Where’s the Canadian Taxpayers Federation when you need it?
Like the cops, they never seem to be around!
Consider those five million bottles of “Tylenot” children’s medication Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government paid a Turkish pharmaceutical company last year at least $75 million to produce in an obviously politically motivated effort to own the Libs in Ottawa.
Yesterday, The Globe and Mail confirmed that fewer than 5,000 bottles of the oddball kids’ pain remedy Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government ordered from Atabay Pharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals Inc. of Istanbul during the brief national shortage of children’s ibuprofen and acetaminophen in December ever showed up in Alberta pharmacies.
After weeks of journalists hounding Alberta Health Services for confirmation of a report that that only 4,700 bottles of the stuff made it to drugstore shelves, AHS finally fessed up that it was so, the Globe reported.
This shows the Smith Government’s much-touted purchase, the Globe explained, was “costly and ineffective,” which is something of an understatement for a shipment of medicine, which nobody wants, that cost almost $16,000 per bottle that actually made it to a drugstore shelf.
The price tag on the bottles was about $12, which even in Conservative accounting represents a loss.
For her part, Premier Smith continues to defend the expensive stunt as the right thing to do. “We stand by the decision made last fall to act and obtain much-needed supply to support families and feel confident that if we find ourselves in a shortage again, Alberta will be prepared,” she said in a statement – although the next shortage Alberta finds itself in had better happen fairly soon, since all the bottles will reach their dump-by date in 2025 and 2026.
UCP spokespeople also talked about selling the medication to other provinces. But no one wants it.
So you’d think, wouldn’t you, that Canada’s self-described “non-partisan tax watchdog” would be all over that like white on rice?
Instead? Nothing … nada. All we can hear from the CTF’s Regina headquarters is unseasonal sound of crickets chirping.
The story’s been in the news for a year. But if you type “Atabay Pharmaceuticals” into the CTF website’s search engine, all it says is “no articles found.”
The CTF has no trouble putting out news releases. In the past three days alone, the group has published news releases calling for an end to the carbon tax on home heating in Ontario, praising Canada’s Conservative premiers for opposing “Trudeau’s divisive carbon tax policies,” complaining about the federal fiscal update, and touting a poll that says a lot of Atlantic Canadians don’t like the carbon tax on home heating fuel either.
Yet for some reason, the CTF remains uninterested in what surely ought to be a major government spending scandal.
Funny, that. As National Observer journalist Max Fawcett observed on social media, “If a progressive government had done this the Canadian Taxpayers Federation would still be talking about it in 2073.”
If the CTF were to raise the issue, its operatives might ask who got the commission for this purchase, and how big it was. They could wonder if Atabay Pharmaceuticals got the deal because the company was partly owned by a relative of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, who was endorsed by UCP fave Donald Trump, a former U.S. president. And they could also inquire into why the Smith Government ignored Health Canada’s accurate assurance that the shortage would be quickly remedied.
Well, hope springs eternal. Maybe the CTF will send out a release assailing the UCP government today, or tomorrow.
As someone said:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time …
Group assails screening of ‘Bearing Witness’ at Alberta Legislature
Last night, a group of about 50 progressive Jews and their allies gathered on Violet King Henry Plaza in Edmonton to protest the screening at the Legislature of Bearing Witness, a film created by the Israeli armed forces that shows graphic video images of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
The group also called for an enduring ceasefire in Gaza now.
“As Jews, we know that our fate is bound up with the fate of the Palestinian people, and of all colonized and oppressed peoples,” said Independent Jewish Voices of Edmonton, a group that supports Palestinian human rights, in a statement. “None of us are free until all of us are free. None of us are safe until all of us are safe. Only justice can bring peace.”
The Alberta Speaker’s Office extended invitations to MLAs and select media for a screening of the video in partnership with the Consulate of Israel. “The film consists solely of footage from the Oct. 7 Palestinian militant attack on Israel, edited by the Israeli military’s communications department,” IJV said. “The only purpose the 45-minute film is to incite a visceral reaction from viewers and build support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.”
It is something that does bear repeating. You cannot trust these phony Conservatives and Reformers to do what is right. Everything they do comes with a very large cost, and fixes nothing, while more people end up suffering. The CTF will not utter a peep. They too are bedfellows with these phony Conservatives and Reformers. Will the CTF ever condem the UCP for paying Preston Manning $253,000, along with a $2 million expense account to come up with a Covid-19 report that is whitewashing what really happened in Alberta? No they won’t. Preston Manning, was the one partially responsible for Danielle Smith getting defeated in 2015, because he thought that crossing the floor to join Jim Prentice’s Alberta PC party was a good idea. It’s also unlikely that the CTF will grill the UCP over the hiring of Mr. Skeleton in the closet, Lyle Oberg, by the UCP to help reconfigure AHS, with more bureaucracy than before. I’m sure he’s getting paid a lot of money. He also was responsible for sacking Danielle Smith, from her position as a public school trustee. It’s a pretty good guess that the UCP wants private for profit healthcare in Alberta, like their hero, Ralph Klein wanted. This won’t bode well in the next federal election, and Pierre Poilievre and the CPC will get defeated.
The UCP are gaslighting the public. The UCP is the anti-government, government. An oxymoron. The anti health minister explained on CTV news that while only a few bottles of Tylenol ended up on on store shelves the bulk of it was used in hospitals, of course no further questions were asked – and now the issue has gone away, save Alberta Politics. Maria Ressa calls most current “journalists” presstitutes. They work to advance the autocracies that are an international phenomena. Alberta, under the UCP is an autocratic state voted in by the many people in Alberta who see themselves represented in the current political leadership – again political leadership is an oxymoron where the UCP are concerned. These people are out to destroy all progressive ideas, the public good, Canada and every other democracy, and will leave in their wake a world hellscape we have not seen in our lifetimes. The elephant in the room is the risk of bringing in policies akin to the complete annihilation of human dignity, rights, life. So yes the Israelis and Palestinians are fighting for their lives and it is indeed a pathetic sad state of affairs, and there seems no end to conflict. What hope do our young people have in a world increasingly dangerous and we humans vote in people who are doing their outmost to ruin every good thing our forebears worked hard to create? Why did those who came before us bother to create cooperative endeavours that benefitted the many? Because many people were suffering; they acknowledged the suffering and tired to relieve the suffering – an unending work. Now we have people who fully accept the cognitive dissonance, focussing on material gain, personal advantage; a myopic viewpoint that supports our collective movement toward our ultimate demise. Sadly, I write this as a testimony to posit the notion that we do not have to follow those who want to destroy, but rather embrace the courage and collective will to actually be tolerant of right brained ideas and people and live in peaceful coexistence – difficult yes, but entirely possible.
The CTF does seem to have developed a soft spot, or maybe one should call it a blind spot, for more conservative governments.
I suppose it might be understandable if they were easier on Kenney, who after all was an alumni of theirs. However, you may expect Smith and her kooky ways, which at least initially supposedly quite unsettled more traditional conservatives, would not get off as easy.
In the past at least, the CTF seemed very focused on, even preoccupied with, arts and culture spending, so perhaps that is also part of the blind spot here. Or maybe they are waiting for the Tylenot to actually expire, before writing a blistering attack. If so, perhaps then the CTF has developed a tactical view consistent with some conservative candidates, that voters should hold their nose and support her initially and the party would get rid of her later. Perhaps they actually still will, but she seems to be getting fairly comfortable running things in the meantime.
On the same topic, are we are still also waiting for the CTF to launch a campaign against wasteful spending on a new arena and how about the UCP’s weak position on energy companies paying their taxes to rural municipalities? For whatever reasons, there do seem to be some blind spots that have developed and again the supposed watch dog does not seem to be barking as much as one would expect here.
I emailed CTF to ask if “alt-right political propaganda machine” was a fair description of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. They declined to respond so I guess that is a fair description. Similar to the Fraser alt-right propaganda machine.
Well we all know (thanks in part to some great investigative journalism from David) that the CTF is an astroturf organization that, in reality, exists as the farm team for conservative politicians.
When Israel shows us who they are, believe them. When child Bibi tell us, he lies.
If this isn’t bad enough we learned yesterday that these Reformers are paying pharmacies 10 times more to administer flu and COVID shots to Albertans than what they are paying doctor offices for doing the same thing. In other words taxpayers are being screwed again by paying private for profit style payments.
Alan K.Spiller: It’s a big shame how people were fooled by these phony and and Reformers.
*Conservatives and Reformers *
Gee I wonder if Israel included any footage of the scores of their own citizens they killed when they invoked the “Hannibal” doctrine.
If one ever wondered if the UCP is a white supremacist fascist worshiping cult look no farther.
The Alberta government could have paid about a tenth of $16,000 round-trip at current rates for discount airline flights to Australia for anyone wanting to pick up a bottle of children’s paracetamol. Seems like better value to me.
Obviously, yet another failed, expensive, and ideologically-driven decision to try and embarrass the Feds. Another excellent and revealing blog, Mr. C. Still trying to figure out “like white on rice,” though.
Andy: Now that you have seen it, you will see it a lot.
https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/like+white+on+rice.html
https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/white-on-rice
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-expression-white-on-rice
DJC
DJC….”white on rice”…lol
similie is a sanitized version of ” eau de farm ” and/or back when we were kids–
Pepe le Pew !
According to its website, CTF has six spokespeople, seven board members and six staff, one of whom is an investigative journalist. “When not sleuthing for stories on government waste and accountability, he enjoys reading, shooting pool, and cheering on the Miami Dolphins and the Toronto Blue Jays.”
Aha, too busy for children’s Tylenot.
Tom: Readers may also be interested to note that the CTF’s current board (its only legal members despite its claim to be a “citizens’ advocacy group”) includes Tim McMillan, late of the the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. DJC
Could it possibly be that the CTF is a very small group of reactionary, mendacious propagandists intent on subverting liberal democracy in Canada on behalf of their anonymous (and probably foreign) funders?
We all knew what Smith was going to do if elected. She was elected. That’s democracy , folks!
We have 38 NDP MLAs. Why aren’t we hearing 38 NDP MLAs screaming at the top of their lungs at what is happening in this province? I fully expect to see the image of my NDP MLA on a milk carton whenever I grocery shop.
Perhaps like J.P. O’Callaghan, David Climenhaga could declare himself the Official Opposition. I would declare that he could do no worse a job but meeting that bar would be a hollow victory.
Eye: Are you saying I’m the J. Patrick O’Callahan of the 2020s? I’ll take that both as a high compliment and as a metaphor for how far the media has fallen. The link above is to an obit written by the late Brian Brennan. Like everything Brian wrote, it is a gem, and I commend it to you all, my dear readers. DJC
Where’s the CTF? Or the NCC or the Fraser Institute or any number of CON entities who act as the self declared guardians of the public trust?
They’re nowhere to be found because they are, effectively, on the payrolls of any number of CON donors and serve only their interests and whims. Of course if a CON official should get out of line or a CON government do something clearly wrong with the public trust, there will be silence.
Dummy up and remember who pays your way.
Andy M,. most likely is young. Have been hearing the “white on rice” comment for deccades, decades, 4 or 5 decades…….
Its nice to know Smith is helping some one with this large expenditure. Don’t know who that was, but it was some one or a group of someones. Buying medication from Turkey? at that price??? Don’t those people know how to comparision shop. Didn’t they check Australia, U.K., U.S.A., Germany, Sweden, Japan, Malta, Singapore, etc. All are major drug producing countries and I’d suggest their quality might well be higher.
Of course you’re not going to hear from the CTF, ever. If its a right wing government its all o.k. They know what they”re doing. The CTF is there to keep those left wing, commies in line and let the voters know how they waste money.
remember some where reading that Mulroney ran up a bigger deficiet thnt his Liberal predecessor and Harper out spent and ran a bigger deficiet than his predecessor. Remember hearing from federal workers when Diefenbaker became P.M. staff were no longer permitted to use pens. They had to do with pencils and a new pencil was not handed out until you turned in the stub of your old pencil. Heard it from a woman who wasn’t fond of Conservatives and worked for the feds during the Dief years.
Its too bad the auditor general in Alberta doesn’t investigate the spending all that extra cash.
Can’t say the Conservative right wingers are all that bright. Buying all those pills at that price, I know they did it for the children, but how is the impending unravelling of the health care system going to help those children or the lack of nurses and doctors or hospital beds.
The Conservatives like to conserve, just not conserve for people who need it. they like to conserve for the rich, the corporations, and their friends. Recall they were always into Conserving money for the oil companies.
Some one ought to put up a few bill boards about this. Gets attention
e.a.f.: I’ve known Andy M. for for about 35 years and I’m pretty sure he’s been a little older than me the whole time. At the moment, I’m 71 with 72 bearing down on me at warp speed. I also know for a fact that Andy is a well-read person. But this just happens sometimes. Somehow, a person just doesn’t register an expression that’s been all around them the whole time. In my case, it was the term “bitch slap,” which I had never encountered (I thought) until I went to work in 2000 for the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, which represents Alberta’s Correctional Officers. In the language of jails, it turns out, this is a fairly well-understood concept, and I soon became familiar with the term. Later, I Googled it and discovered a reference in a book I’d read years before. Well, maybe I read it in a bar, something that has been known to happen in my life. For whatever reason, I missed “bitch slap” when it was all but slapping me in the face and Andy somehow missed “white on rice.” I have assured him he will see it everywhere for weeks to come. I’m standing six for my commenters! DJC
No surprise that the UCP members would accept and promote this Israeli propaganda. Perhaps they hope to pickup some tips on how to be even slicker in their gaslighting of Albertans. In videos of the new US speaker preaching, the Israeli flag is on display along with the Stars and Stripes. The second coming and the end times also works for many in the TBA crew.
Once upon a time some guy said that:
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
“According to Palestinian historians, the massacre at Kafr Qasem mirrored the typical Israeli blueprint of terrorising Palestinians into fleeing. In his book Atlas of Palestine, 1917-1966, Dr. Salman Abu Sitta lists at least 232 places where atrocities, massacres, destruction, plunder and looting were carried out by the Zionists between 1947 and 1956. Almost every one of thirty military operations were accompanied by one or two massacres of civilians. There were at least seventy-seven reported massacres, half of which took place before any Arab regular soldier set foot in Palestine during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.”
It is the human manifestation and representation of certain symmetries occurring in nature, whereby, “forces always occur in pairs, and one body cannot exert a force on another without experiencing a force itself and where the force exerted is the action and the force experienced as a consequence is the reaction.”
To be contrasted and compared with the “philosophical concept which states that time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity.”
Hello abs,
That would be hilarious if it wasn’t so wasteful on the part of the UCP. By the way, Australia is a nice place, went there once, sort of accidentally. I just saw an article that because of changing economics, ranchers have too many sheep and some are offering to give the sheep away. Since I think that sheep are cute, it’s tempting to move to Australia. All of these ramblings are completely off-topic, but with all the rubbish going on in Alberta, you have to think of some nice things once in a while.
The CTF used to be critical of the Conservatives when they did very pricey shenanigans. I remember this very well. West Edmonton Mall, which was over $400 million, and involved Ralph Klein, comes to mind. So does Ralph Klein’s wasteful Ralphbucks, a very expensive vote buying gimmick, that was exceeding $1 billion. Now, the CTF are parrots of the Conservatives, who really aren’t the true Conservatives that were there when Peter Lougheed was our premier.
Anonymous: That’s an interesting observation that hadn’t occurred to me. Certainly, the CTF used to be critical of the Progressive Conservatives from time to time, but usually only when elections were far away. Nowadays, as you point out, they are much less inclined to say anything critical of the UCP. While there was some residual loyalty to and pride in Jason Kenney, a former CTF operative, you may be onto something when you suggest that the current lack of criticism reflects the fact that Smith’s UCP is now as extreme as the mysteriously funded CTF. In other words, why say anything bad when the CTF’s puppetmasters are getting precisely what they want? DHC
If you go to the CTF website, you will notice numerous buttons to donate and a whole bunch of critical items related to Quebec. Without a doubt there are many things the CTF could comment on in Alberta. It must be nice t sit back and watch donations pour in and do nothing in return.
OA: I have a feeling – and a feeling is all it is – that donations are not pouring into the CTF as fast as they once did. DJC
Maudlinity. Is that even a word? Oxford Concise says of the root: “weak or mawkish sentiment.” Anyway, I thought Danielle Smith’s “Help is Coming” tour was “weakly or tearfully sentimental”—and if I were an OED editor, would have said ‘overly sentimental’— as maudlin as it gets.
I felt the maudlinity almost instantly because, as I recall, there are dozens of ways to divide an adult dose of aspirin or acetaminophen and prepare its dose and palatability, proportioned for a child. There shouldn’t have been so much fuss, not even if the shortage included adult preparations of those drugs because, if we harken back to days of the rugged pioneer—like, for example, from pseudoCons’ fantastically heroic past—, willow bark (the source of aspirin™) is plentiful circumpolarly (is that a word?). It’s easy to prepare and doesn’t taste bad. And it grows everywhere, if I may commit a redundancicity.
I confess I don’t really know what the supply of adult acetaminophen or non-steroidal analgesics was at the window of gotcha-opportunity to disingenuously alarm parents and blame it on Trudeau. Yet it was suspect that Smith focused on children’s preparations alone. If adult preparations were available, the responsible public health advice would have apprised citizens of how to make do for children’s lower dose. But only anti-vaxxer Danielle could imagine so many children getting Covid and needing these medicines in the first place. How’s about a little gotchacicty, Danielle! Does it taste good?
(BTW, how was Alberta’s supply of Ivermectin doing at the time? Probably just a good job the UCP didn’t go shopping for that medicine—off-label doubtlessly being much more expensive than, say, Turkish child’s Tylenol.)
Smith’s maulinicity isn’t quite as intense or alarmist as the spectre of Hillary Clinton’s headquarters of heinous child-abuse in the basement of a pizza parlour— the completely hogwash rumour tRumpublicans fabulated and passed around to help Donald F tRump win the 2016 election by defaming his Democratic opponent—, but it’s of the same kind, if not degree.
Sort of like FoxNews’ Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson’s insincere shock and outrage over the baby-formula shortage in the USA. Forgive me, but what ever happened to warming milk —yes, ordinary cow’s milk of which I never heard of any Covid-supply shortages— you know: in a pot. On a stove. With a little squirt on the inside of the wrist to check its temperature. And an old-fashion clock to time the pasteurization. No panic!—it’s simply DIY one can easily learn—from YouTube, even. With a teaspoon of willow bark, if needs…? Or has modernicity (?) made us forget every worthwhile homesteading skill?
But at least FoxNews could simply let that baby-formula ‘scandal’ go (before moving on to the next cocked-up crisis blameable on Joe Biden), whereas Smith has to answer—and probably keep on answering— for this tremendously flagrant waste of public money and her blatantly unabashed attempt to embarrass the feds. It probably didn’t work very well on that count—but, as medicine, I hasn’t worked at all.
It will pay the inept UCP dividends it deserves, which Albertans can only hope is a longer, more embarrassing and painful process than they, as taxpayers, have already had to endure from other UCP boondoggles: pipelines and public investments to nowhere, among other dogs, and now extraordinarily expensive children’s Tylenol nobody wants and will probably never use, among other turkeys. Maybe UCP calculus figures that, after enduring hundreds of billions of dollars of forgone petroleum taxes and royalties—not to mention Danielle’s get-out-of-jail-free card she gifted the industry, leaving citizens the multi-billion-dollar tab for cleaning up abandoned wellheads and lakes of bitumen sludge—Albertans are too inured by now to notice relatively diminutive malfeasances. That’s possibilicity for you.
It’s enough to make anyone headachely. Is that a word? I dunno, but I’m reaching for my Mason jar of dried willow bark right now.
‘“As Jews, we know that our fate is bound up with the fate of the Palestinian people, and of all colonized and oppressed peoples,” said Independent Jewish Voices of Edmonton (…).’
It takes much courage to take such a position against a dominant Zionist ideology among Jews.
Interestingly, the Indian subcontinent produced the most illuminating views on this topic, as can be glimpsed through this excerpt from a Bengladesh-born journalist with a keen eye for British “heritage” in the colonies:
“(T)his conflict (in Palestine) is the product of specific (British) imperial policies that were practiced in the first half of the 20th century to foster a colonial project. The “Jewish question”—Europe’s longstanding inability to adequately address its own antisemitism—was made into Palestinians’ Zionist problem by the British Empire.
(“The British Roots of the Conflict in Palestine”, by Saurav Sarkar. Posted on nakedcapitalism.com October 19, 2023)
D.C., thank you for the information and your and your friend’s ages. I’m older, at 74 pushing 75. I’ve heard the term “bitch slap”, when I was younger. Probably first heard it in the late 70s.
My first two spousal units were older, had lived through a variety of experiences, and in other countries. They aquired along the way some interesting expressions. Sometimes they will pop into my brain and I’ll use them and people will ask, where did you get that. From a long time ago. Some phrases were from England, the U.S.A., some Halifax. Language is interesting and changing.
Thank you for writing this blog. Not only is it sometimes entertaining but above all its informative.
Children’s Tylenol or Advil are 1/2 the adult dose!
Can’t people read the ingredients in their empty bottle? Buying a renewed supply of these Children’s products just shows me how completely our advertisers and businesses have brainwashed we consumers.
When a child, my parents just crushed a 1/2 Aspirin, stirred into apple juice, or mixed a little sugar into it and with a little water, administered it in spoon. Liquid doses indicate the dose of the active ingredient or look it up online.