Alberta’s United Conservative Party must really fear the potential impact of the Corrupt Care Scandal, as the NDP Opposition has dubbed the continuing brouhaha about dodgy contracts pushed on Alberta Health Services by government insiders.
One key reason for such concern would be the imminent end of the federal election campaign on April 28, at which point local media will naturally turn its attention back to a local scandal, especially one as juicy and long-lived as this.
Another might be the realization that having cut former infrastructure minister Peter Guthrie loose, they may have a created a monster with the power to hurt them. I mean, seriously, who is likely to be better placed than the recent holder of cabinet’s infrastructure portfolio to know where the bodies are buried when it comes to big-money government contracts? And now Mr. Guthrie can say what he pleases.
Be that as it may, you wonder, where’s the evidence the government is really worried about this?
Exhibit A:
Well, first, it’s surely no accident that Premier Danielle Smith has chosen this fraught moment of national crisis, not to mention the most solemn and serious religious observance in Christendom, to get the hell outta Dodge and gallivant across the Pacific on a week-long trade mission to Japan and South Korea.
As Ms. Smith has demonstrated before, she is a believer in the dictum that when the going gets tough, the tough should get going – as far away from the action as possible.
A return to the condo in Panama so soon might look a little tacky, though, and Dubai isn’t particularly lovely in the springtime, so what better moment for an Asian trade tour? And right in the middle of cherry blossom season, too!
According to an unusual Good Friday news release from the Premier’s Office, Ms. Smith “will meet with government officials, importers and energy and agricultural sector leaders to position Alberta as the partner of choice to meet Japan’s growing demand for energy and food security.”
And not one of them, I’ll bet, will ask her a question about why she had the CEO of Alberta Health Services fired or why she won’t call a judicial inquiry into all those allegedly dodgy contracts.
“I am excited to head to Japan and South Korea to advance work under Alberta’s memorandum of understanding with the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security and celebrate the success of our decades-long twinning relationships with Hokkaido, Japan and Gangwon State, South Korea,” said her canned quote in the government news release yesterday.
“I will be taking this opportunity to strengthen the mutually beneficial ties rooted in these agreements, identify new opportunities for collaboration across our resource, agri-food and technology sectors and underscore Alberta’s position as a global leader in secure, reliable and responsible energy development,” she burbled.
The Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security? So, does this mean she’ll be pitching contracts for metallurgical coal from the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies?
Decades-long twinning relationships? Well, that certainly sounds like a valid reason to leave your country in the middle of a national crisis!
Premier Smith left yesterday and will be gone until a week from today, two days before the election – after which, I suppose, she may start issuing threats to break up the country if whoever gets the keys to the Prime Minister’s Office doesn’t dance to her tune.
Exhibit B:
When things get bad, Canadian Conservatives concentrate their fire where it’s really going to count: Bike lanes!
On Thursday, accordingly, Transportation Minister Devin “MAGA Hat” Dreeshen was in Edmonton to hold a news conference with a simpatico City Councillor Karen Principe about the city building too many bike lanes.
“Alberta’s position is simple,” huffed Mr. Dreeshen, the MLA from rural Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, who has lately also been busy fighting the City of Calgary over public transportation, another UCP bugbear. “We support bike lanes when they make sense, but we will not support tax dollars being used to reduce road capacity.”
“They want to keep us distracted and divided,” observed Ward papastew Councillor Michael Janz in an email to his supporters. “When Doug Ford’s government was facing a police investigation and riddled with scandals related to the Green Belt and corruption allegations, what did Doug Ford do? He threatened to rip out a few bike lanes in downtown Toronto.
“Now with Smith and her government flailing in the Corrupt Care Scandal, and her former minister, Peter Guthrie, now tabling deeply concerning allegations and documents,” Mr. Janz continued, “they need to get us paying attention to anything but health care procurement and their broken promises.”
“Today it’s about bike lanes,” he warned. “Tomorrow it might be regulating facility rentals or what library books that Alberta libraries can carry without losing funding, crosswalks, or removing speed bumps.”
“They keep telling the City Council to stay in our lane,” he concluded. “They need to do the same.” And pay their municipal taxes.