Now that Dr. Mark Joffe is “out” as Alberta’s chief medical officer of health – I quit, you’re fired, or whatever – he obviously feels free to say what he thinks about measles vaccinations.
The formerly all-but-invisible CMOH published an op-ed in The Calgary Herald yesterday in which he bluntly stated the obvious: that measles is highly infectious viral disease, it’s dangerous and potentially deadly, the measles vaccine is effective and safe, the idea the vaccine causes autism has been thoroughly debunked, and the only way to stop the measles infestation now plaguing Canada is to “maintain high levels of immunization.”
Even stating such facts as politely as Dr. Joffe did is clearly verboten under the United Conservative Party Government led by Premier Danielle Smith, who is well known to be a vaccine skeptic if not an outright opponent, a foe of effective public health measures, and a determined advocate of discredited quack cures for COVID-19.
She famously called COVID vaccine resistors “the most discriminated-against group” she had observed in her lifetime, public illustrating the limitations of her powers of observation. And despite suggestions to the contrary, it’s quite clear her objections to immunization programs extend well beyond that one disease.
Why Dr. Joffe is out as CMOH remains unclear. It is undeniable, though, that after two and a half years as interim CMOH during which he rarely appeared in public, let alone spoke up for vaccination programs, public health, or controlling infectious diseases, when he did finally publish a statement on April 11 encouraging Albertans to get vaccinated against measles, he was out of the job in less than a week.
While there’s a strong argument he should have been making statements like those in his op-ed when he was still CMOH, now that he no longer holds that position it was almost as if he wanted to set the record straight on what he really thinks as quickly as possible.
Dr. Joffe’s statement was published a day after former UCP infrastructure minister Peter Guthrie published an open letter assailing Premier Smith and the rest of his former cabinet colleagues for their cavalier attitude about what appear to be shady practices in health care contracting. In his letter, he called for a full public inquiry by a judge with the power to compel testimony, accused the government of lacking fiscal restraint, and criticized Premier Smith for harming the federal Conservative election campaign.
Mr. Guthrie, who resigned from cabinet in late February over what he called deceptions in government business practices, was booted out of the UCP Caucus last week, whereupon, ungagged at last, he tabled his Feb. 25 cabinet resignation letter in the Legislature, making it a public document.
While the issues now being raised by Dr. Joffe and Mr. Guthrie are different – although both intersect with the UCP’s ongoing mismanagement of public health care – it’s almost as if opposition to the policies of Premier Smith’s UCP by former senior government officials is starting to go viral, as it were.
If this keeps up – if the premier and her party will forgive my use of this expression – this could soon turn into an epidemic!
Mike Ellis ‘repeatedly misrepresented’ RCMP staffing in Legislature: senior Mountie
Meanwhile, in another outburst of apparently completely justified frankness, the commanding officer of the RCMP in Alberta accused the province’s public safety minister on Monday of making inaccurate statements in the Legislature about policing in rural Alberta.
In a letter to the minister, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Rob Hill observed that while speaking in the Legislature Mike Ellis “repeatedly misrepresented the number of authorized positions for the Alberta RCMP, despite that number being clarified on a number of occasions.”
Commissioner Hill didn’t call Mr. Ellis’s misrepresentations intentional, diplomatically suggesting instead that perhaps ministry staff hadn’t passed on accurate information provided by the Mounties. But anyone who has worked for a Canadian civil service, federal or provincial, knows this is extremely unlikely.
The simplest explanation is that the UCP Government wants a provincial police force that it can control and that will never be the RCMP, which is too federal and too independent.
Mr. Ellis is the frontman for that effort, which remains unpopular with the public. Bill 49, the Public Safety and Emergency Services Statutes Amendment Act, 2025, is designed to facilitate that politically charged effort. And badmouthing the RCMP’s work in rural areas during the introduction of the act is a key part of the strategy to move forward the UCP ambition to create what the government has called “Alberta’s prospective new police service.”