Everybody who’s been paying attention to what Alberta Danielle Smith has been saying and doing for years understands that her government’s new policy of forcing Albertans to pay for COVID-19 immunization has precious little to do with saving the $135 million worth of unused doses she claims was “flushed down the drain last year.”
Ms. Smith took to the airways Saturday to repeat and embellish that particular talking point about the policy on her bi-weekly CORUS Radio Your Province/Your Premier program with her usual blithe confidence, which is frequently untethered to verifiable facts.
“We just wanted it to be cost recovery,” she insisted at one point. “We want to limit the amount that that ends up getting wasted.”
“We threw over away over a million doses because people just don’t want to, to, to get it, to get the vaccine in the same rates as others,” she blithely chirped in response to a question from Wayne Nelson, CORUS’s congenial and uncritical host.
This may be true, partly true, or not true at all. Premier Smith’s MAGA-dominated United Conservative Government certainly did its best to suppress information about the vaccine and its value. But despite her confident delivery, readers should never assume Ms. Smith’s numbers can be fully trusted.
“I think it’s because it doesn’t work particularly well, if you want the truth,” Ms. Smith stated firmly of the COVID vaccine, if not exactly accurately.
“I mean, a vaccine is one where you get an injection once or twice, and then you never develop the underlying condition,” she bloviated onward, moving from unverified claim, to inaccurate statement, to something approaching word salad.
“And so you have to judge vaccines on that basis. With influenza, you get have to get a new strain each year. And so it’s reasonably effective.… COVID, it ends up mutating very quickly. It’s very difficult to develop an effective vaccine for it. So it’s not a vaccine like measles. It’s more of an immunity booster.” Yadda-yadda.
Who knew that on top of everything else, our premier is an epidemiologist!? Well, it’s better to see Premier Smith’s bloviations in black and white print where it’s much easier to spot the illogicalities, misrepresentations, exaggerations, and untruths that pepper her speech. To that end, an imperfect but generally accurate transcript of her remarks Saturday about COVID vaccines has been provided here.
As is often the case, the longer Ms. Smith rambles on uninterrupted, the less sense what she says makes. But it doesn’t seem to matter. She sounds as if she knows what she’s talking about – especially if you’ve gotten bored and partly tuned out, as most of us do.
And it is a truth universally acknowledged that many voters will uncritically accept absolute nonsense as long as it supports what they want to believe.
Like U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ms. Smith is an anti-vaccine nut who actually seems to have internalized many of the conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine that have animated the MAGA movement in the United States and increasingly among the base of her United Conservative Party in Alberta.
One hesitates to call MAGA an ideology, of course, a term the Oxford Dictionary defines as “a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.” A system may be a low bar, but MAGA is closer to a collection of convenient superstitions.
However, Ms. Smith’s second reason, discussed briefly in my hot take on the policy soon after it was announced by “Primary and Preventative Health Services” Minister Adriana LaGrange late Friday once most reporters had booked off for the weekend, is found in her genuinely ideology-based mission to impose U.S.-style private health care on Canada.
It must be noted here that I am fully aware that since announcing her candidacy to lead the UCP Ms. Smith has claimed to support publicly funded health care despite her many previous calls for the introduction of user fees and co-pays, in addition to delisting of essential services. But her actions, as folk wisdom puts it, speak louder than her recent words.
So this immoral and unsound policy which will result in the deaths of vulnerable Albertans is an opportunity at once to placate her party’s MAGA base while implementing her plans to introduce American-style heath care.
It will never save money for the simple reason the cost of treating unvaccinated Albertans infected with COVID-19 and influenza, for which the new policy will also make vaccinations harder to find if not prohibitively expensive, will soon surpass the purported potential savings.
Buzz Hargrove, CAW president who led historic break from U.S. union, dies at 81
I was sorry to learn last night of the death of Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers Union from 1992 to his retirement 2008.
Basil Eldon Hargrove truly was, as the website of the CAW’s successor union Unifor put it yesterday, “a beloved and iconic figure in Canada’s labour movement.” He was 81.
“He never forgot where he came from – and he carried that working-class spirit with him into every boardroom, bargaining session, and public forum,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne.
Mr. Hargrove began his career on the shop floor of Chrysler’s Windsor auto assembly plant. After volunteering as a shop steward, he rose through the ranks of the labour movement, playing a central role in the CAW’s historic break from the U.S.-based United Auto Workers Union in 1985.
“A committed social unionist, Hargrove pushed the CAW to fight not only for better wages and working conditions, but also for broader social justice issues including public health care, retirement security, equity, and fair trade,” the Unifor release said.