Despite the Alberta premier’s explanation, it’s hard to believe the idea was a phone-in radio show caller’s
When someone named Lori called Danielle Smith’s phone-in radio program on Saturday and proposed a way to restructure a controversial plan to move Alberta health inspectors from an arm’s length health agency into a government department, it was almost as if Alberta’s premier knew the call was coming.
“On June 13, you said public health inspectors don’t belong in acute care because we don’t work at hospitals or perform surgeries, and I agree,” said Lori, sounding as if she were reading a prepared statement. “We work in community health centers, and our work is prevention alongside public health nurses and other public health professionals who have already transitioned under the Ministry of Primary and Preventative Health Services.”
Until recently, public health inspectors were employees of Alberta Health Services, the province-wide health agency that the United Conservative Party is set on smashing into smithereens. Alberta Health is the government’s health department. The Ministry of Primary and Preventative Health Services is one of four new health ministries the United Conservative Party Government created out of the old health ministry, for reasons that have never been convincingly explained.
Moving health employees from AHS to a government department was controversial for two reasons: First, there is a widely held view the inspectors should not be employed by a department subject to direct political interference from the Premier’s Office. This is especially so in light of the fact the breakup of AHS is widely thought to be retribution by our anti-vaxx premier for its role in enforcing public health regulations during the pandemic. Second, because unionized health inspectors were going to have to move to another bargaining unit and many would lose pay, benefits and seniority.
“Since your government has created new public health enforcement officers,” caller Lori continued, “wouldn’t it make more sense for those enforcement roles to be with Alberta Health while public health inspectors move under the Ministry of Primary and Preventative Health Services? Would you commit today to reconsidering moving public health inspectors under that ministry?”
“Thanks, I think you called last week,” Premier Smith responded confidently in her cheerful voice, pausing not even a moment to consider her answer.
“I took it away and what we discovered is that what you’re proposing is exactly the right solution,” the premier chirped. “We would have the public health inspectors move under the agency of Primary Care, and that then maintain all of the seniority, and the various benefits, and the various pay levels!”
Premier Smith went on in a jocular tone: “That was the real issue that we discovered, is that by coming into government it would have meant that those 300 or so workers would have had to switch unions.”
“Those are hard-fought issues at the table,” she said. “You don’t want to lose your seniority and your wages and your benefits,” the premier added, chuckling. “So I think the solution that Lori proposed was the right one, and that’s the one that we’re moving on, so that we can reduce the disruption!”
“I thought that that had already been communicated, so maybe I’m making news today,” Ms. Smith added. “Wasn’t intending to.”
“That’s why I do these shows,” she concluded the segment. “There’s things that I don’t know that I don’t know, and I only know about them because people call and let me know, and if there’s a problem that in something that we’re doing, we want to fix it.”
Now, let’s just pause and think about this for a moment. How likely is it, do you think, that the government modified a policy proposal in a couple of weeks based on an unidentified caller’s suggestion on a fortnightly radio program kindly provided by a commercial broadcaster for the premier? It’s a funny old world, and anything’s possible, but surely this is improbable.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, one of the two unions whose members would have been impacted by the transfers, issued an update to members on Saturday, calling the announcement good news and the right decision for the government to make.
Understandably, though, AUPE was cautious. “While we are relieved the government has reconsidered its ill-conceived plan to move public health workers from Alberta Health Services to the Government of Alberta, it’s unfortunate that we had to learn about it through this means,” the statement said. “Just yesterday we received communication from the Public Service Commission, and this information was not shared with us.”
“We will work through official channels to confirm the information the premier shared and will share more information as soon as we have it,” the AUPE update concluded.
On June 19, leaders of AUPE and the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (the other union whose members would have been impacted), flanked by senior elected officers of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and United Nurses of Alberta, held a news conference in Edmonton.
AUPE President Sandra Azocar took a tough line. “They are asking us to pick winners and losers, but we refuse,” she said. “That’s not how AUPE operates. … As union leaders in health care, we are united in standing up for the protection of health-care workers.”
It’s hard to deduce the explanation for the government’s change of heart. Doing it to protect unionized public sector employees’ contract provisions doesn’t quite seem on brand for the UCP.
Maybe they just didn’t want to distract from the opportunity to crow about their “compromise” with the City of Calgary over changes to the city’s noise bylaw that had virtually every Conservative leader in Canada whining about the terrible damage about to be done to that vital Alberta cultural event, the Calgary Stampede.
Despite the premier’s boasting that she’d saved the Stampede, though, it doesn’t sound like that much of a victory. Mayor Jeromy Farkus mostly stuck to his guns and the city didn’t give up much.
As the seasonal conclusion to the government’s press statements says: “Happy Stampeding! YAHOO!”
Yeah, right, more like.