A story published by a community newspaper chain late Monday quotes Premier Danielle Smith telling a United Conservative Party town hall in Drayton Valley how she plans to hand over some public hospitals in rural Alberta to the Catholic Church, which will as a matter of principle refuse to provide certain basic health care services, and use that to scare the bejesus out of AHS administrators.
If you think this is an exaggeration, consider Ms. Smith’s words recorded at the Aug. 17 party-members-only meeting and reported by Brett McKay, who owes his employment as rural and municipal reporter by Great West Media to Ottawa’s $59-million local journalism initiative, proving that at least some of the federal funds earmarked for the preservation of journalism in Canada have been well spent.
“When you’re dealing with a monopoly,” Ms. Smith told the Drayton Valley meeting about Alberta Health Services, “and they believe that they can deliver any type of care, and there are no consequences, they’re going to continue to deliver bad service.”
Now, let’s not forget that the principal problem with the quality of AHS care has nothing to do with managers maliciously delivering bad service and everything to do with chronic underfunding of health care by the UCP, shortages of medical professionals resulting from past government decisions throughout Canada, and the Smith Government’s massive vanity project to restructure health care along ideological lines.
But how does the UCP now propose to solve the problems it’s created? “Competition is one option” the premier explained to her rural audience. “That’s why we’re offering chartered surgical centres and why we’re offering Covenant.”
Actual evidence indicates that so-called chartered surgical clinics are making things worse and it’s doubtful Covenant Health, owned by the Roman Catholic church, can do much better.
“Contrary to government claims that outsourcing to for-profit facilities increases provincial surgical capacity, data suggest that the expansion of chartered surgical facilities has diverted resources away from public hospitals and, in turn, reduced provincial surgical volumes,” the Parkland Institute reported in a study last year.
Getting back to Ms. Smith’s commentary, she said the other option “is the fear of having it taken away. That is going to be a very powerful competitive incentive for the managers to say, ‘Oh my goodness, if we continue to deliver terrible care in Drayton Valley, then somebody else is going to be chosen for the operator.’”
This is dangerous balderdash, but it’s a great line to offer to a rural audience sympathetic to the UCP’s extreme market fundamentalist and socially conservative base when you want to get them to support a program of dismantling public health care that will hurt rural areas far more than the province’s cities.
The premier described frightening AHS hospital managers as an incentive – and it will be, an incentive for the most competent health leaders to leave Alberta and move to better-run nearby jurisdictions, a phenomenon we have already seen among Alberta physicians during the UCP years that began in 2019.
Ms. Smith apparently also explained that she sees Covenant Health as a useful replacement for AHS in some communities because the smaller church-owned care provider “has never closed down rural hospitals.”
We have to infer that her reference is to the temporary closings caused by shortages of health care professionals that have plagued rural hospital Emergency Departments operated by AHS, not permanent but politically dangerous closings and consolidations of costly rural hospitals that no government has the courage to touch with a bargepole. Covenant has, in fact, faced the same difficulties as AHS for the same reasons – just not as often because it’s so much smaller.
Well, as Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare, summed it up: “Using Alberta Health Services as a scapegoat for our government’s own failings in health care is an age-old strategy here in Alberta, but Danielle Smith has turned it into a political obsession designed to rally her base against our public health care.”
It’s wrong, though, to suggest Ms. Smith’s leaked commentary from Drayton Valley is either a revelation or an announcement.
It has been clear literally for years this was Ms. Smith’s plan and, since her ascent to the premiership, UCP policy.
Some of the points covered in Ms. Smith’s Drayton Valley town hall were blithely set out in fatuous detail in a non-peer-reviewed paper published under her name by the University of Calgary’s right-leaning School of Public Policy in June 2021.
Despite its obvious flaws of scholarship, the paper was illuminating because it sketched out many of Ms. Smith’s worst ideas in detail in advance of her return to politics. It’s still worth a read for that reason, if only to keep other bad ideas from becoming news stories after it’s too late to stop them.
“Bureaucracies have proven themselves to be terrible at finding efficiencies,” the paper says, a statement the comparative efficiency of AHS proves to be false. “They are geared to grow. The only way to make substantial and significant changes in the way programs are delivered is to allow contracting out, competition and choice.”
At a libertarian conference on “meeting the health care challenge” on Oct. 23, 2021, a few days less than a year before she assumed office as Alberta’s premier, Ms. Smith laid out her plan to sever major public hospitals from Alberta Health Services in more detail.
A video of those remarks was posted on Twitter by the NDP in May 2023, and remains there.
“Alberta Health Services becomes the contractor,” she told her simpatico libertarian audience. “Then we would have the Alberta Health Quality Council do us an auditor function, and tell us whether or not Alberta Health Services should continue running the Lougheed Hospital, or the Rockyview Hospital, or South Campus, or any of the hundred hospitals that they currently run …”
Not yet premier, Ms. Smith seemed confident she could find a way to make the Health Quality Council of Alberta do her bidding. Lo and behold, last month Ms. Smith, now premier, appointed former Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman as chair of the HQCA’s Board – a fact reported here on Aug. 14, but still ignored by mainstream media.
Conveniently, former Premier Ed Stelmach, whose government established AHS in 2009, is now chair of the Covenant Health Board and clearly unwilling to object to Ms. Smith’s plans.
“If they can’t meet the terms that we want them to, we can do an RFP,” Ms. Smith went on in her 2021 speech. “And then the Alberta Health Insurance can give a different contract to a different group of doctors …”
“That is completely compliant with the Canada Health Act,” she boasted.
Now, presumably, there is more compliant health minister and a very enthusiastic premier. And if Ottawa does object, she can always wave her Sovereignty Act at them.
The point is, Ms. Smith has told us all before, repeatedly, what she plans to do. Now she’s doing it. No one should be surprised.
Just when you thought you saw how bad it was under premier Ralph Klein, with his destructive cuts to the public healthcare system in Alberta, the UCP are taking that up to the next level, and will make it worse.
When Ralph Klein was premier, nurses were laid off in droves, and they had to either take early retirement, or relocate. Imagine having to deal with nurses who had to leave Alberta, when they were reluctant to go, because they had to leave their families behind? Hospitals also suffered, because they were shut down, or destroyed. People almost lost their lives, or did lose their lives, because of this, and the provincial government was sued. We don’t know what the settlement amounts were, because they were kept secret, but they must have been huge, because people ended up richer than they were before.
The UCP hired Janice MacKinnon, as part of their Fair Deal Panel. She was a Liberal, turned NDP, who turned into a Reformer, and when she was a Saskatchewan cabinet minister, she closed down the rural hospitals in Saskatchewan (by emulating Ralph Klein’s bad decisions), and this caused the NDP’s defeat in that province.
The ultimate goal of the UCP is to do more cuts to the public healthcare system in Alberta, to weaken it, just so they can have it privatized. Chartered is another word for privatization.
More people will end up losing their lives, and the UCP will get sued.
In the United States of America, private for profit healthcare is not functioning so well, and many people end up financially destitute. Hybrid healthcare, like England has is a disaster.
What kinds of financial payouts is Danielle Smith paying Ed Stelmach, Alison Redford, and other former Alberta PC politicians? She didn’t support them to begin with, and now they are on her payroll.
Things would have been different in Alberta, if people had listened to people who said that the UCP were no good from the start. You can’t get any more foolish than this.
Anonymous, I think Danielle Smith is so confident that her pal Pierre Poilievre will win the next federal election that she will be ready to help him destroy Canada’s highly praised Public Healthcare System and force us into an American Style one like Preston Manning and Mike Harris spent a year trying to promote. Privatization of healthcare and education has always been a mandate of these reformers, hasn’t it?
Alan K. Spiller: You are correct. I do recall around twenty years ago that there was a pending federal election. Ralph Klein was beaking off about his healthcare plans, which certainly included private for profit healthcare. The CPC got clobbered, and they absolutely hated Ralph Klein. The Alberta PCs even said they have had enough, and forced Ralph Klein out, in a leadership review.
When Ralph Klein first became premier of Alberta, many people who had Alberta PC memberships gave those up, because they knew how bad he was.
Danielle Smith’s healthcare and pension ideas may make Pierre Poilievre and the CPC face defeat. Canadians won’t agree with it.
Years ago, I remember talking to some seniors, and they may have been from the Vegreville area, or had family who was from there. They told me they were suing the provincial government for causing their relatives to get harmed in the St. Joseph’s Hospital in Vegreville. That hospital, like others in Alberta, had problems caused by Ralph Klein’s dumb cutbacks. These seniors told me that they just couldn’t vote for the Liberals. I didn’t tell them this at the time, but I should have told them that that’s exactly what Ralph Klein was.
Others that have known Ralph Klein for a long time, know how bad he really was. Even his own family didn’t support what he was doing, and they tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen.
RE,
The UCP hired Janice MacKinnon, as part of their Fair Deal Panel. She was a Liberal, turned NDP, who turned into a Reformer, and when she was a Saskatchewan cabinet minister, she closed down the rural hospitals in Saskatchewan
In other words she was an opportunist !
Trailblazer. Friends in Saskatchewan point out that she closed down 52 rural hospitals and they kicked the NDP out and elected Brad Wall conservatives and now Scott Moe has proven that there is nothing conservative about him while he praises what these Reformers have done in Alberta and Ontario and they think he will get kicked out this fall. Manitoba was smart enough to kick out their Reformers and we all need to do it, don’t we?
Alan K. Spiller: Hopefully, British Columbia doesn’t make the same mistake we did in Alberta.
This woman is out of her ever loving mind and needs to be stopped before more damage is done. Sure her rural constituents love the ideas she puts forward but once we let religion into our politics there will be no coming back from that cliff. She desperately wants American style politics in Alberta and if not stopped she will soon have her wish. She and Poilievre are both playing with disaster as he proselytizes the evangelicals for their vote. There must be a clear distinction btw church and state in Canada and yes Marlaina, your plan does not adhere to the rules of the Canada Health Act and is nothing but an ideological push toward a fascistic form of government.
Charlie you got it. One of my American Cousins has been saying for years “For Gods Sake Don’t Let Anyone Destroy your Public Healthcare System, Trust Me You Don’t Want Ours”. I wonder how many of these senior fools supporting Smith can afford $800. to $1,000. each like my American Relatives are forced to pay? Not many I bet.
Hate to break it to you pal but the courting of the evangelicals was completed under someone named Stephen Harper, loooooooong before he was prime minister (they’re a big reason he was propelled there in the first place)
On the other hand, while they make a lot of noise, evangelicalism is a shrinking movement, not a growing one.
Little Bird: A Canadian journalist – Marci McDonald – wrote a book about this a few years back: ‘The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada” (2011: Penguin|Random House Canada).
More recent events have overtaken much of what she wrote about in the book, as it was published before the 2011 federal election that led to a Conservative majority government, but it is still illuminating of some of the philosophical underpinnings of religious social conservatism in this country. I’d recommend it.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/111191/the-armageddon-factor-by-marci-mcdonald/
I’m sure the TBA government’s rural base will enjoy their new private health care, as long as their issues aren’t complex enough for them to get punted to the remains of our public system. Also, contraception??? Fugget about it!
I’m not sure the Catholic Church is as eager to run more hospitals now, as Smith is for it to do so.
Premier Smith is capable of sounding reasonable and not too kooky for a while, at least long enough for an election. But the kooky ideas are never far from the surface and can be counted to pop up from time to time like a gopher, particularly when she is speaking to a safe crowd.
This isn’t the 1950’s and I am not sure the Catholic Church has the resources to take on running more hospitals, even if they wanted, particularly those struggling rural ones whose biggest problem is they are understaffed.
Funny how the UCP in its zeal to cut costs and penalize rural doctors has made that problem even worse and is now desperately looking for someone to bail them out, or to create another distraction. I suppose if you can’t baffle them with bs, confuse them with more chaos. Perhaps this is the UCP’s strategy when it comes to health care.
Maybe some recent Covenant board appointments will step up to help bail out Smith here. But unless they can find a bunch of nuns to quickly fill in, the underlying staffing problems in these struggling rural facilities will remain. And again these problems have been and are being made worse by the UCP. Creating more chaos will not attract more or better staff.
On August 12, 2021 the Globe and Mail published its investigation into the wealth of the Canadian Catholic Church. In 2019, Catholic churches received $886 million in donations, far and away the most of any charity. It had assets of $61.2 billion in investments, stocks and bonds, earned $110 million net profit and held $3.3 billion in property. No world wide figures were provided.
Unfortunately, David, it is in the nature of being a good-hearted, open-minded, thoughtful liberal to be surprised that a professed democratic government can have have such evil and autocratic policies or be populated by such evil, unintelligent, arvicious and contemptible people.
The nature of good people is to presume good and positive outcomes from groups of people who espouse democracy.
Unfortunate because these are the last people to mount up for war but are so very necessary to win that war.
And yet, Ranger, as fascists, slavers and their ilk so often forget, “liberals” (to use the modern term) can turn out to be quite good at war when required. Consider Abraham Lincoln and FDR, for two examples on this continent. DJC
Exactly my point David. Very effective but late to the cause.
I would prefer not to go to war. I would prefer a more muscular approach to the day-to-day sparring and jostling of democratic politics.
Is that even possible when the other side lie, cheat and steal just as a matter of course?
Six years ago, I had a recurring problem that required surgery. Living in the west end of Edmonton, naturally one goes to the Misericordia. After another flare up, I was admitted overnight awaiting surgery in the morning. The next morning I met with the surgeon and she decided not to operate and sent me home. As my condition needed attention and was not going away, I decided to go to the U of A the next morning. Rather than being turned away at the Covenant Misericordia Hospital, I was admitted and in surgery with 3 hours of arriving at the U of A. The doctors there finally resolved the issue after about 5 years of getting no where at the Misericordia. Since that episode I have not set foot at the Misericordia. From my perspective Covenant Health is the “we can’t do anything for you” gang while AHS, specifically U of A, is the “we can do this or this for you”. Looks to me that Dingy Smith is really running the health care system into the ground.
Yes, Danielle Smith’s old playbook hasn’t changed. It’s not very original, either. She has made Alberta Health Services the evil bogeyman, the scapegoat to blame for her deliberate and callous destruction of our health care system. You can imagine how everybody who works in the system feels, weathering the UCP storms trying desperately to hold it together so people don’t ACTUALLY DIE.
It’s like the story of the old farmer who’s got the chicken by the throat and says, “Look, Martha. This chicken can’t walk. Guess we’d better butcher it!”
She wants “competition”? For what? IV poles? Stretchers? Doctors and nurses?
We have that now with her farming out surgeries to private clinics. How is that helping increase anything but the bottom line for these businesses? Waitlists are continuing to grow and the Emergency Rooms are stacking people like cordwood. If they’re open at all.
What about the UCP’s BIG FAIL trying to hand over all laboratory services to Dynalife? Calgarians were waiting over 5 weeks for routine bloodwork and it was their outcry that made our illustrious Health Minister Adriana LaGrange say, “Oops! Mistake!” and suddenly throw the wreck into reverse, ending Dynalife’s contract and putting lab services back into the public domain. Smith acts like we all just imagined that fiasco.You can be sure that it cost Albertans plenty, and not just financially.
What’s heartening is that even though Smith is well-practiced at gas-lighting, gifted even, Naheed Nenshi is finally calling her out. He’s got a good post, a video up on his social media about her shifty scheme to hand public hospitals over to private players. Hopefully the mainstream media will give him his due.
Smith’s musings are turning into a nightmare for Albertans but I’m glad Nenshi’s finally calling “bull#*!t on her.
If only we could read Danielle Smith’s thought bubble. We can only imagine….
“Well, listen, Take Back Alberta donors (there’s a list!) are telling me what to do and I’m all ears. There’s a leadership review this fall, doncha know. TBA wants government to run women’s bodies and thy will be done. We’re all Catholics now, and fundamentalist Catholic women must make babies or die trying. It’s God’s will, and God is a man. We all know that. All Albertans are all God-fearing and UCP-fearing, now.”
“Oh my goodness, if we let women continue to make terrible decisions about bodily autonomy in Drayton Valley, then women in Calgary or Edmonton might exercise their awful, lawful choice to make decisions about family planning, or even not having children at all. They might seek urgent medical assistance for miscarriages, which would allow them to continue being alive to parent their previously-born offspring. We can’t have that, can we? The rights of the pre-born come first, even if the pre-born are not viable. Women need to be afraid of reproduction and their own evil bodies, and more competitive with the other baby factories. How else are we going to encourage population growth?”
“Sure, we’re saying now that Catholic beliefs won’t override acceptable guidelines for medical treatment of ectopic pregnancies and so on. But soon, all hospitals will be religious hospitals and whatcha gonna do? Wink, wink.”
“Also, thank you to Margaret Atwood for her excellent non-fiction instruction manual on how to run Alberta, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and its sequel, ‘The Testaments’.”
“By the way, I categorically deny ever having visited Pinesdale, Montana. That is simply untrue.”
Was this all a dream sequence in a cheesy* movie of the week? Or is it a freaking nightmare come true? Is fear and loathing of the Insane UCP/Uterine Donkeys (IUDs) now reality?
*Not Hawkins Cheezies™.
How does this address the staff shortage problem which is the main cause of delays in Albertans receiving timely healthcare? It doesn’t. It just deflects from the fact that Smith has no idea what she is doing. We are very poorly governed in Alberta.
As a recipient of Nenshi’s emails looking for volunteers and donors, I would say he is putting out a Call to Action. I have responded and I would urge others to do the same. Albertans only hope is the next election. Let’s all start doing something to rid our province of this UCP pestilence!
My brother in law who lives in St. Albert has just been diagnosed with lymphoma. He doesn’t have a family doctor and was diagnosed at a clinic, now has to wait until October 10 to find out his treatment options. Last year I suffered a UTI infection which turned out to be E-Coli and took three months to fully recover, mostly because my prostate blew up on me. My PSA readings were so high it was felt I had prostate cancer. My blood chemistry was so off it was thought I was also suffering from blood clots. Here in B.C. the medical system has its faults but for me, I was scheduled for a biopsy, MRI and cystoscopy and came out testing negative for cancer. I am grateful for the system as is here in B.C. and I don’t believe it would have been that way under the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark “Liberal” regime which was governing at that time six years previous. Which brings me to your Premier Smith and the UCP. It seems that the medical system in Alberta will be soon be “Pray For Good Health” and nothing more than that. Which is concerning not only for my brother in law but our daughter and our son in law have just been transferred to Calgary from Winnipeg to his employer’s head office. It isn’t up to me to tell Albertans how to vote but as do other Canadians residing outside of Alberta, we do have something to lose on how the province is run.
It is not a coincidence that La Crete was chosen as the launching pad for this experiment. The region has double the birth rate of other areas of the province. This move by the UCP is about women, women of reproductive age, and who controls women’s bodies.
Soon La Crete will have a brand new maternity and community health centre, attached to a continuing care centre. Women who don’t appreciate being a captive audience, subject to denial of certain reproductive services by the religious organization in charge of their health, can get in their cars and drive themselves to High Level. Maybe the ferry will be running, or not. What can go wrong if they have to stop on the side of the road in winter, due to refusal of health care? Just saying that women from La Crete have had to travel to Grande Prairie for some reproductive services in the past, but it’s just 5.5 hours away if the roads are good.
(I wonder if anyone in the attached continuing care centre has been refused MAiD, and if that is offered in High Level, and if so, how they drove themselves there.)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/expectant-parents-in-northern-alberta-hamlet-hope-gov-t-will-deliver-on-promised-birthing-centre-1.5978996
https://reachfm.ca/articles/covenant-health-to-operate-new-la-crete-health-centre
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/planning-begins-for-new-la-crete-maternity-community-health-centre
A couple of incidents have been reported in the media in B.C. where people wanted MAID and had to be transferred to another hospital or across the street to another building. From what I read it was a terrible experience for not only the dying person but their families. Can you imagine you are already sick and you want maid, only to have to be loaded into an ambulance driven to another hospital for the procedure. People who are dying just want some peace and quiet. They don’t want a road trip.
Speaking of La Crete, how will their fundamentalist Protestant Mennonite residents react to “Papists” running their health centre? I mean, once upon a time, the most devout Protestants resented, and even hated, the Roman Catholic Church.
Tensions between Protestants and Catholics have led to all sorts of sectarian violence over the centuries, from the Inquisition of medieval times to the Troubles in Northern Ireland between the 1960s & 1990s. I’m no theologian, but it seems odd that anyone would think a primarily Mennonite town would be happy with the Catholic Church being in charge of their health centre.
As for the drive to High Level, the Tomkins Landing ferry doesn’t need to be running – they can get there via Fort Vermilion (we lived in Fort for 2½ years back in the late 80s), crossing the Highway 88 bridge over the Peace River to get to Highway 58. It’s about an hour & a quarter drive in good weather.
Jerry: This is a very good question. Having been raised by Protestants – Anabaptists not unlike the Hutterites and Mennonites on one side of the family, evangelicals on the other – I’ve wondered about this too. But I would say that actual theology matters a hell of a lot less (and I use that term advisedly) now than it did even a couple of generations ago. Consider the United Church of Canada – a seemingly unnatural union of no-free-will Presbyterians and free-will Methodists, with a smattering of Congregationalists (who knows?) tossed in. How do they get along? Well, as my late sister told me when she was pondering a career in the UC clergy, “we just don’t talk about it.” They’ve gotten along just fine that way since 1925. Anyway, the last time I attended my dad’s family’s church, they seemed to have dropped the Anabaptist approach entirely and replaced it with cowboy shirts with pearl buttons, pointy boots and 10-gallon hats along with pure MAGA theology unsupported by Scripture, and that was 20 years ago. Evangelical Christianity appears to have converted almost entirely unto a fascist movement utterly unconcerned by Christian doctrine beyond using it as a tool of abuse. Read the Gospels? Sorry, they’re too busy doing their research on YouTube. I’m ranting, but you get where I’m going with this. Having the RC Church running a “birthing centre” in a Mennonite community is probably less of a problem than either of us imagine it will be. DJC
I always considered the United Church (in which I was raised for my first 15 years or so) as the NDP of Canadian churches. Female ministers, gay friendly.
Lefty: This is fair, although it was the first Canadian denomination to be publicly wracked by a spasm of homophobia. Notwithstanding the fact Jesus had nothing whatsoever to say about the topic, we all understand that the Old Testament if full of hatred for what we now know as LGBTQ+ folk. This almost split the UC in 1980s. I suppose you could say it did split the UC, because many long-time members departed over the issue, losing the physical structures where they’d worshipped, and leaving them to shrunken congregations that couldn’t afford to keep them. The UC in which my wife and I were married is now a yoga studio, quite possibly in that case as a direct result of the 1980s. DJC
Ah, “The UCP Years”—what fond memories of wishing the UCP was really just a memory.
This “market fundamentalism” musta got me brain in a time-warp. It’s unhealthy, especially for the public healthcare system, and especially in Alberta where the system is particularly beset by market fundamentalism —and even social conservatism. Wasn’t all that ended when the “End of History” proved a bust? Yikes!
No wonder BC—which is chronically short of doctors, partly because so many wild-rose ex-pats prefer to retire where there’s more ‘fun’ than ‘fundamentalism’—has handsomely increased doctor and nurse remuneration: we sure don’t mind benefiting by Alberta’s loss, but lament that so many of our compatriots in the Wild Rose province are thus deprived.
We rationalize—something about ‘democratic fundamentalism’—colloquially, ‘voting with one’s feet.’ And ‘fair’s fair’: we have to fill supertankers with Albetarian dilbit, via the publicly-owned TMX pipeline, that will ply the high-traffic, inclement-weather Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca through the world’s only inland sea surrounded by temperate rainforest, so we might as well accommodate whatever doctors and nurses decide to migrate to the Coast from our neighbour to the east. Give us your tired, your poor, huddled masses of healthcare professionals yearning to breathe free of the wretched effuse of your steaming tar-sands-settling ponds, your demeaning governing party, your creaming market fundamentalism, and your screaming social-conservatism. Or, Welcome to British Columbia!
In other news, the former-governing, market-fundamentalist, social-conservative BC Liberal Party has all but evaporated with today’s announcement that its new leader, ex-BC Liberal cabinet minister, Kevin Falcon who, as leader of the Opposition, changed the party’s sullied name to BC United (sound familiar?) is stepping down as the recently resurrected BC Conservative Party continues to suck BCU MLAs into its growing fold. Several BCU MLAs have scheduled press releases today which we expect will announce their own floor-crossings to the BCCs. It can’t be long now before the BCU evaporates completely.
Falcon had booted John Rustad from the BCU caucus for bellowing that climate-change is a hoax. Rustad, now sitting as an Independent MLA was thence invited to resurrect and lead the BCC party which has been in suspended animation for decades. As the BCU’s polling numbers shrank, the initial trickledown of its erstwhile caucus members became a deluge, Rustad’s party has roared past the minimum number of MLAs to achieve official party status.
We Dippers were cautiously chuffed that the partisan-right vote was thus split between two parties, yielding 99% odds that the NDP would win its deserved incumbency in October. But we’re not too disappointed at today’s turn of events because the BCC is prone to invoke many of the tropes the federal CPC, Saskatchewan Party, and Alberta UCP, and New Brunswick ProgCon party adopt from tRumpublican MAGAnauts south of the border where hyper-partisan rhetoric is leaving orbit—and, as much as the BC partisan-right wants to resurrect tired old canards about the NDP’s supposed fiscal ineptitude, after two back-to-back terms of Dipper government it’s hard to cook that narrative without scorching it on the heat of one of Canada’s fastest growing economies and booming private and public sectors as construction towers sprout like magic mushrooms o’re the skylines of our cities and public infrastructure expenditure keeps pace.
In other words, if the UCP sends the BCC some of its CPC-boosted rhetoric —particularly the base, ‘us-against-the socialist-hordes’ twaddle so evidently disproved, I think we’ll be okay—awaiting the BC version of the Lake of Fire.
From where I sit, Alberta’s complaint that it gives more than it gets is warranted and welcomed. But of course, all of that’s the UCP’s decision —which, naturally, is what voters approved. Democratic fundamentalism is helping BC conserve its nominal socialism. And, having myself recently been treated to the high technology and sterling medical professionalism of our public healthcare system, I’m pretty confident the NDP will survive October’s election.
Meanwhile, it’s fair strange that while the prospect of Alberta enjoying a second Dipper mandate—and maybe even a back-to-back incumbency—is pretty good in the longer run, we’ll happily take whomever can’t wait to enjoy the fruits of the socialist hordes in BC.
Now, there’s a statute of liberty!
Hang on, my Alberta friends!
Scotty: Strange ectoplasmic disturbances reported in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Cemetery in Burnaby, Timberland Lot 464, Grave 5. Who ya gonna call? DJC
Got it!
Mental health and addictions? Jesus is the answer. Need reproductive health care? Jesus says no way! Can’t wait to see what’s in store for long term care. But I guess we can hurry them on their way to heaven to save a few bucks. Or those newly minted recovery coaches could take a few extra courses and be certified coaches for the elderly and disabled.
Gail: Don’t they call those “Death Dulas”? I’ve never liked the sound of that. Too Albertan. DJC
How very convenient that the new, state of the art, $46M (originally $30M, but not the $60M the community wanted) health centre in La Crete, built with public money for a religious organization, will have an attached continuing care centre. How disappointing that this remote area won’t get the high-risk pregnancy unit and obstetrical specialists it wanted. Surely turning the place into a Catholic facility will make that happen? Oh, well. Construction should be complete in time for the 2027 provincial election.
It’s a good thing the residents of La Crete are 100% Catholic and definitely not some other religion like Mennonite or even First Nations, with views that don’t fall in line with European belief systems. Yes, purely Catholic and pure Catholics up there. Take the money and run that hospital.
Gail S, Sadly, long term care seniors are now sharing living space with folks over the age of 18 with complex mental health and (non-active) addictions. One of the UCP’s answers to the housing crisis. At Calgary’s Carewest (contracted by AHS) Colonel Belcher our police services are routinely called in to deal with complex behaviours that are out of scope for the nursing and health care staff. Advocates like myself have been working relentlessly and it was only after a press conference organized by the NDP on May 27th that the UCP / AB Health Minister admitted knowing anything about the situation. LaGrange has since ordered an investigative audit, the results of which, the CCB Family Council, advocates and military stakeholders are anxiously awaiting.
As for contracting and outsourcing care of all kinds, only those who can afford that contracted care, (including those in Drayton and other smaller centres) will be served.
Covenant is not an answer to inspiring competition in health care for Albertans. Neither is fear mongering. Trust me when I say managers, Directors and COOs in Alberta Health Services don’t worry a whit about losing their jobs never mind truly serving the people in ‘their care’. After a number of meetings with all the aforementioned levels of administrators, I can report than none have the authority or the ability to affect or effect change.
Even the gate keepers, inspectors and directors, auditors and the like at Alberta Health are up against a brick wall despite proof of non compliant care models, despite the fact they know things are way out of scope, out of control. Their hands are (somehow) tied. Why? Because any precedent setting solutions, and any form of ‘fixing’ is going to cost the Province 100s of millions that the UCP will never admit needs to be allocated and spent. So. You can bet every bottom dollar that distraction, lies, and fear mongering are top of the bill anywhere the shrinking aspect of Danielle Smith needs ‘friends’ to support her in the upcoming leadership review. She and the UCP did not get my vote nor will they in any upcoming elections.
“The answers” to our collective health care issues are incredibly complex and will not be easily implemented by anyone / party.
DC; I am miffed and concerned that you omitted column space for a picture of Shambles in his pyjamas, housecoat and bunny slippers threatening his neighbour in the driveway! Shocking! I mean after all, he is a board member!
Truth be told, POGO, I have been regretting that omission all day. But how long can these stories get? That one was almost 1,200 words at one point, maybe still is. DJC
Well well, are my only wishes for you! However, my generation requires you to parse the utterances of that gloomy cohort of abomination that masquerades as our government! Your dice have been rolled!
POGO— maybe he’s made it past the “Snapdragon ” part of his life……LOL
( it’s not easy being green &fuzzy)
I completely fail to see how any public service can be run by fear. It sounds like a bad movie about a despot, like Ming the Merciless, not a plan for any sustainable system with a future. Or a form of slavery used on galley ships.
Boatswain to galley slaves: “fellas, I have some good news, & some bad news. The good news? Double rations for lunch!”
Galley slaves: “yay!!!”
Boatswain: “Now, the bad news: after the lunch, the captain wants to go water skiing!”
Queen Danielle wants 10M people living in Alberta in ten years?
It’ll happen … if they survive.
as Mom used to say, “what you want and what you get are usually two different things”.
Smith wants to double the population in Alberta within 10 yrs. That ought to be fun. Who wants to go to a province which wants to incacerate you in so
me sort of jail/hospital against your will, have your information on some private app, where hospitals are understaffed, you are unable to access any number of health services and where women die because Smith and her bible pounders won’t allow modern medicine in hospitals. What could possibly go wrong. I’d expect people will choose other provinces, even if they have to learn to speak french.
Things in the U.S.A. when it comes to maternal health care is so wierd it is beyond belief. One woman in Texas had a miscarriage and was arrested and charged with murder. she is now suing the state. In some Central American countries it is not unusal for women to be charged with murder if they miscarry, so many don’t report it and don’t access health care. Some who are reading this may not remember what it was like before we had the right to control our own bodies, but I do remember Jack Wasserman of the Vancouver Sun started printing it in his column when a woman died of a back street abortion. The state has not business trying to control a person’s body or dictate the health services available.
What Smith is trying to do is have mangers compete to keep their job. She is setting it up so managers will harass staff to work faster, etc. Then she can declare its more efficient that way. What Smith doesn’t seem to understand people can and do move to other parts of Canada, U.S.A. and other parts of the world.
Having churches run hospitals???????? They’re not administrators, doctors, nurses, technicians. Gee what could go wrong. In the U.S.A. there are hospital chains which have religiious names. Do they have better out comes. Don’t think so. The U.S.A. has amongst the highest death rate for women having babies. The babies die also at a higher rate. They don’t do things like pre natal care. guess Smith will eliminate that also.
Some of these bible bounders who want the world to live as they say do give me some laughs. So if we are to buy into their act, when you die, you go to ‘heaven”, greeted by St. Peter who decides who gets in and who doesn’t. I can see it now, Smith is told she won’t be give access because she caused thousands of women pain and suffering and deaths. She asks why, I followed the teachings of my church. I banned abortions and birth control. st. Peter responds and that is how you caused all the pain and suffering. Off to see Satan to atone. (O.K. I’m an atheist and have been since I was 10). But sometimes I do wonder about the people who cause all the pain and suffering which is so unnecessary, did have to answer for their actions.
e.a.f. Might be a good idea to start learning French now. You might have to immigrate to another country to use it soon enough, if Ms. Smith’s evil political twin becomes prime minister. DJC
Luckily for the TBA/UCP, many people are solely motivated by money and will continue coming to Alberta for all that freedom.
Ooooh, “breaking news “….from the Globe and Mail
Alberta NDP leader, Naheed Nenshi, slams Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s plan to transfer hospitals……
(That’s as far as I could go with the paywall. )
Marlaina on X today……
Albertans are grateful for their doctors, nurses and frontline health professionals.
I was at the Airdrie Urgent Care Centre today(*) to continue to hear directly from those frontline folks on what they need actioned (?) at the ground level so they can do their jobs and treat patients in a timely manner.
——————————
(*)so no frog jumping in the middle of this week??
DJC— on her X posting, there are 3 pictures; larger one on the right, 2 smaller. The top right has a lady ,with hands together.
Is it just me, seeing another Alberta heritage moment? It’s kind of hard to tell from Marlaina’s profile but she doesn’t look ‘very happy’ in either one..
Randi-lee: I’ve read the CP story, which is presumably what the Globe published. Had the same headline, anyway. It’s not much of a slam. It’s certainly not what’s required of the NDP. If you’re speaking of the picture I think – this one: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1307368740476477&set=pcb.1307368800476471 – that’s Angela Pitt and she’s probably thinking about what the voters in Airdrie are going to do to her re-elction chances if she doesn’t get them a real freakin’ hospital, not a pay-to-play facility. DJC
““There’s no evidence driving it. In fact, it’s counter to the objective evidence specifically relating to having two health authorities in the Edmonton Zone which have performed worse on all the objective measures than the Calgary Zone,” Parks said.”
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/alberta-covenant-health-danielle-smith
While Smith looks after her rural Alberta friends who got her elected we see gas at the pumps as much as 20 cents a litre cheaper than in the cities where she didn’t get elected. What a surprise.
My goodness she is not just dangerous, she is brainless.
Creating a problem and blaming your enemy for it in order to liquidate them is right out the fascist playbook. The problems in health care in Alberta -the shortage of doctors and the under funding of healthcare – were created by the UCP, not the AHS. You voted for it Alberta, you own it.
If doubling Alberta’s population in the next ten to twenty years were to be a real (as opposed to imaginary) objective, now is the time for the province to make huge infrastructure investments. It takes 10 years from design to commissioning for a major hospital. An extra 5 million people would require a minimum of 15 new hospitals, with 5 of them being tertiary care. Dozens of new high schools, scores of new elementary schools, new water treatment and distribution systems. New sewer and drainage systems. New transit, new railways, new roads, new sustainable energy projects, etc. There will be lots of employment, but no surpluses for a few decades.