a guy who chugged a beer during a session in the Legislature. Of course, when your entire perceptive is formed working many hours in a quarry in La Crete, Alberta, you’re bound to have some pretty black & white views of everything. It was no suprise when Dan Williams’ brother in Christ, CPC MP Arnold Viersen, declared that, in the House of Commons not less, that he did his research on the plight of Haiti by spending many long minutes looking at the country on Google Maps. How can one dispute suck scholarly endevours? Viersen’s talents also extend to Rap n’ Hip-Hop, so he truly is a Renaissance man.
So, once healthcare and treatment is reduced to a myriad of Twelve-Step programs, you know Alberta has turned into a weird and special place.
For the ideological fixated disciples and true believers, all individuals must worship at the capitalist market altar and its techniques of bondage as the exemplar of a formalized and institutionalized cultural BDSM model as well as the overall standard capitalist addiction to addictions. For certain individuals that train, it seems, must keep on rolling at any cost even as . . .
. . . Dislocation theory informs that,
“”Dislocation” is the condition of great numbers of human beings who have been shorn of their cultures and individual identities by the globalization of a “free-market society” in which the needs of people are subordinated to the imperatives of markets and the economy.”
https://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/dislocation-theory-addiction/250-change-of-venue-3
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/100649/1/Bryant_Does_capitalism_cause_addiction.pdf
See also, “This study shows that poverty exposure early in life increases the risk of drug use problems in young adulthood. One implication of our findings is that public health policies aiming at narrowing social inequalities are needed.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8247994/
Who possibly stands to benefit from a long standing and habitual ideological rigidity and its consequent business as usual crony capitalist regime?
“The UCP convened a panel on mental health and addiction, co-chaired by Pat Nixon. Pat Nixon is the father of Environment and Parks Minister Jason Nixon and UCP MLA Jeremy Nixon, and is the founder of the Mustard Seed Ministry.”
“The mental health and addiction panel includes three people in the top echelons of the private recovery sector — Poundmaker’s Lodge executive director Brad Cardinal, Fresh Start Recovery Centre executive director Stacey Pederson, and Andy Crooks, a lawyer and founding director of Simon House, who was also a director with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation while Premier Jason Kenney was its CEO.”
“All three are abstinence-only 12 step recovery centres, and two have since received government funding. Fresh Start, which is for men only, received $1.56 million to fund 294 beds over three years. In the same announcement, Lloydminster’s Thorpe Recovery Centre received $2.21 million per year to fund an additional 1,722 treatment spaces and Sunrise Healing Lodge received $518,300 to fund 156 beds, both over three years.”
https://www.theprogressreport.ca/the_alberta_model_who_benefits_from_the_alberta_government_s_shift_away_from_harm_reduction_to_abstinence_only_recovery
It is shocking to me how little ink the grifts of the Nixon family have seen.
Just a reminder as they whip rural voters into hysterics: drug users come from all walks of life, all communities, all families. These people (the UCP) are demented egomaniacs who would chew off their own arm if they thought they could extract money or influence by doing so. They literally see dollar signs in the eyes of their friends and family. Disgusting, empty headed grifters who don’t even care if their policies fail, it’s of no consequence to them.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but Williams is yet another parachuted in psychopath from Ontario, no?
No, it seems Dan Williams is from Alberta, and Peace River area, but he worked in Kenney’s office in Ottawa and came back here with Kenney after 2015. Funny. his official bios appear to have expunged the Kenney connection, and I don’t know how long he was in Ottawa.
https://peaceriver.citylive.com/2019/04/12/dan-williams-ucp/
Of course ending the development of solar and wind energy in Alberta will diminish investment considerably. That’s the point!
As for Rick “the Dinger” Bell, he knows he has to write these asinine columns or he will be frog marched out of post media in a heart beat. The man no doubt has bills to pay and the reality of his plight is no one else would hire him. We all know it, so does Bell. The man is to be pitied.
Over 20 years ago spotlight showed the world that roughly nine percent of a certain religious organization are child predators. We also know that many of their victims grow up to become homeless drug addicts due to the horrific abuse they receive by someone they believed they could trust. Will the ucp enforce compassionate rehabilitation on people who are addicted to funding child predation every Sunday in the collection plate?
Yet more examples that the UCP has ideology and doesn’t need facts!
The UCP are as bad as they get. Fools re-elected them.