When she opened her news conference on Nov. 8 last year, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith began: “Welcome to a new day for health care in Alberta!”
Did she get that right, or what?
It’s a new day alright, although not the better one the premier promised when she announced the United Conservative Party’s plan to break up Alberta Health Services into four separate bureaucracies that would “put Albertans first in every health care decision and give our front-line experts the right space to properly care for Albertans.”
As everyone in the province understands, it’s a shambles, and getting worse. It turns out when it came to health care, that the UCP’s motto was: “If it ain’t broke, break it!”
The nay-sayers – and there were many – have been proved right in spades.
As Rachel Notley, leader of the Opposition NDP at the time, predicted, the division of AHS into four separate, province-wide silos would bring nothing but chaos and confusion. “There are no new doctors, no new nurses, no new paramedics, no new nurse practitioners and no new LPNs in this plan.”
However, Ms. Notley said, “there will be entire new office floors filled with people at computers trying to figure out what the heck the UCP wants from them.”
“What Danielle Smith described this morning will make health care slower and harder to find and more fragmented,” said then NDP health critic David Shepherd.
Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Guy Smith said “nothing in these reforms addresses the short-staffing crisis and it might even drive more workers away from the front lines and hinder attracting new workers. … The government’s plan will only take things from bad to worse.”
United Nurses of Alberta President Heather Smith warned that none of the changes addressed long wait lists, delays in surgery, and bottlenecked emergency response. “We have severe deficits in terms of people and capacity in our health-care system,” she said. “They’ve made the wrong diagnosis and absolutely prescribed the wrong treatment.”
By the way, none of the Smiths mentioned in this story are related to one another. But the predictions of the critical Smiths and other critics are pretty much bang on. The premier’s? Not so much.
Paul Parks, who was then the president of the Alberta Medical Association, was milder that day last November, telling CTV that it was clear “physician engagement in each of these new organizations will be critical. The AMA will advocate for our voice at the decision-making tables.”
Well, we all know how that turned out.
Yesterday on social media, Dr. Parks made the startling claim that the Alberta taxpayers are spending something like a million dollars a day to pay consultants to figure out how to turn the UCP’s four new health care bureaucracies into reality – something last year’s news release promised “will be in place by fall 2024.”
Well, it’s fall 2024 and there’s no sign of any of them except for Recovery Alberta, which officially began operations at the start of September. Janet Eremenko, the NDP’s mental health and addiction critic, said of the roll-out that it “has been a costly downward spiral into chaos and uncertainty.
The Smith Government “clearly underestimated the complexity of this undertaking,” she added.
That said, as the addiction-treatment hobbyhorse of a small group of ideologues in the Premier’s Office, Recovery Alberta was the silo most likely to be subject to the “laser focus” Health Minister Adriana LaGrange repeatedly promised in the November 8, 2023, news conference.
The other new agencies – primary care, acute care, and continuing care – are obviously not of as much interest. Just something for all those consultants to busy themselves with.
Speaking of which, in his tweet thread yesterday, Dr. Parks pleaded with Alberta journalists to FOIP the money being spent on consultants, which he suggested is part of why the government has failed to honour its agreement to a new funding formula for family doctors.
“Alberta is in a vicious vortex,” he tweeted, “paying consultants millions to tell them how to create redundant bureaucratic admin structures that will then cost millions to run, all while saying ‘we spend too much so we can’t invest in critical health care areas’ like family medicine and hospital stabilization.” (I have edited Dr. Park’s tweet just a little for clarity.)
Meanwhile, he concluded, while the consultants are laughing all the way to the bank, patients stuck in packed Emergency Departments, lying in hallways, and languishing on surgical waiting lists are not.
Well, as the premier said, it’s a new day for health care in Alberta. And it’s probably going to get even worse, and even more expensive, tomorrow.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
On Friday night, the wait time in the Emergency departments at hospitals in Calgary were 5-6 hours, depending on which hospital you were checking about. That does not seem to be any improvement, and probably is worse than it was previously.
That are the posted wait times. The reality is much different. Last Saturday posted time at U of A was 3.5 hours at about 11:00 am. I had a bad cold that I thought might be something more, so I went to emergency. The outer waiting room did not appear to be very busy so I thought maybe this would go quicker than I thought. Well 3 hours later I saw a nurse practioner, to assess me. 2 hours later I was moved to a back waiting room so I could get an x-ray. 3 hours later I had the x-ray, saw a doctor, got some steroids and a puffer and was feeling better. The total was 8 hours. While the hospital staff were terrific, the really long wait indicates no improvements have been made over the last year.
All of this is going according the TBA government’s plan to destroy public health care so their political owners can ride in and save the day, for a price of course. The weird thing is that TBA cult members think people believe them. Collectively, I think Alberta is the dumbest province in Canada. This is, finally, my last day in this province, so long and thanks for all that money!
So long, CX. You can read this blog from anywhere in the world, expect maybe Russia. DJC
…and China
This is the exact course they are taking in my opinion as well.
I often wonder what it’s like to live as or with a perpetual complainer who hates change and any new ideas that aren’t their own. I’m sure it’s not fun.
My recommendation to anyone who reads articles written by Mr. Climenhaga to try a different news source because everything I’ve read that he writes is doom and gloom and highly critical. For your own mental health and wellness being try and find someone more optimistic. You’ll be happier and healthier.
Hmmm, being a semi-regular reader of this blog, I can personally attest that Mr. Climenhaga does intersperse posts with levity and humour amongst the doom and gloom missives, which tend to be negative based on the continual incompetence and mean spiritedness of the governing party.
Speaking of different news sources, perhaps Robert would care to review the various Postmedia rags, and their flagship National Post. Fearmongering, complaining, whinging, ranting, more complaining, and this from multiple writers (I said writers, not journalists), and to a far larger audience. Exhibit B is the leader of the opposition federally, he of the “everything is broken” stance. Exhibit C is via our neighbours to the south, with the leader of one party surmising at every rally that he exists in a ‘hellhole’, saying without hyperbole, that it is an existential crisis (btw, lock up your pets). So there’s that.
Compared to these, DJC is practically all about rainbows and unicorns.
…except in Alberta…
Burying your head in the sand won’t help!!!!
You sound like someone who has been here before under a different name. Perhaps you should take your own advice.
https://youtu.be/ZbmQQ4RfzVE?si=Jes5YQWU-NB4NbEA
Actually my family is living through the hell that he is describing, right now. My mom who caught Covid in LTC is laying on a hard stretcher, in a noisy hallway in Red Deer confused and in pain. My sister stayed with her for as long as she could until staff told her she had to leave because there was no room due to all the other stretchers arriving. So you just let Mr Climenhaga continue to tell the truth and perhaps we can force changes so others don’t need to suffer like this. My greatest fear is that she is going to die there in that hallway with no family with her.
I’m sorry to hear this, Linda. Keep pushing, it’s often the only way to get results in our failing health care system. DJC
Advocate for her. Keep one family member at the hospital and check in. This healthcare nightmare you are going through is being felt by many across this province. Take care.
Isn’t that a complaint?
Robert Is it doom and gloom or is it true conservatives trying to put a stop to these Reformers who are deliberately destroying our children’s and grandchildren’s future, and fools like you show them no respect.
Can you explain to those of us from the world of finance and supported by every lawyer, accountant, economist, oilman, banker and former conservative MLA we have known where you think our children are going to find the $260 billion to cleanup the oil well cleanup mess they dumped in our laps, $75 million wasted on children’s cold medicine, the $2.2 million wasted on Preston Manning’s stupid lies, the $78 billion debt and the list goes on and on. Why aren’t you smart enough to be concerned about the fact that they putting all of our lives at risk by trying to force us into privatization. With 48% of nurses telling us they are leaving the intelligent people are concerned for good reason, too bad you don’t care.
I find that independent and well-written information fights the incessant gaslighting I get from UCP (mis- and dis- information) and helps my mental health.
YMMV.
Optimism is the desire for a cleaner environment , a better future that is not status quo, accountable government and more!
TB
And what’s Pollieve’s excuse?
Moon Barry All he wants is to get elected and will say or do anything to get so. Sadly there are enough mindless seniors to fool, he likely will.You can’t trust him he is a Reformer and the former conservative MLAs I knew when Lougheed’s energy minister Bill Dickie was a brother in-law of one of my uncles taught me to never trust them and they were right.
Would I be “happier” if I didn’t think critically, didn’t assess facts, didn’t question actions taken and assertions made by those in power? Maybe in Pleasantville. I prefer to live in colour.
As to “healthier,” not likely in this province under this leadership.
Do you think? Maybe you have a solution here. Two weeks ago, a Calgarian friend was diagnosed with serious arrhythmia and told by her dr to cancel a trip to Portugal as she could have a heart attack on the plane. All travel plans got cancelled. She needed to see an electrical cardiologist asap and immediately made an appointment. Earliest she could see one was in six months. Looked up the Mayo Clinic and their earliest was end of November. I think her wait in Alberta is unacceptable. I don’t think the UCP has had any positive impact on Healthcare nor do I think they have any answers on improving it.
Robert, these blogs contain objective observation and invite comment on political matters affecting us all. I and others appreciate the commitment, research and effort put towards them
Sometimes ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s just another way to propagate more UCP voters.
Go ahead, Robert, and bury your head in the sand and believe the UCP’s health care plan is all butterflies and roses. I personally will stick with the critical thinkers.
“In a ruined and toxic future, a community exists in a giant underground silo that plunges hundreds of stories deep; there, people live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them.”
So goes the show synopsis for the TV series Silo. It might as well be a description of Alberta in the Smith-UCP era, or at least the health care system. The TV series resumes November 15. As for Alberta, anything goes after November 2. Just don’t go outside to clean (show watchers know what this means).
While many of our fellow seniors continue to believe the lies she feeds them she is putting their lives at risk and they aren’t smart enough to understand it. While Poilievre continues to prove he is another Donald Trump, all mouth and no brains, he blames Trudeau for the high cost of living that the COVID pandemic created for the world, and wants to make it worse by destroying the Carbon Tax that is putting funds in the pockets of people who desperately need it, that’s how stupid this guy is.
In tue Reform Party fashion he shows no respect for our children’s future just like he did when he was praising the Convoy Truckers and showing the citizens of Ottawa and the police officers involved no respect and did not care about the $65 million it created for taxpayers. He bashed Trudeau for using the Emergency Act to stop it while police officer friends praised him for how he handled it. How long was Poilievre prepared to allow it to continue and how many more millions was he prepared to waste? The list of stupidity goes on and on between Danielle Smith and Poilievre like wanting to give criminals the right to bear arms like the American Republican Party when Trudeau wants to take Assault Rifles and Handguns out of the hands of criminals and these Reformers refuse to cooperate with him. They don’t care about children being gunned down in their classrooms. The conservatives in my world don’t want another damn Reformer as Prime Minister, do you?
Alan K. Spiller: Danielle Smith is following along with her hero, Ralph Klein, so she can get private for profit healthcare, just like he wanted to have for Alberta. Ralph Klein put people’s lives in jeopardy, with his foolish cuts to the public healthcare system in Alberta, and Danielle Smith will do the same with her tampering with it. Watch lawsuits happen. Ralph Klein and the Alberta PCs were sued, but the settlement details were kept secret, but we do know that they payouts were substantial, because people ended up wealthier than they were before. Lyle Oberg fired Danielle Smith from her job as a public school trustee. What is Danielle Smith paying him to tear apart AHS? You can’t get anymore foolish than that, can you?
Shoppers is owned by Loblaws. Shoppers also has a subsidiary Shoppers Speciality Health Network which (among other lines) offers a drug distribution service. Hello Houston. We have a coincidence.
Boycotting sends messages to both Loblaws and the UCP. There are less tainted choices.
What dream world are you living in, Robert, and why are YOU reading Alberta Politics? Redirect your attention to UCP government announcements and I’m sure all will be well in this best of all possible provinces.
Well, well, well, we have here then 3, or 4 silos competing for resources, and duplication of missions likely. The end result chaos, regardless how many consultants are hired. Good work you who staff the UCP “brain” trust. I do hope the rural voters appreciate the much improved service.
it’s so totes win-win for the conservatives. When Ralph and Marthe start dying in emergency rooms at an even higher rate, when they can’t get primary care, when they die needlessly because their cancer can’t be diagnosed? Who are they going to blame? The liberal government in Ottawa. Even if there isn’t one.
D&G: Martha & Henry, no? Ralph’s already dead. DJC
For every opinion there is a counter. The skill is in figuring out what’s real and what’s smoke and mirrors. Cherry-picking rare occurrences to make a point? Smoke. Fact laden misinformation? Mirrors. Then again bad news sells. Media.
The UCP D.Smith is a very good example of the Dunning n Kruger effect.
Thinks she knows how to run a province but we are all witnessing she hasn’t figured out how to do that.
Yes, Smith promised a new day, which sounds kind of vague but nice. Unfortunately, not every new day is a good one and not all change is good either.
Even more unfortunately, our public health care system is something we all rely on – urban and rural, various ages, all backgrounds and different political leanings. So when the UCP starts to tear apart this system, they are not just hurting their political opponents. Their supporters can expectedly, or unexpectedly, need medical care as well.
The shortage of doctors and other medical professionals is not just a problem in cities that don’t support the UCP as much, but also and perhaps is even worse in the rural areas that do.
I feel Albertans will start to turn on Smith and the UCP once it becomes clearer that despite all their interventions and reorganizations, health care is not improving but getting worse. Their time for fixing it as they promised is almost up.
How’s the Calgary stadium.??no hospital in edmonton??.
Remember when Premier Cray Cray stated AHS had bloated administration costs, when they were verified as the lowest of any healthcare board in Canada? Well dividing AHS into 4 and quadrupling their administration costs will make her look like a prophet to her fellow mouth breathers.
As Gomer Pyle would say, surprise, surprise, surprise. The UCP is delivering on its mandate to create absolute chaos & bedlam minus the beds for the medical care system.