There was a time in Alberta when sending a stroke patient in a taxicab to a cheap motel room in Leduc rented by a sketchy sounding organization and calling the destination a continuing care facility would have sparked a province-wide scandal.
If it happened more than once, it might even have gotten big enough to topple a government!
And it wasn’t that long ago – say, about 10 years.
As a matter of fact, it was 10 years ago next Saturday that premier Alison Redford was finally driven out of office by a frightened Progressive Conservative caucus – MLAs terrified by what they were hearing from voters.
Ms. Redford submitted her resignation a decade ago yesterday.
Sure, looking back now at the spring of 2014, many of Ms. Redford’s political sins seem picayune, even quaint.
Mostly, they were spurred by a kind of clueless entitlement. Like that $45,000 trip to South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s funeral, booking and then cancelling seats on the government plane so the premier’s party could ride in privacy, hiring a law firm where her ex-husband worked for a huge contract, and building a secret apartment for the premier atop a government building in Edmonton.
Many of them would have been defensible, if only the business had been conducted in public.
Not every Alberta premier comes from Edmonton, after all. So even the notorious Sky Palace might have been a good investment – except maybe for the butler pantry – had it only been announced with a press release.
But since then we’ve had four years of Donald Trump as president of the country next door to serve as a bad example to Canadian conservatives and just generally bring the tone down everywhere.
As a result, Jason Kenney, Danielle Smith, and the United Conservative Party could do or say pretty well anything they liked.
Attacking the institutions of government, tearing down the health care system, giving billion-and-a-half-dollar tips to corporations for pipelines that never get built, setting up government-owned private companies to attack the government’s enemies, badmouthing public health officials, denying COVID-19 is thing, and jetting off to Dubai for a conference they weren’t invited to attend? No problem.
We’ve been desensitized.
As long as they don’t say how much the trip to Dubai cost (what do you want to bet it was more than $45,000) and keep saying bad things about vaccines, it’s all cool!
Stuff some poor guy in a taxicab to Leduc, thinking he’s going to a continuing care facility, and dump him at $47-a-night motel? Pfffft!
Health Minister Adriana LaGrange insists no rules were broken, and if any were, they were broken by Alberta Health Services. She says “proper procedures” were followed and blamed the patient for ending up at the motel.
Nothing to see here, folks. Please move along.
Seniors, Community and Social Services Minister Jason Nixon says his department never gave any money to Contentment Social Services, the company that was supposedly renting the motel room and sending people around now and then to drop off fast-food lunches.
It sure sounds like the government plans to try to ensure AHS ends up wearing it if this turns into “Motelgate.”
Social media posts indicate Contentment Social Services, which has a generically uninformative website and won’t return phone calls from reporters, was renting at least 10 rooms at the motel. Were they all occupied by folks receiving “continuing care” as well?
The company, which seems to have gotten its start in property management, does business out of a hot-desk office and mail drop in downtown Edmonton. The lights are on but no one’s home.
Then there’s also an entity called the Contentment Social Services Foundation – whose only listed officer has an ordinary sounding name belonging to someone who seems to have left no digital footprints at all on the Internet.
Meanwhile, the UCP has been beavering away removing even the inadequate protections that exist for people in continuing care.
United Nurses of Alberta reminded Albertans yesterday that the Continuing Care Act passed in May 2022 eliminated language from previous legislation that identified a minimum number of hours of nursing care that had to be provided to patients in continuing care.
The previous legislation required continuing care operators to provide 1.9 hours of nursing and personal care per day, of which 22 per cent had to be provided by a Registered Nurse or Registered Psychiatric Nurse. In 2023, the Auditor General of Alberta said that was too low.
So the new act, which has not yet been proclaimed, and new regulations that are supposed to take effect on April Fool’s Day, require zero, nada, none at all. Hours of care are not even mentioned.
“This is clear, new evidence that the UCP plans to reduce the quality of care received by seniors and the accountability for that care,” said NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley.
Actually, the UCP will leave that to continuing care operators and say it has nothing to do with them. Indeed, they’re already doing just that.
Cafe care facility was a great slip!
Thank you! Someone had to say it!
This doesn’t surprise me at all. The Alberta PCs were doing all kinds of very expensive boondoogles for a long time and hardly anybody said anything about them, and they were constantly re-elected.
Ralph Klein even lied and said that if he did anything like the sponsorship scandal, that Jean Chretien and Paul Martin did, that there would be no place for him to hide, and that he’d be drawn and quartered. The sponsorship scandal was in the neighborhood of $100 million to $250 million, at the most. Ralph Klein in fact did do very costly shenanigans, and lots of them that were worse than the sponsorship scandal.
West Edmonton Mall had a secret settlement that was was way over $400 million. The B.S.E bailout that didn’t help the farmers, like it was supposed to, was $400 million. Swan Hills had a very heavy price tag that is beyond ten times its original cost, and it goes into the billions. AISH was $100 million. Electricity deregulation has already surpassed the $30 billion mark. There is a gigantic orphan well mess that is $260 billion, or more. The oil royalty rates were pared down to a pittance, taking away $575 billion in the process. We don’t know what the gas royalty rates were reduced to. The tax regime had a substantial loss of money.
These aren’t the only missteps Ralph Klein did, but they are a fair amount of them.
Ralph Klein butchered the public education and the public healthcare systems in Alberta. Teachers and nurses were given pink slips, and lost their jobs, or were forced to move out of Alberta. Schools and hospitals in Alberta were so badly looked after. People even had their lives put in jeopardy by Ralph Klein’s foolish healthcare cutbacks.
I remember talking to some seniors around 20 years ago. They told me they were suing the Alberta PCs for what the healthcare cuts did to one of their relatives. When they were talking to me, they said that they wouldn’t vote for the Liberals. In hindsight, I should have told them that when they voted for Ralph Klein, they voted for a Liberal, turned Reformer.
Peter Lougheed was so embarrassed by Ralph Klein, that he wouldn’t appear with him at public events, or social gatherings.
I also recall reading about someone who knew Peter Lougheed’s MLAs, and they said that he governed in a responsible manner. This person also said that Don Getty told them that he had deep regrets about allowing Ralph Klein to join his government.
I also remember hearing that Peter Lougheed was advising Alison Redford on how she should be governing. She didn’t listen to his sound advice, and made things worse.
The UCP are comprised of people who are Reformers in Conservative clothing. They too, waste so much money on the biggest boondoogles, that set us back billions of dollars, and once again, very few people speak out. Danielle Smith lies through her teeth, and will say anything to get elected, because thats how Reformers are. The UCP are also not collecting the right oil royalty rates, and corporate taxes that we need, while wasting money on buying votes. Municipalities are being punished, and have to increase their property taxes, and infrastructure is left in a state of disrepair. Schools have overcrowded classrooms, and hospitals are having problems. We also have a water crisis, and the UCP are intent on having open pit coal mining in our eastern slopes, which will poison the remaining water even further. With our CPP, the UCP will put that in jeopardy. The UCP wants to micromanage municipalities in Alberta, just like a dictatorship. Elections in Alberta are questionable, because the UCP dodge the rules, and never get the punishment they deserve. Power prices and insurance costs have soared in Alberta. The UCP are causing so many problems, and are enabled to do it. Electing a losing politician, Danielle Smith, with a history of being defeated, was a foolish mistake. It is mind boggling how people in Alberta haven’t come to their senses.
Yes, it does have something to do with expectations. At this point we expect the former lake of fire woman to be petty, mean spirited and clueless. She does not disappoint us, unlike Redford and the PCs who claimed to be better.
Yes, Smith claimed to be considering building a badly needed new hospital in Edmonton during the election. But clearly the voters of south west Edmonton were skeptical about that one. I suspect privately their former UCP MLA might even privately concede that. Her promised tax cut that she didn’t deliver, well that was for lower income earners, so maybe that didn’t matter so much to many of her supporters. It is now almost forgotten like that barrage of temporary affordability measures, which like those monthly cheques and fuel tax suspension, which were clearly not meant to last. Deep down most of us knew her real concern wasn’t affordability but getting reelected.
Unlike Redford, Smith did not try to avoid her fellow MLAs so she and her child could travel unbothered or have a nice suite to stay in near the Leg. Perhaps it is an advantage in some ways not to have children. Although unlike the past Premier she does have a spouse, which might make the family values crowd a bit more comfortable.
Deep down I suspect many are uncomfortable with hotel health care, which the UCP will find a scapegoat for if it becomes too much of a political problem, and the deliberate erosion of continuing care standards, which is clearly on them. However, unlike Redford and the PCs, we are not collectively ready to throw them out for their bad government, at least not yet. Smith with her culture wars and distracting us by constsntly picking fights with the Feds has managed to take at least some attention away from her own shortcomings, at least for now.
A world desensitized by Donald Trump? I don’t know about that. That’s giving him too much credit. The thing about Donald Trump is that there’s a lot of smoke but not much fire. Back in 2016 Trump the fascist dictator was all the rage. Trump the demagogue was going to smash democracy. But once he got into office he proved to be not very effective. From day one he was on the defensive. He was never able to consolidate power over the DC bureaucracies which thwarted him at every turn. He gave orders which were ignored or were contradicted by various officials who issued statements, proclaiming themselves as the “adults in the room.” Trump was the proverbial elephant in the room except he was a mouse. Not a very good role model for conservatives. Not a good role model for anyone.
And yet somehow he succeeds and conservatives all around the world are aping him. Turns out all they had to do was give up on decency and double down on the lying and grifting. Many people, it turns out, are mean spirited and hateful and we’re looking for someone to make it okay to hate again. I’m still holding out hope that 21st Century neo-fascism will go down in flames, but despite the insanity, despite the cruelty, despite the sheer cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face stupidity, it keeps marching on.
Your points are well taken. However his lasting legacy will haunt the United States for a generation or more. His appointment of three Federalist Society approved Supreme Court justices along with three previously put into office by George W. Bush and his father ensures a supermajority of right wing power resulting in the erosion of civil rights for decades to come. It’s happening already with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The fun has just begun.
RonMac: If you were one of those US government officials and Trump ordered you to drop a nuclear bomb on a hurricane, would you obey that order?
Here’s little tune for all those kind and gentle UCP supporters like “Blowme”! https://youtu.be/UrgpZ0fUixs?t=1
“Contentment Social Services, was renting at least 10 rooms at the motel. Were they all occupied by folks receiving ‘continuing care’ as well? … The company, which seems to have gotten its start in property management…”
Makes one wonder who owns that hotel in Leduc.
I?: We checked. It doesn’t seem to be anyone who has a connection to Contentment Social Service. DJC
Probably corporate registered in the Bahamas, or such as a shell organization if the principal is smart, to avoid legal liabilities.
Contentment Social Services sounds like something from the movie Soylent Green.
So how bad does it have to get before this bunch get voted out? Three more years??? This is a nightmare.
Debrah: It was like Doug Ford and the PCs in Ontario. People now regret giving him a second term, and voter turnout was very low. Do people in Alberta regret giving the UCP another term, even after there were people who said this was a bad idea?
Debrah, an Alberta-wide general strike lasting 7-10 days would accomplish that. Alas, Albertans don’t have the stomach for such civil dissobedience, or self-sacrifice. Therefore, more suffering for the next 3 year, I’m afraid. Buckle up I guess.
Hearing rumors that a former UCP MLA has connections with Contentment Social Service. Is this more cronyism? It also seems this so called business does not have a business license? How deep is this rabbit hole?
Robert: This rumour seems to be based on a Twitter account in the name “Mark Smith” with “Contentment Social Services” under the name. Is this compelling evidence that is the owner or operator of CSS? I would say not. That name is not on the organization’s registration documents. DJC
There is this:
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/mark-smith-875587136
Though this person lives in Edmonton and the former MLA lives in Drayton Valley apparently.
DJC — re: Mark Smith
LinkedIn :
Mark Smith — Contentment Social Services
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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And just a thought. Ms Lagrange said 150 spaces had been created in the last 5 months (PM article); so if we have 39 patients accounted for, what about the other 111?
Is Mr Nixon running around with his “unlimited ” credit card that he’s already put $25,000 on, paying off other “hotel medicine rooms”, before someone else comes forward?
And just how many Smith’s can be featured in the same cocktail before someone realizes it’s not a ‘Long Island Iced Tea’ ??
FWIW– Reddit
Contentment Social Services.
The amount of different services that they seem to provide……
>With the myriad difficulties that face the world ,it is essential to have organizations making the planet a better place. For years CCS has strived to providing support such as funding for education ,essential needs, home support,clothing and medical coverage for orphan children in Uganda, Sudan, Senegal and other places. (***)
Long term care for people in Alberta, education for orphans in Uganda …..yeah here’s an organization with focus. It just screams scam.<
I concur!!
““This is clear, new evidence that the UCP plans to reduce the quality of care received by seniors and the accountability for that care,” said NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley.”
It is certainly about avoiding accountability and it is also about avoiding legal liability by any means necessary, in this case changing the rules and regulations, or moving, or perhaps removing the regulatory/legal ‘goalposts’ altogether. Where, it is commonly understood and remains the case that, “Legal responsibility refers to the obligation of an individual or entity to comply with the laws and regulations governing their actions in a specific area of law . . . . . This responsibility includes the duty to act in accordance with legal standards, to avoid causing harm to others, and to be accountable for any violations of the law. Failure to fulfill legal responsibilities can result in legal consequences, such as fines, penalties, or legal action.”
So, if you are a politician (or any other actor in a position of social/organizational responsibility, i.e., in a position of power) that wishes to avoid both accountability and legal liability, simply change the rules and regulations, or purposely design the rules and regulations so that they are deliberately ambiguous and subject to multiple interpretations and then the metaphorical get out of jail free card becomes both the norm and the reality. For only the dominant and the powerful in the social order, of course. All other individuals viewed as “transgressors”, or “trouble makers” are subject to the brute reality (realities) and full force of the “law”. “Examples” must be made, after all.
Further, the idea that AHS is a standalone entity completely free from outside political machinations and manipulations is a somewhat disingenuous and clumsy obscurantist representation of the “isness”, or order of things in our little petrostate duchy.
I hate to think what’s in store for those who have aphasia and cannot tell their own stories, for those who have dementia and will not be secure in a hotel beside a busy highway or for those who have diabetes and cannot get by on Skip the Dishes or Uber Eats kids’ meals from a fast food restaurant three times a day.
We knew this was coming from the UCP libertarians, who see no purpose in keeping the young, the disabled, the elderly and the addicted alive. These are the people who removed shelter from the homeless in -40°C. Let me fill in Jason Kenney’s blanks: people should not live beyond age 82, which is the mandated age of death in this province, and if they do, perhaps the process of dying should be accelerated. The current premier is Jason Kenney 2.0.
This is disgusting and inhumane. But this is the government that removed protections for preschool children, leading up to the worst E. coli outbreak in Alberta’s history. Some of those children will suffer lifelong consequences.
In short, if you are too young to work and contribute to the economy, your UCP-libertarian government has no use for you. They will, however, change labor laws to allow you to work at successively younger ages.
If you are too old or too sick or too addicted to work, your UCP government has no use for you. They will send you to the gulags, or to the highways and byways, where you can pass your days intended in a cheap motel until you pass away from neglect. Compassionate Intervention, baby. It’s coming for you.
Danielle Smith is Ayn Rand 2.0, too.
Does anyone think the hotel chain that has allowed its properties to be turned into pseudo-death camps should be called on the carpet for this?
Abs: I think it’s likely the motel chain operates like a franchise, with corporate branding and an online reservations page buy local or regional ownership of local motels. DJC
David, are you sure we (Albertans) haven’t been desentized by Kenney instead of Trump?
I have a feeling that whenever one of these taxpayer funded boondoggles comes to light the gang in the back room laugh and state that if Albertans weren’t meant to be sheared they wouldn’t have been made sheep. We can’t blame them for thinking that way since other than 2015 we have had one party rule since 1935 and darned proud of it.
Yet it’s our fellow seniors who are believing every lie they feed them. They are just too dumb to understand the difference between a true conservative and a reformer pretending to be a conservative and you can’t be any dumber than them, can you?While doctors write letters to the newspaper editors stating that they have had enough of the way they have been treated and are leaving these fools say “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out” . Totally ignorant of the fact that they will be the ones needing doctors down the road. While they whine about a 7% increase in their property taxes they fully support destroying the RCMP and are too dumb to understand that it would likely increase their property taxes by at least another 10%. Then there is the carbon tax that Reformer Pierre Poilievre has them all whining about. It’s going to financially destroy them, yet they are too dumb to do the math and realize that the Rebates are actually putting some money in their pockets, and that will increase with the increase of the tax. Of course there is no mention of the fees added to their power and gas bills by their friend Ralph Klein’s deregulation that is far more than the carbon tax ever will be. You can compare them to Nazis for daring to get vaccinated and they don’t care and are so dumb they can’t figure out that if these Reformers are true conservatives why have they deliberately destroyed everything our conservative hero Peter Lougheed created for the good of the people and why is Energy Minister Brian Jean still trying to ram coal mining down our throats when Lougheed knew how dangerous it was for our water supply so he put protections on it. It doesn’t matter that Coal Tech was fined $60 million for polluting rivers and streams in B.C. and Montana but these fools don’t care do they?
I haven’t forgotten the young man who asked me if I was another one of those stupid seniors who helped Jason Kenney get elected like his grandparents did. Apparently him and his sister, along with their parents were furious with their four grandpa for believing every lie Jason Kenney fed them, can you blame them? No one in my family is that ignorant I told him.
Alan K. Spiller: You absolutely have it right. The problems these phony Conservatives and Reformers cause doesn’t help us. I remember hearing and reading how people were praising the UCP and Danielle Smith. She was a political loser, and was fired as a public school trustee, by the Conservatives, and was defeated twice, when she was leading the Wildrose. It was other Conservatives who defeated her. The last premier of Alberta was a Liberal turned Reformer, like Ralph Klein was, and Danielle Smith is just a Reformer. As we know, Reformers destroy jobs, cheat us out of our oil and tax wealth, to buy votes, ruin the environment, just so their rich friends can become richer, do very pricey boondoogles, that cost us billions of dollars, drive up costs of things, such as utilities and insurance, make people poorer, and pass the blame. We never saw this foolishness under Peter Lougheed. He was right about not being able to trust Reformers. When you look at newspaper comment sections, anyone who speaks out against these phony Conservatives and Reformers, gets called nasty names. I recall someone being called a communist, because they didn’t like what the UCP were doing. Where’s the sense in this?
I am a retired social worker. In 1993, I worked briefly as a hospital social worker at the U of A Hospital. Our primary problem, 30 percent of the hospital beds were blocked by patients no longer requiring acute care. This case sounds very similar to that time. The Klein government downsized the social work and nursing funding, and blew up and closed hospitals. Charles Camsell GH in Edmonton was eventually closed. I was sent on my way with many other civil servants by Klein. The UAH terminated 50 percent of its social work department staff in the space of a year. Nursing suffered a similar attrition.
In the event step down beds were never created to take patients requiring non-acute care in so far as I know, and the bed blocking crisis remains to this day.
Discharge planning staff struggle with rudimentary tools, and almost no budget to discharge patients. Safe discharges are still an oxymoron. It’s not any better in BC BTW. Here patients are discharged to park benches across the street from Vancouver GH.
The usual excuses by the government and the health authority; it’s the health authorities fault, their funding is adequate. And the health authority will blame the discharge planners (usually nurses or social workers) who are disciplined or terminated. Why? they didn’t assess the situation of the patient correctly, i.e. medical needs, socio economic needs, family supports.
There is usually a tag line somewhere about the purchasing agency of the service (read hospital) not being responsible to monitor the outcomes of the contract.
And so the clown show will continue until voters insist on proper service and accountability. But, you know, we are busy building 4 nice shiny new administrative silos, so don’t count on any better outcomes for patients from mad Marlaina and the United Crazies Party. They keep doing the same thing, which is conservative, and expecting a different result.
Everybody knows now that Mr. Blair Canniff was “transferred” from the Royal Alex Hospital, while suffering the aftereffects of a stroke, and left in a cheap hotel in Leduc.
Quote from:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-health-minister-says-proper-procedures-were-followed-for-patient-taken-to-hotel-instead-of-care-home-1.7147904
“My understanding is that AHS [Alberta Health Services] followed their proper procedures. They did discharge to a non-profit provider and you would have to ask the non-profit provider why they chose that site,”—Adriana LaGrange, Minister of Health.
That statement from LaGrange is the most mealy-mouthed evasion I have ever read. It is a cowardly denial of responsibility.
But wait, it gets worse. A different minister, Jason Nixon, has promised to look into the incident. Nixon is the minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services. (Mr. Canniff is 62. I guess that qualifies him as a senior—when the UCP get caught in a stupid screwup.)
So, one point to Nixon for promising to check this out. Zero points to LaGrange for—again!—refusing to take responsibility.
Rachel Notley says LaGrange should apologize. Rachel’s wrong. LaGrange should resign! She won’t, though. Like her boss Danielle Smith, LaGrange is on a mission. Both of them know they’re right, and neither will back down—unless forced.
God help every disabled senior, God help every dementia patient in AHS hospitals. The UCP government has proven it will not help them.
Mike J Danysh: Adriana LaGrange was also very bad as the education minister. The UCP shows no concern over the well being of Albertans. Adriana LaGrange was responsible for the largest single handed mass layoff in Canada’s history, with the layoffs of thousands of educational support staff. Coincidentally, before the last provincial election in Alberta, they were all hired back. If I recall, Adriana LaGrange has a nephew who was a senior manager in one of the meat processing facilities in Alberta. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he made a back to work order, and many workers got very sick with Covid-19. Adriana LaGrange should resign, but we know that won’t happen. The UCP is good at never taking any responsibility for the problems they cause.
If its not the politicians fault, UPC, but some other entity, which was created under their ministries, then some one ought to send the memo to PP and have him stop insisting a number of Liberal politicians resign, etc because things went sideways in companies which were contracted to provide services for the government. If the politicians in government aren’t responsible for various “mistakes” who is and why do we have elected M.L.A.s Not my fault, its over there with the company we contracted with. Well if you contracted the company to provide services and they don’t you, the cabinet minister/premier, are responsible.
Are the people in office from the UPC brain dead or did they not read the job description, memo, etc.
It will be interesting if any of this results in death, how a court will rule in the law suit.
My guess is those who are being given the “motel” version of care are most likely those without family, active support systems, and don’t have a lot of money. I’m sure we will never see any of the UPC’s family members receiving “motel” care.
e.a.f….I wish that someone would send a memo to PP asking him why Mr Bartlett asked for an investigation dating back to 2015, when the company in question has been doing government contracts since 2004, and why didn’t he as finance secretary(? ) to Stephen Harper who used said company for his full term in office; why they never picked up on the irregularities, and why was Maxine Bernier distancing himself from the candidate running for the PPC who got a contract for said company for $7+million.
So easy to omit information, jazz up the headlines for the base, and if anyone notices the discrepancies, too late, damage is already done.
In her interview with Postmedia, Ms Lagrange said
“We have to make sure that we are getting patients to the right care, in the right place, and at the right time, she said noting that there can be a variety of barriers ,including financial …..or needing accessibility upgrades like wheelchair ramps installed at home. ”
But it’s okay to put them into a motel that is not wheelchair friendly??
And I wonder if the other >150 temporary or transitional spaces, for those being discharged have been created in the last 5 months<
are also hotel rooms.
Back in the day, some intrepid reporter would have been out checking bookings.
we could send him a letter with the questions, but it is doubtful we’d receive an answer unless it was attacking us for asking and not admitting Alberta is great and there are no problems.
Motel care is medical neglect. Thought there was this line for medical people, first, do no harm. Well putting disabled people in a motel instead of keeping them in a proper facility with nursing staff and therapy is just a waste of taxpayer’s money and abandonment of the government to do the job they were elected to do. Wonder who owns the motel and who are the related to. Some one is making money, but it isn’t the health care system.
Considering that there is the very strong likelihood that the rapist, thief, money-laundering, short-fingered vulgarian, malignant narcissist, buffoon, pathological liar, likely Kremlin-asset will return to the White House, the question has come up … how did all this come to pass?
While too many Americans have this bizarre belief that Trump is, somehow, next to Jesus in the righteousness department, it seems to me that there is nothing unusual about any of this. Chinese proverbs offer much wisdom, especially the one that says that the “Fish always rots from the head down”. We all may have seen this movie before, by the way.
After the great rise, there is always a spectacular fall. It’s happened to every empire throughout history, so why stop now?
Global has new details today. They found at least one other hotel I think in Leduc, the Park Inn with patients and a person dressed as a nurse who would not comment.
Also LaGrange has changed her story and stopped blaming the victim today.
Also everyone in gov’t health care denies any connection to Contentment Social Services.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10373044/alberta-patients-discharged-motels-social-agency/
I have to wonder if AHS has a list of private care providers that they tell patients they can choose to use. If so I wonder how many of them involve people who lost health care jobs for refusing to get vaccinated for covid-19? Sounds like something Danielle Smith and her minions would favour.
A number of post-hoc commenters have argued that Alison Redford’s fate was the result of misogyny directed against Alberta’s first woman Premier. On the other hand, she governed further to the right than she campaigned, and the public perception of a sense of entitlement that arose out of the Sky Palace and the “fakes on a plane” affair was the proximate cause of her downfall.
I’m not sure now which explanation holds water — perhaps they both do, in a world where the Sky Palace and “fakes on a plane” might not have redounded as sharply with a male Premier. In any case, on the scale of good or bad governance, there’s no way any reasonable person could argue with a straight face that her government was anywhere near as bad as Daniellezebub’s.
I believe they both do, Jerry. While she was certainly guilty of running a deceptively progressive campaign and had a degree of entitlement not atypical of PC politicians, she was harassed and excoriated at a level that never would have happened had she been a man. She was a brilliant woman with a lot to offer. She also wrestled with personal demons that made her less effective and contributed to her political demise. Her election had such promise, so little of which came to pass. DJC
while Alberta had Allison Redford, we in B.C. had the Socred/B.C. Liberal/B.C. United Party. They were so bad, I phoned a friend in Calgary and suggested we trade Premiers, then alberta would know what a bad premier is and we in B.C. would get a much better premier.
Some very serious allegations have been made on social media by people other than Mr. Canniff’s family. These allegations include missed meals, missed medications and eventually missing patients. Allegedly, some victims of this motel scheme were moved from place to place and families were unable to contact them. Also allegedly, someone called the RCMP to do a check on welfare. If true, this can be verified by government officials, who are also allegedly looking into it.
RE: “But since then we’ve had four years of Donald Trump as president of the country next door to serve as a bad example to Canadian conservatives and just generally bring the tone down everywhere.”
What is the term often used to describe those who appear to be obsessed with demonizing Mr. Trump in spite of his many successes? Trump
Derangement Syndrome (TDS) I believe it is.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t know many United States presidential candidates in history who managed to get over 140 Million votes spread over two presidential election cycles, one of which he won (2016), and the second one which was close but no cigar (2020).
And for Mr. Trump to add even more insult to the injury of his many detractors (that’s the nice way of saying haters), this same Donald John Trump, is now apparently poised to perhaps receive another 80 – 90 Million votes in the upcoming election on November 5, 2024.
So, while he may have a terrible bedside manner (figuratively and literally I suppose…if Jack Daniels daughter Stormy can be used as an indicator of the later), he still does manage to somehow confound his critics with his Teflon-like exterior and like the old Timex commercial, “takes a licking and keeps on ticking”. Should anyone be surprised if Mr. Trump is back to serving as a bad example and bringing the tone down once again before this year 2024 is in the history books?