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.
Yes, one of Smith’s communication skills is to sound so confident in what she is saying it can often offset the fact it is gibberish or totally illogical. For instance, no we will not save money if more people don’t get vaccinated and do get sick.
She may not have become a drama school teacher, but years in talk radio does help one develop certain similar skills. Smith’s performances remind me of the old sayings, fake it till you make it and if you can fake sincerity, you got it made. However, the problem is that at some point being genuine matters. For instance, do you want to be treated by a treated by a qualified doctor or someone who just plays one well on radio or TV? I would say Smith is the latter.
Again, she really should leave medicine to those more qualified.
When are UCP supporters going to start calling out the premier and holding her accountable? We are nearly at 1 billion in wasteful taxpayer spending (surg contracts, Tylenol and now this).
I mean …. We can refer back to the CBC article titled “In resurfaced video, Danielle Smith said the vaccinated fell for ‘charms of a tyrant referencing Adolf Hitler” …
People didn’t even know the Covid vaccine was still available.
UCP has got to go.
Minister Lagrange’s title, Minister of “Primary and Preventative Health Care”, is as Orwellian as that of fellow Minister Rebecca Schulz, Minister of the “Environment and Protected Areas”.
Schulz’s focus is on the exploitation, not protection, of the environment, and Lagrange’s is certainly not about preventing illness.
If our host will forgive the crudity, I can suggest an alternate name for LaGrange’s ministry; one that preserves the acronym PPHC:
“Minister of Piss-poor Health Care.”
Could there be a conflict of interest on a health minister who was the dispatcher for a trucking company that isn’t nearly as busy these days. A bit of self interest to keep trucking in an oily industry that have streamlined their business. By reducing the need for hauling rigs and other incedental needed in o&g.
She has a diploma in..well rehabilitation..kinda like a computer prompt..if she graduated school..well, no one left behind..a puppet, yes girl, Catholic hypocrite, defunds abortion..go back to your trucking buisness, and go broke
“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.”
This is a very valid point about radio in general. Long gone are the days of early radio, when people would sit around the ‘wireless’ to listen to a radio program. Today the radio is on while we do something else: drive, operate a machine, do household chores.
As such, it is a perfect medium for someone like Danielle Smith, whose confident sounding voice too often has more impact on the listener than the sketchy ideas she introduced.
Long time readers may remember commenter Farmer Brian, a hard right conservative from central Alberta. Brian had excellent BS detection skills, something I learned the hard way when I argued with him. In one of his posts, however, he did mention that he liked the ideas Danielle Smith presented as a radio host. I expect he heard her ideas while focused on the farming task he was performing, rather than listening to her with the same BS detection meter he used when reading this blog.
Danielle Smith now has the power of God, not passed through the legislature and possibly not passed through her own cabinet, to decide who lives and dies in this province. Isn’t that every wanna-be dictator’s dream for eliminating undesirables: broader strokes than eugenics, more efficient than an army and requiring no weapons other than the microphone at the CORUS studio to make it so.
RIP, Buzz.
The whole COVID shtick from *ANY* side is not a hill I want to die on. At this point, it’s been so polluted from political rhetoric that whatever the actual scientific evidence for its efficacy or its side-effects problems are the conversations are so polarized that I’m waiting a decade before I make a final judgement.
___
As for Buzz–awwwww man, I am gonna miss that guy. He was a stand-up working class guy who wasn’t afraid to knock heads with the power structure at certain points. Didn’t always agree with him as radical enough but he generally had something thoughtful to add to the dialogue and he was stalwart in showing up to a lot of events and lending support to just causes even when sometimes, his own union members didn’t agree with him.
Tell us you’re an anti-vaxxer without quite telling us….Mr. I won’t rush to judge.
D&G Thank you for pointing out *exactly* what’s wrong with the vaccine discussions. It’s polarised into name-calling nonsense.
Science is ever-evolving, ever growing, ever questioning. Remember Thalidomide? WHO started the opiate crisis? When did it *really* start? Who perpetuates it?
The COVID “vaxx” isn’t a vaccine to begin with. That was loaded language designed to entice people into taking it rather than just tell them the truth of how it worked and what it could, and could not, accomplish. This is information that all consumers are entitled to know about the products they consume.
Smallpox has a vaccine, mumps has a vaccine, measles has a vaccine. The word “vaccine” implies both implicitly and explicitly that that particular medical intervention will *stop the spread*. Thus, I’ve less trepidation about such correctly identified vaccines being mandated for public health.
The COVID shot not only doesn’t stop the spread–it wasn’t even tested for that before it was rolled out and sold for that purpose. Same with flu “vaccines”. Flu shots are not sold to the public on the promise that it will stop the spread–only that it will lessen the symptoms for the consumer and that’s a valid selling point. I’ve no problem with standing on that.
I want to see independent research for *all* medications not just research the sellers paid for. And that’s from someone who worked in the health field.
I’ve nothing against anyone wanting to take them, nor anyone involved in the manufacture of selling of them. I want the same transparency for the COVID treatment that we should all be demanding of ALL medical treatments.
The truth.
What are the benefits? What are the side-effects? How efficacious is it? In the case of a vaccine claim, can it or will it stop, or significantly reduce transmission?
If the manufacturers of a medical treatment who profit can’t answer those questions and we aren’t demanding that information then there’s far more wrong in our political discourse than the public health implications.
Science has proven irrefutably that the COVID vaccine mitigates the harm done if and when someone contracts the virus. Facts, not opinions. The vaccine proponents have never claimed it prevents COVID. At the moment no medicine can do that.
I am disappointed (disgusted) that ‘B” should be given a soapbox to spread this kind of anti-science nonsense.
Well for starters b, there is more than *one* covid shot, in fact there are several, Russia had a proprietary one, Cuba did as well, there was at least three different options available in Canada, this information isn’t hard to find. Long covid is debilitating millions of people world wide, and evidence is increasingly pointing to the large percentage of these folks who weren’t vaccinated. And hey. Let’s not forget the millions of workers that died.
In my experience, anyone trying to appear “concerned” about the efficacy of the vaccine(s) and the potential side effects, tend to do things like you did here, and pretend we are talking about a singular (1) vaccine for SARS Cov-2 that was used the world over, which simply isn’t true and greatly hampers the effectiveness of the argument you are making.
Political rhetoric aside, I was there for the 2020 pandemic, I was fortunate to neither die or be struck with long covid & im thankful that several different vaccines were made available for me, & my family and friends to choose from. One cannot imagine the calamity otherwise.
Was the scientific community broadly ignored w/r/t other potentially more effective methods such as air quality control & broad scale implementation of filtration in planes, airports, schools and business, I think we all know the answer to that. Neither do I think it was wise to just let Covid rip through the population in successive waves (currently the 11th in the United States) once the vaccines saw broad uptake. People died.
However, I refuse to let people of any political stripe politicize vaccines in general, demonize those countless people who worked on the different vaccines the world over, or pretend that they haven’t saved millions of peoples lives at this point, billions (?) that’s ridiculous, and it’s beneath the quality of comments on this website.
RIP Mr. Hargrove. Your contributions to the labour movement in general and specifically to the well-being of Canadian workers will not be forgotten.
Marlaina is doubling down on bald faced lies. She worships money, but doesn’t have any problem wasting it on frequent junkets for herself and cabinet or for $280,000 rugs for her office or millions on useless Tylenot.
Charging Albertans for vaccine accomplishes two things that are near and dear to her black heart: punishes those Albertans who are such losers that they are poor (insert sarcasm), and hastens the destruction of the health care system so that she and her cronies can profit from privatization.
$135 million on unused vaccines.
How many patients requiring ICU treatment does $135 million buy? How many lives?
How many operations delayed because hospitals are clogged with COVID patients?
How many doctors and nurses burned out?
How many work hours, and how much productivity and GDP lost due to COVID and long-term health effects (long COVID)?
Penny wise, pound foolish.
This is the woman who proposed gifting the überwealthy O&G industry with $20 B in royalty credits for well cleanup that companies were already legally obligated to do.
A competent government could explore ways to reduce vaccine wastage without denying life-saving measures to the public.
Danielle Smith, oil lobbyist and immunology expert: “Well, I think it’s because it doesn’t work particularly well, if you want the truth. I mean, a vaccine is one where you get an injection once or twice, and then you never develop the underlying condition. And so you have to judge vaccines on that basis.”
The goal of COVID vaccines was primarily to reduce the severity of illness and mortality — and secondarily to reduce but not necessarily stop transmission. The ICU and mortality rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated bear this out.
Neither the companies nor regulators made any promise that the vaccines would block virus spread.
The vaccines were designed primarily to prevent symptomatic COVID-19 infection and severe disease — not to totally prevent transmission. Vaccine studies showed a significant drop in, but not a complete elimination of, transmission.
Together with sensible public health measures like hygiene, handwashing, distancing, masks and isolation of COVID patients, vaccines could help reduce transmission, but all such measures require full public co-operation.
COVID transmission depends on viral load and personal immune response. If you stand next to somebody with COVID — if your exposure is high enough and long enough — the virus will take hold. All else being equal, the consequences are likely to be less severe for the vaccinated.
“COVID-19 vaccine: Does it stop people getting the virus?” (Medical News Today, March 6, 2023)
“The COVID-19 vaccine does not stop a person from contracting SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. However, it can strengthen immunity against the virus and help prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death. It also helps reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
“The COVID-19 vaccine does not prevent COVID-19. A person who is fully vaccinated can still contract the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, and may go on to develop the disease.
“However, a 2021 science brief from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)Trusted Source outlines recent scientific evidence demonstrating the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine. These include reducing rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission and reducing the risk of severe disease, hospitalization, and death.
“A person’s susceptibility to COVID-19 following full vaccination may depend on the variant of SARS-CoV-2 they have exposure to.
“At present, the most prevalent variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States is the Omicron variant.
“A person who develops an Omicron infection can still spread the virus to others if they have received the vaccine. However, the risk of this variant causing severe symptoms and complications is reduced in someone who is fully vaccinated compared with a person who is not.
“Vaccines work by conditioning the immune system to produce virus-specific antibodies without making the person sick. They do this by exposing the body to the inactive parts of a virus that trigger an immune response.
“This teaches the immune system how to fight the virus by making virus-specific antibodies. Therefore, if someone goes on to contract the virus, their body is able to respond more effectively.
“The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine has helped reduce rates of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease. While the vaccine does not provide complete protection against COVID-19, it helps reduce the severity of its symptoms. Researchers have associated the vaccine with an overall decrease in hospitalizations and deaths.”
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/does-the-vaccine-prevent-you-from-getting-covid
“In general, most vaccines do not completely prevent infection but do prevent the infection from spreading within the body and from causing disease. Many vaccines can also prevent transmission, potentially leading to herd protection whereby unvaccinated people are protected from infection by the vaccinated people around them because they have less chance of exposure to the virus. We are still learning whether or not the current Covid-19 vaccines prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2. It is likely they reduce the risk of virus transmission but probably not completely in everyone. This is one of the reasons why it will still be important for people to continue wearing masks and practicing physical distancing, even after being vaccinated.”
Johns Hopkins University: Vaccines FAQ
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/vaccines-faq
“Fact Check: Preventing transmission never required for COVID vaccines’ initial approval; Pfizer vax did reduce transmission of early variants” (Reuters, Feb 12, 2024)
“NOT REQUIRED, NOT PROMISED
“In the video clip shared online, the Pfizer executive accurately states that studies of the vaccine’s effect on virus transmission from person to person were not performed during the original clinical trials of the company’s vaccine.
“At the time governments were negotiating advance purchases of vaccine in 2020, the European Medicines Agency had already laid out requirements for an application for conditional marketing authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine, clinical trials were underway, and tests to show the vaccine prevented onward transmission were not required of any vaccine maker.”
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/preventing-transmission-never-required-covid-vaccines-initial-approval-pfizer-2024-02-12/
Geoffrey, I agree with much of what you said. Well-researched reply.
While the manufacturers may not have explicitly said, “stop the spread” they DID pay for advertising on such “news” shows as “Rachel Maddow” who expressly said, on a nightly basis–that it “DID stop the spread”. It was almost comedic in intensity if it hadn’t been so tragic.
I never once saw a Pharmaceutical rep come on her show (or any of the others) to refute these claims. Lying by omission plus profit?
While Canadian media was far less hyperbolic than American media with these claims, it’s easy to see why the pushback has been so hard.
I’m not excusing Dixie Dani BTW.
As an efficacious medical treatment particularly for seniors or those with concurrent illnesses, it should, by all means be covered while any doctor/pharmacist administering it should be making their patients aware of both the benefits and potential side-effects.
B wrote: “As an efficacious medical treatment particularly for seniors or those with concurrent illnesses”
If vaccines can reduce COVID symptoms, such as coughing and sneezing, it can reduce transmission from young people to more vulnerable people such as seniors.
However, it would be an error to suggest that only seniors, the immune-compromised, and those with multiple medical conditions are vulnerable to COVID and can benefit from vaccines.
“UCP’s COVID vaccine cuts put children at serious risk” (EJ, Jun 16, 2025)
“On May 27, the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics published a patient information page about Long COVID in children. It states ‘Long COVID is common, affecting up to 10 per cent to 20 per cent of children with a history of COVID-19. With almost six million U.S. children potentially affected, this is higher than the number of children with asthma, the most common chronic health problem in children.’
“Two weeks later on June 13, Danielle Smith’s UCP, famously fans of the anti-science Trump government, highlighted horrifically unscientific new FDA guidance suggesting healthy children and pregnant women are not recommended for COVID vaccination, while announcing a new policy where most Albertans have to pay for immunization.
“… According to Alberta’s spring COVID vaccine schedule, immunization for children under 12 is ending June 17, when doses on hand expire. Unconscionably, that implies that babies who turn six months of age after that won’t be offered their initial two-dose series of immunizations despite being at high risk from exposure.
“Babies — the most important people in our society — continue to experience high incidence of severe COVID infection, with infants comprising about 30 per cent of all pediatric hospitalizations and being hospitalized at higher rates than all but the very elderly. Infants are in great need of COVID vaccination, particularly given they are immunologically naïve, vulnerable and have long lives ahead of them.
“Moreover, as I recently wrote about in Scientific American, a growing mountain of evidence shows pediatric Long COVID is more common than previously believed, with robust research demonstrating it affects or has affected millions of children in the United States alone— implying hundreds of thousands of cases in Canada.
“This makes sense, since COVID is proven to cause cardiovascular, neurological and immunological harm, even increasing the relative risk of new onset pediatric diabetes when compared with other infections. Pediatric Long COVID symptoms range widely in kind and severity, but many common symptoms affect energy levels, memory and cognition.
“… Brain impacts are another major concern. Research shows even mild, resolved COVID infections persistently decrease IQ scores. Another study found that spike protein accumulated in the skull bone marrow and brain meninges of many patients with past COVID infection but who died of other causes, and that buildup was reduced among patients with mRNA vaccination.
“This demonstrates the need to periodically vaccinate children against circulating variants, since doing so reduces the rate of severe disease and Long COVID. We all want COVID to be a cold, but it just isn’t. Colds haven’t varyingly disabled 400 million people in the last five years.
“It has taken just five years for COVID to create from scratch one of the most common serious chronic illnesses in children. Given the virus mutates and periodically reinfects, what will it do over, say, two decades?
“… A policy of ending pediatric COVID vaccination will disable, hospitalize and even kill Albertan children, leaving blood on Smith’s hands. It contradicts the very principles of choice and freedom that the government claims to uphold.
https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-ucps-covid-vaccine-cuts-put-children-at-serious-risk
I don’t listen to the premier’s radio show but am happy to learn she is concerned with sparing the taxpayer unnecessary costs. Doubtless she also reminded listeners of the incredible waste of $70 million for Turkish tylenot (half still undelivered), and how she is committed to getting our $49.2 million still owing back from Sam Mraiche and, also, what a monumental disgrace it is that $5 million and counting taxpayer dollars has been spent storing this crap.
Marlaina is a child of her times, and creates her own reality, as is the fashion for pretty much everyone these days. But there never was a reason to expect the mRNA injections to work. Moderna had failed to solve the problem of the mechanism required to transport the mRNA across the cell membrane. Surprisingly, the immune systems in test subjects proved stoutly disinclined to have the synthesized lipid particles playing in and out the window. The prevalence of the single, then double, then triple-vaccinated among Covid cases did not seem consistent with a vaccine that prevented people from getting sick. Perhaps 50% of hospitalized COVID cases in Alberta by July 2022 indicates something different to an epidemiologist than to a lay person.
Public Health Care is to the UCP as sunlight is to Dracula. They think any measures regarding prevention of illness or injury to “the public” is an assault on their person freedoms.
No one tells them what they should do! Food handlers having to wash their hands after using the toilet? Says who? Monitoring air pollution from industry? Down with that! Get vaccinations to prevent outbreaks of communicable diseases? How dare you!! It’s every man for himself and if the poor or helpless, are endangered that’s their problem. As far as microbes, you just stare down that virus or whatever. When you get sick your superior libertarian immune system will just tell it to bugger off!
The UCP governments under both Kenney and Smith have made the position of Chief Medical Officer of Health a joke. They don’t want an expert doctor trained in public health and control of communicable disease to guide their policies. They want a eunuch, a person subservient to the Premier’s whims and agenda. They have reduced the expertise from a full-on public health expert (Dr. Hinshaw), to a specialist in infectious diseases but no public health expertise (Dr. Joffe) to an ER doctor with no expertise in either (Dr. Sookram). This is interesting because they have chosen a physician who treats people after-the-fact when they show up in Emerg with respiratory distress from viral illness or pollution. Expertise in disease prevention, particularly vaccines is a no-no!
Soon enough Dr. Sookram’s skillset will be needed in the hospital no doubt, as word has it Covid is on another wave, maybe a newer variant. Families in B.C. are being laid low with the ugly bug and whole floors in community hospitals are being locked down with outbreaks.
But, never fear! Dr. Dani is here!! The latest expert on everything, even Covid and vaccines. Who can throw enough jargon around that her fanboys can relax because she sounds and looks like she actually knows something.
Smith does know some things, that can’t be denied. She knows how to keep her “base” happy, basically holding David Parker in her lap while she writes public health policy. (He was the one who claimed he was the “kingmaker” in Alberta, remember?) She knows how to exploit (or stimulate) a crisis to create an opportunity for a wealthy supporter to make a pile of money. She also knows how to play games. LOTS of games. Distraction games. Word games. Shell games. And now she plays “Doctor”.
Like the snake eating its own tail, Danielle Smith’s policies limiting people’s access to vaccines however will be problematic as this runs up against their “choice” to protect themselves. Will another game be set up? Has it already and we are just being moved around the board like so many guileless little tokens? Will a mysterious businessman show up with a secret stash of “special” Covid vaccine? Will Blue Cross miraculously come up with a new “plan” to cover said vaccine? Will the feds show up and say no, you can’t place financial barriers between citizens and necessary health care? Dr. Dani has already cleverly framed that one hasn’t she? Declaring Covid vaccine doesn’t really work … ergo it’s not NECESSARY health care.
Yes, the game’s afoot alright. The Smith government and the UCP haven’t figured out who will win, ultimately. They are so deluded. You can set up all your own imaginary rules like, “don’t pee in this end of the pool”, or “unimmunized people are special”, or “no masks allowed” but in the end the germs don’t care. They don’t give a fig about how rich you are, how healthy you are, how old you are, where you live, who you know, or how “free” you want to be. They are saying, “Go ahead, Dr. Dani, roll the dice.”
This is her first step to privatise Health Care, as been her somewhat hidden agenda all along. She is well known for lying or covering up her actions. Starting with this vaccination so her “anti-Vax Supporters” can defend her. Sorry anti-vaxer’s but this is only the start, hope you don’t have anything serious happen to you medically because you will have to pay out of pocket! This is sickening, and the fact she has so many supporters still is frustrating.
IMHO the best union reps have personalities like sand paper. Do not try to chew on them!
Ot in other news.. our Dani just had her office staff experience the gleep of justice! It was millions of dollars short and many days late, but that judgement raises a small sign that, unlike our benighted sisters, brothers and those who are fine the way they are, we still have a judiciary that works.
She’s not very intelligent but I’m not fully convinced that she really believes what she is saying about the vaccine. Adolf Smith needs the votes from the KonvoyKommunityK****s so will say what she needs to in order to get their votes. She probably doesn’t care how many of them will die from measles or get ill from covid. I would love that this is killing them but because idiots are pretending vaccines don’t work – so they don’t have to get a needle – measles will kill kids who are too young and get exposed by their foolish adults.
Another day in the world of liars.
Isn’t there something the Federal Government can do to stop Danielle Smith’s expansion of the US style health care? Taking health transfer money back maybe, until she reverses her actions?
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-care-system/canada-health-care-system-medicare/canada-health-act/letter-provinces-territories-january-2025.html
“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.”
Ideological fanatics and the cheerleaders supporting them simply do not facilitate the use of any available forward looking predictive modelling that has the potential of falsifying or contradicting their cherished belief system. There are many psychological studies and abundant research available demonstrating why this is the case.
Further, by accessing the following sources,
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cihi-covid19-canada-hospital-cost-1.6168531
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/dashboard/respiratory-virus-dashboard.htm?data=summary#summary
And using the currently available data for Alberta it can be demonstrated that, for example, assuming a $23,111.00 average cost per hospitalization multiplied by 3610 hospitalized patients equals a $83,430,710.00 total cost.
Meaning that “surpassing the potential purported savings” is a very likely near term future outcome and that vaccine skepticism and the alternative narratives surrounding and supporting that same skepticism have potentially large negative spillovers attached to them, i.e., there are irrecoverable human and economic costs associated with a fanaticism and a value system that is disassociated from the currently available and widely accepted scientific evidence.
Danielle Smith is one of those glib people who can speak with total confidence, even when they know they’re spewing bulls–t. The trick is to believe what you say while you’re saying it. Even if you KNOW she’s lying, it’s hard to resist the aura of certainty she projects.
In the passages DJC quoted, Smith uses a flimsy framework of factoids to hang her personal opinions up for the world to see. Her ignorance is most visible in the opinion that “you never develop the underlying condition.” That’s the straw-man argument anti-vaxxers stand up to knock down: “Hey, man, why bother if you’re gonna get sick anyway?!”
No responsible scientist ever said ANY vaccine would guarantee you’d never get sick. As Geoffery Pounder points out, the point is to boost your immune system (Smith got this major point right, then dismissed it as inadequate); and to reduce the risk of severe infection requiring hospital care.
(Side note: do the Dastardly Duo of Smith & LaGrange realize that their vax-denial policy is most likely to hurt their own base? If so, do they care?)
And I can’t quite believe that Smith dared to mention measles in her “not a vaccine” yammer. Oilberduh is the Measles Capital of Canada—and soon, maybe, of North America. As of 9 June, the extreme south of the province has more measles cases than the rest of the province COMBINED:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/physicians-brace-for-summer-travel-season-as-alberta-tops-800-measles-cases-1.7556088
Who were the victims? A link to the alberta.ca website gave this explanation: “Most reported cases have been in children under 5 years old and those aged 5 to 17 who are not immunized.”
https://www.alberta.ca/measles#jumplinks-1
Does anyone wonder where the next wave of Covid infections will appear in Alberta?
Mike: Per capita, Alberta is pretty much the measles capital of the world now. I’m surprised that Mr. Trump, famously germaphobic, would even come here. Perhaps no one told him. Last count in raw numbers, we had about 75% of the number of reported cases in the entire United States. The population here is about 5 million. The population of the United States is circa 340 million. DJC
Right now being the important assertation. Quebec and many US states had large measles outbreaks last year. Alberta is basically an island on the North American continent and typically is out of phase in terms of disease outbreaks. During COVID eastern media focused on alleged unfolding tragedy in Alberta while ignoring that Alberta had substantially lower infections while waves peaked out East.
Her qr 77 stint is more of an infomercial for the UCP. It was interesting to hear on QR77 that Wayne Nelson was being called out by the callers and a lesser degree the host about all the soft ball questions being asked to Smith by Nelson.
Good news!
Got a few emails from the Alberta NDP in the last week.
If anyone eligible donates to the Alberta NDP by Tuesday, June 17, 2025 the donation is tripled by generous donors with way more money than you may have.
Do you want to defeat the UCP?
Or be smug.
Political donations are tax deductible.
Your call
Darwin must be laughing his arse off right now.
Humanity has decided that the ways of the jungle are better, and let nature take its perilous and pernicious course, commonwealth be damned.
Elon Musk and others are begging for massive numbers of births, which will surely be needed in the face of rising, massive levels of mortality.
Humanity evolves by killing off its own numbers — now there’s a plan.
I want to know if Premier Smith and her cabinet got the covid vaccine.
You forgot to label this as an “opinion” piece because this is not actual reporting. The way you’ve written this is clearly biased with very little factual information. I get it, you don’t like her, that’s fair. However, you should label the fact this is your opinion and not actual journalism.
@Oriel: This is a blog. By definition it is an opinion column — but opinions formulated on the basis of facts, and he cites his sources.
If you don’t like what you’re reading, you’re welcome to … just stop reading it.
Which part isnt verifiable?
I’d like to know who is due to profit from the money Albertans will have to pay to get immunized against covid. Who is supplying the vaccine? Watch the Globe dig up some new scandal soon about whose bank account gets fattened by all that vaccine revenue.
She is just a disgrace