Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government hasn’t quite taken to posting unexpected proclamations in ALL CAPS on Truth Social at 2 a.m., but Premier Danielle Smith’s announcement yesterday that Thursday’s budget would have an additional $1.4 billion in it for “physician recruitment, training, compensation and development” was trending that way.
“We are making the largest investment in physicians in Alberta’s history, backing the doctors who care for our families and taking real action to improve care provincewide,” the premier enthused in a canned quote in the government’s press release.
“This record funding will help pay for treatments, appointments, services and training so that Albertans can get the care they deserve,” chipped in Adriana LaGrange, Alberta’s former health minister who is now one of the UCP’s Gang of Four holders of quarters of the health portfolio. “This investment in Alberta physicians will support our continued efforts to build a sustainable, modern health care system that delivers better care for Albertans.”
Ms. Smith and Ms. LaGrange repeated much the same kind of optimistic folderol during a lunch-hour news conference at a southeast Edmonton facility operated by Roman-Catholic-Church-owned Covenant Health. Former Progressive Conservative Premier and Covenant board chair Ed Stelmach made a cameo appearance at the presser, during which Ms. Smith suggested the new facility should be named after him.
If nothing else, all this numerical good cheer obviously reflects real concern within the UCP’s strategic brain trust about the public perception of the ongoing capacity crisis in the provincial health care system and UCP legislation that critics assert risks destroying public health care, and not just in Alberta.
Better get out there with some good health-care news, someone obviously decided, or at least some good sounding news!
And it all sounds very hopeful indeed. However, the response from the Alberta Medical Association, which bargains collectively for the province’s physicians, was wary. The association didn’t exactly say, ‘What the hell? First we heard about it!’ But, while more politely worded, it did convey the same sentiment.
Ahem, the statement began, “the AMA was not notified in advance of this announcement and must review the government’s figures to understand how they have been calculated, allocated or linked to physician compensation and services.” Nevertheless, the statement went on, “we are encouraged by the government’s focus on the investment required to sustain the system.”
The AMA statement was not attributed to President Brian Wirzba, but it certainly crossed his desk before it was released into the wild. Physicians in private practice also must absorb the increasing costs of paying, rent, utilities and staff salaries, Dr. Wirzba reminded the CBC when its reporter called about it.
“The AMA was pleased to hear the premier and minister reference upcoming negotiations with the association and describe a common understanding of the importance of a constructive relationship,” the statement added cautiously before members were advised that it’ll get back to them when someone has figured out what the government’s actually up to.
“We take government at its word, and the AMA looks forward to negotiating in good faith to achieve a fair, sustainable agreement that supports physicians, their practices and the patients they care for,” the association said with what sounded to me like a note of skepticism. “We are hopeful that given our shared interests, the parties will be able to reach a timely agreement once negotiations commence.”
Reading between the lines, the key phrase in the AMA message is “upcoming negotiations.” In other words, in the great tradition of mystery fiction and government press releases, two genres of literature that share certain qualities in common, not everything is exactly as it appeared at the lunch-hour news conference.
The NDP came close to the heart of the matter in a statement from Sharif Haji, the Opposition critic for primary and preventative health services, a title that echoes Ms. LaGrange’s official portfolio name. “The announcement today by the premier is unclear as to whether this new money will just cover a new contract with existing doctors or will see a real gain in doctor-to-patient numbers.”
Indeed, it’s not clear if this is new money at all. When the Smith Government is clearly signalling that the Thursday’s provincial budget will include a substantial deficit of $6 to $8 billion or even more, any new money to pay Paul is likely to come from Peter’s pocket.
Probably, this is a bit of administrative sleight of hand in which the bulk of the seemingly fantastic sum earmarked to recruit new doctors will be used to finance the deal the government is going to have to negotiate with the AMA anyway.
“As a result of these investments, more physicians are choosing to practise in the province than ever before,” the government’s news release said.
“The reality,” said Mr. Haji, “is we have fewer doctors per capita in Alberta than we did when the UCP government came to power.”
Of course, both statements can be true at the same time.
It is probably wise to be skeptical about UCP announcements, which can turn out to be less than they appear to be after more scrutiny. In this case there is more uncertainty as it seems to be a surprise to the AMA and they haven’t negotiated this yet.
It is possible Smith, who had some past good luck with oil prices, has looked at the bump of 5 to 10 dollars due to recent uncertainty in the Middle East and found a bit of room with a budget deficit that may now be just fairly bad, rather than very bad. Perhaps she has also realized destroying health care before the next election may not be good for her political career and so has now decided to pace herself a bit. We’ll have to see if this recent modest luck with oil prices holds up much past budget day. It may not, but at least it could allow them to now use higher oil price and revenue projections in this budget.
Of course, how this spending fits into a budget unlikely to have much more good news remains to be seen. So is also possible something else will have to be cut to cover some or all of this announced spending.
I am sorry Dave. Skeptical? What else do we need to know that nothing Danielle Smith never tells the truth?
I am sorry but my sentence is bad and I rephrase.
Does anyone, other than the MAGA pack, believe what Danielle Smith burps?
This announcement by the UCP is very suspicious, from a timing standpoint, and for other reasons. There are also other areas of concern and questions arising from this too. We are anticipating the UCP’s latest budget, and it does not look so good, and that’s due to a decline in oil prices, and the UCP’s lack of fiscal acumen, which Danielle Smith was foolishly trying to lay the blame for it elsewhere.
A Covenant Health hospital is where a man in his 40s succumbed to heart failure, and sadly perished, after a horrific ordeal in a waiting room. We haven’t heard anything more from that, and whatever inquiry the UCP will have into it will naturally absolve the UCP of any guilt, or the report will be buried, and Albertans will have forgotten all about that.
As we already know, the public healthcare system in Alberta didn’t have problems, until Ralph Klein started making bad cutbacks, and the UCP have done a less than stellar job of making any meaningful improvements to it. What happens to be Ed Stelmach’s new role with AHS, and how it’s being broken up into segments, by decentralization? How much is Danielle Smith paying him for his role? Danielle Smith happened to loath him, when she was the leader of the Wildrose, and Ed Stelmach was the leader of the Alberta PCs, and our premier.
Here we have what appears to be another UCP shell game. This money for public healthcare has to come from somewhere, and if the provincial budget looks bleak, which is from the drop in oil prices, and how badly the UCP are with money, which they waste on boondoogles galore, where are they taking this money away from? This money is also insufficient to deal with the years of deep cuts to the public healthcare system from Ralph Klein, and the UCP’s further bungling of it.
It appears that something else is awry, because of the UCP’s Corrupt Care scandal with a hefty price tag of $614 million, or more, is still under investigation by two of the three remaining people/departments that are investigating it, which are the provincial Auditor General, and the R.C.M.P. Raymond Wyant’s investigation was not comprehensive enough, because of the restrictions Danielle Smith put on him. The provincial Auditor General, Doug Wylie, is also investigating other healthcare related matters, involving the UCP, and he needs more time, before his contract ends in April. Who knows how far the R.C.M.P will go with their investigation, because the UCP have started the process of replacing them with a provincial police force, which will be quite expensive. Something else tells me that there is another scandal by the UCP somewhere, because at other recent press conferences by the UCP, Danielle Smith looks very fidgety and uncomfortable, like she did a year ago, when a reporter caught Danielle Smith and Adriana LaGrange in a moment of sheer surprise, when they asked them about receiving kickbacks. Who will see through this charade by the UCP? It appears like this is a vote buying gimmick, or a shot at redemption from the UCP. Things just don’t add up.
A few facts:
(1) Mr Stelmach is Board Chair of Covenant Health, the Roman Catholic parallel health agency that operates hospitals and continuing care facilities in Edmonton, Lethbridge and some rural communities in Alberta. It now also operates the community health centre in La Crete. He has nothing whatsoever to do with Alberta Health Services (AHS).
(2) The dismantling of AHS into four “pillars” and a new plethora of health care bureaucracies specifically does not affect Covenant Health’s existence, organizational structure or operations, except perhaps indirectly as a potential knock-on effect from the AHS breakup. However, under the province’s new model, Covenant Health is nominally subservient to Acute Care Alberta, on a peer level with the “new” AHS.
https://www.acutecarealberta.ca/
How this will influence Covenant Health looking ahead remains uncertainty.
jerrymacgp: Okay. I still don’t trust the UCP and Danielle Smith – with anything.
Ditto.
As I am with anything Smith blurts out of her mouth, I am skeptical about this announcement. Does that mean the extra money will fund and help set up more private surgical centers, aimed at tearing down public health care? I suspect so. The other thing is Smith is projecting doom and gloom for the new budget coming down in a few days, so where did all of a sudden massive amounts of money for this and that suddenly appear? Does it come from kicking people off AISH?
Soooo…no new hospitals, then?
B: That would be my interpretation, yes. DJC
I was in Lethbridge a number of years ago and I meet a couple on vacation from the U.S.. They both were 65 and had just retired and had decided to travel across Canada for a year. They told me how fortunate Canadians are to have public health care and how Americans struggle to afford the costs of insurance. They went on to explain, that part of their retirement package was one year of paid health insurance and after that, they both had to find new jobs to cover the insurance costs. This is the road, that Smith and her Merry little breezes are taking us down. In my line of work, I do a lot of traveling and talking to people and much to my dismay, most Albertans are not paying attention and love Smith. It’s so sad.
My Dad never got to retire – had to keep working until he was 70 or lose his health insurance – he hadn’t “retired” for more than 10 months before the cancer he’s been fighting for 12 years finally got him. So f- these greedy, ignorant people I despise them.
…”AMA looks forward to negotiating in good faith “… There’s the problem right there, the UCP and all modern conservatives are incapable of behaving in good faith. For conservatives, good faith is to be used against people.
The UCP are complete grifters and are completely incompetent. We are in billions of dollars in debt, but there is no plan to pay down the debt. All the conservatives can come up with is a ploy to gain votes – a ploy to enrich the wealthy through greed based, ergo capitalist, medicine. What a ruse! Sadly, most Albertans fully subscribe to UCP terrorists who are hell bent on breaking Canada apart. How can anyone believe that a party that wants to destroy the country is going to invest in public health care? No, the UCP are in fact treasonous terrorists because they are planning to destroy Canada and are terrorizing the general public at the same time. People who support the UCP are mentally ill, full of hate, deluded creeps who want chaos at all costs. These are the same people who could not pass grade school in the public system so they started their own schools in which the standards are so low that they are functionally illiterate. Do not vote for the MAGA UCP! Stand up for democracy. ABC! The insanity that is MAGA/UCP speaks volumes about the diseased mental state of the MAGA/UCP followers, including the derisive main stream media that echoes and amplifies the insanity so that they can profit from the chaos.
The CBC story on this topic describes the increase as 22%. UCP enthusiasm aside, I am wondering if this ‘historic’ increase is actually enough.
The government hopes this 22% will do things: provide an adequate increase in salary for our existing doctors, and attract new doctors to the province. Given that the doctors are coming off of a contract from 4 years ago, I assume it will have to cover four years of annual increases. Given the inflation we have dealt with in those four years, I think most of the 22% could be eaten up just by letting existing doctors keep up with inflation.
Then there is the issue of population growth. How many new doctors do we need to recruit just to match Alberta’s growth in population? In other words, how many new doctors do we need just to prevent the horrendous situation we are in from getting even worse?
@Bob
As my above snarky comment was an attempt to denote, herein lies the problem from someone who used to work in healthcare centres as part of my job.
Nowhere does Smith talk about *where* these doctors are going to work. Nowhere does she claim they will fund more public clinics or hospitals.
Importing 12 plastic surgeons so she can get cheap liposuction won’t do a whole lot for the rest of the citizenry who are dying in over-stuffed emergency rooms or who can’t find a GP because setting up a practise is so expensive. It won’t build elder care health facilities or mental health clinics or small rural emergency rooms.
So, to me, it sounds like a whole lotta yap about nothing.
I guess Rahki said it best: “Cut the bullshit”, Dani!
I agree and it is the only way to deal with these people. It is about time we treat them the same way they treat us. Enough of this Trumpian crap
Recruitment +retention = more doctors.
Recruitment + constant bleeding of doctors to BC and elsewhere = less doctors.
Lethbridge still has zero doctors taking new patients.
“ Former Progressive Conservative Premier and Covenant board chair Ed Stelmach made a cameo appearance at the presser, during which Ms. Smith suggested the new facility should be named after him.” The Danielle Smith and Ed Stelmach Centre for Increasingly Privatized Healthcare,” or something, right?
So they treat our doctors like morons, accuse them of being overpaid, and tear up their contracts, now they want us to believe they have changed their minds and want to play nice. I wonder how stupid they think we are with friends and relatives still waiting for months or years to get help and this can’t be changed overnight like they want you to believe.
Exactly. This is the way idiots run a province!!
I found Nenshi’s pre-emptive presser well worth the listen. https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnvWhE-mkas
I also enjoyed listening to Bonnie Critchley and Corb Lund at two different events on the weekend. Two Albertans who recognize B.S. when they smell it, literally and figuratively.
Thanks for posting the link, it was a good speech he did.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
Right on Anon and O A, and all the other commenters. I figure that this money will help to fund the privatization and profits of all the new and existing surgical centres etc. I imagine that it will make the four pillars of the health care apocalypse, as it were, more easily saleable to what one of our kids calls evil corp. As Lacoon might have said in this situation “Beware of the UCP bearing gifts.”
NDP: CUT THE BULLSHIT! CALL UP RAKHI – NOW!
It is just another 1.4 billion down the drain as usual.
Marlaina on FB…
April 8th 2023
“We have already hired 2500 new doctors and nurses in Alberta.
Our recent budget increased funding to hire (up) 3600 more doctors, nurses, paramedics, and health workers.
This will ensure our public system is available to everyone. Albertans will never have to pay to see a doctor or access quality health care. ”
—————————
Also— on FB …Feb 2026
” The government of Alberta will announce record breaking investments in physician compensation and recruitment to enhance primary and acute care access across the province.”
So what is the line about repeating the story often enough, you will start to believe it: gaslighting 101 .
One other possibility about where the new found money is coming from is her O&G buddies report about the increase in revenues from the Trudeau/Canadian taxpayer funded TMX pipeline that she refuses to talk about.
>>>TMX has boosted pipeline capacity from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000.
Jan 13th 2026
www. asiapacific.ca>publication >canada
Canada’s oil exporting future…
So, I’m not an expert, but bookkeeping 101: even if you’re selling at a lower price from last year, but you’re selling twice as much + you’re still coming out ahead. But then this is UCP math and economics, so I’m probably wrong.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
Shortly before Covid, the UCP limited the number of patient visits a doctor could bill for in a day. Is that rule still around?
It seems that we know the reason for the record deficit now: massive, massive amounts of social spending. For months, the UCP has been denouncing increasing social spending, going full MapleMAGA on the hardline anti-socialist tripe they throw to their base. But that’s all in the past, now, because the UCP have discovered their social responsibilities and have decided to open the spending floodgates, “better dead than red” be damned. However, I suspect that the rug will be soon pulled out from under everyone, once Queen Danielle pulls her bait and switch stunt.
Hmmm, almost like there’s an election coming soon…
UCP’s strategic narrative positions physicians as costly and entitled, shaping public perception at a time when Albertans are absorbing reports of budget deficits.
There are plenty of Cuban doctors, well trained, experienced and many have been displaced by Trump’s evil empire. I hope other provinces see their way to recruit a few.