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.
*Accurately transcribed. Included in tribute to Donald Rumsfeld’s famous Unknown Unknowns discourse in February 2002, and as an illustration of the muddled thought behind Ms. Smith’s smooth gaslighting. Listen to it. It will make sense while making no sense. DJC
Maybe we’re too cynical, but that call does sound a bit staged, kind of like when authoritarian leaders go out and meet or speak with supposedly ordinary citizens who thrn only say nice things or praise them, despite things not going so well.
If so, Smith may be more desperate for any good news now than some realize. Of course, with her divisive referendum plans she has managed to alienate both pro Canadians and separatists. Her health care reforms are not very popular or successful and now she seems to be on the losing end of fight she started with the Mayor of Calgary. So perhaps this should not be surprising. The thing I still find surprising is Smith is not already more unpopular than she is, but she seems to be getting there, so perhaps give it a bit more time.
The Real Truth
I retired as a Public Health Inspector with AHS a few years back. The truth of the matter is that when the rumours started to evolve about the transfer of PHI’s to the GOA, the management team had to sign a confidentiality agreement (aka-gag order) to not disclose any details of the transfer. In fact, HSAA was NEVER consulted or involved in any planning or decision making processes. It was purely political.
The call-in from Lori was staged imho. There was a letter of agreement between the GOA and the unions involved that severance packages would be offered to those staff who could decide not to pursue employment with the GOA. This would have cost the UCP millions of dollars.
Also, there likely was a late scare from the UCP that attempting to replace all the lost expertise/ displaced staff would have been a recruiting nightmare, let alone increasing the public health risks to Albertans.
Something or a number of things broke at the last minute. I’m hopeful that common sense and good public policy prevailed, but I doubt it.
With all the recent rainfall, it reminds me of a time when Mike Harris messed with/cut public government programs in Ontario that were in place to safeguard the health and safety of the public. Then the rain came, the drinking water was tainted and Walkerton unfolded.
Maybe it’s too soon after this incident.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/butterfield-acres-cryptosporidiosis-9.7180672
Or this:
https://globalnews.ca/news/11335558/e-coli-cases-calgary-area-restaurant-another-jump/
Or this:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ecoli-daycare-meat-loaf-report-1.7279159
Paragraph 11, “There’s things that I don’t know that I don’t know,”
Looks like “that I don’t know” is a double.
Perhaps Dingy Smith is that stupid that she doubly knows nothing, but I would just suspect she knows nothing and is faking everything.
OA: I recommend that you listen to the segment – it starts at around 13.00 as I recall. Doubting myself, I listened to it again just now and added a comma where she paused for breath. That is exactly what Ms. Smith said. She can be quite incoherent when she is gaslighting, as she was it times during this discourse. I mostly edited around that simply because I wanted to convey her message without too much interference from ums, ers and ahs. However, I left that passage as it was – a real working journalist would have spiked it to protect the speaker – for two reasons. First, it illustrates the real incoherence of her thought, as opposed to her delivery. (If you listen to it, it seems to make sense. It is often helpful to make a transcript of what Ms. Smith says, then read it. It demonstrates how shallow her thinking is.) Second, it amused me because it reminded me of the late Donald Rumsfeld’s famous remark in 2002 about the U.S. attempt to fully colonize Iraq: “… as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” I would say there is plenty Ms. Smith doesn’t know she doesn’t know. DJC
Thanks for clarifying that. After I posted I thought perhaps this was not your error but suspected this was her blathering on as she does in a similar fashion as her hero Trump. I have a great deal of difficulty listening to Smith and need to mute the TV when they have her on the news so listening to her radio is a definate no go.
The “I don’t know….” doubled up by clowns like Smith is a humble brag that is supposed to mean that you are so clever you realize that there are things you don’t know going on in the universe, but that you are so smart, you know you don’t know. Odd thing to say from Smith who no doubt ALWAYS thinks she is the smartest one in the room.
Clearly one of Ms. Smith’s unknown unknowns is that she is not always the smartest one in the room unless she controls who, beside her, is allowed to be present.
A commenter on The Breakdown’s (aka Calgary paramedic Nate Pike) Bluesky post announcing this development suggested she makes decisions based on the last person who spoke to her on an issue. There is another prominent right-wing political figure who shares this model of policy-making… his name is Donald Trump.
https://bsky.app/profile/sooz64.bsky.social/post/3mpcmh6ev4k2v
I don’t believe, either, that Smith had a change of heart about which department public health inspectors should report to because she cares so much about their benefits and seniority. Sandra Azocar of the AUPE is a feisty and experienced union leader but I don’t think she “converted” Danielle! I’m thinking more like, some dim light went on when she and her “advisers” realized the blame for next EColi outbreak in a daycare, or from an unlicensed abattoir is going to land squarely in her lap. Much better to have an arm’s length agency, AHS for example that you can screw around with but not get blamed for any of those consequences.
You’re right, of course, but the “arms’-length agency” won’t be AHS. It’ll be the new “Primary Care Alberta”, or PCA — by the way, a somewhat confusing acronym for those of us who actually work in health care, since in an inpatient context it stands for Patient-Controlled Analgesia …
You can’t trust the UCP and Danielle Smith. Never, ever.
Danielle Smith’s Saturday radio show is nothing more than an outlet for herself and her supporters to spread the UCP gospel. Chorus Group and all their media outlets should be loudly boycotted for pushing this propaganda.
One “caller” expressed that they believed the judge’s assessment that the separatist question was unconstitutional due to lack of First Nation consultation was extremely anti democratic.
Then the next “caller” expressed the desire to have First Nations financials audited.
It’s no wonder Alberta First Nations are sounding off about the increase in hate speech that they are being inundated with. All because they have so far thwarted the separatists from obtaining their agenda.
The regular and known paid UCP media bot posters are spewing this same UCP vomit across social and legacy media articles. I’ve noted PostMedia is really pushing the hate speech boundaries for the want of more clicks.
I hope that the First Nations get their lawyers to send out some very public cease and desist notices to these shameful media companies. Enough is enough!
What can one say about a population that would provide any hope for reelection of something like Smith? This stunt is like something one might have seen in an early Cohen Brothers movie or maybe an episode of the Simpsons. The sheer contempt that Smith’s handlers must have for voters to pass off policy changes as the product of AM radio phone-in shows is hard to imagine. And yet, the Grift-o-kons sit ahead of the opposition in any polling that has recently seen the light of day. The subjugation and inculcation of the people with plutocracy worship is total. The demise of Starmer is a pretty good measure of the total irrelevance of political institutions in the US Empire. There is literally nothing a politician can do to address austerity and the increasingly rapacious accumulation of wealth by the kakistocracy. The nonsense about music tents in Calgary is a typical microcosm of this phenomenon. Calgary is a city whose historical cultural highlights are professional wrestling, the by-gone Electric Avenue (a series of bars that at it’s peak didn’t even have a music scene), and the annual corporate festival of local herdsmen. The only novel aspect of Stampede entertainment is the relaxation of public mores to the point that one can observe 20-something women pissing in plastic bags while they wait on line to buy short-poured booze and listen to Spotify. Farcas is proving a wily character, coming down principally on the side of paleo-conservatives while seeming to be progressive. It’s thus far proving a novel strategy. An inverted Barf Klein.
Speaking of things that sound staged…
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/alberta-premier-first-nations-separation-democracy
Here’s the premier agreeing with “Blaine” that consultation with First Nations must not be done without getting a mandate from Albertans first. Then she goes on to argue that the 2021 provincial Citizens’ Initiative Act, which she ignored with regard to the Water Not Coal and Forever Canadian petitions, overrides federal law and voids treaties with First Nations dating from the 1800s, before Alberta became a province.
She also points out that “no” doesn’t mean “no”. So will she override sexual assault laws in the federal Criminal Code next?
“So, what does ‘No’ mean?” Smith said.
She also agreed with “Diane” about putting First Nations under an audit, as if we haven’t seen this before.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/lethbridge-consumption-site-no-charges-1.5851981
We have already figured out that her proposed train project is a one-way line to Crazy Town, terminating at Dictator City. But first, there’s a stop at the Pinocchio Parade, where you can watch the premier toss *crotch candy* to the crowd. (What else do you call candy tossed from a bucket between her legs?)
https://calgary.citynews.ca/2026/06/28/canada-alberta-flags-ponoka-parade-separatism-debate/
@Abs
Every time there’s a dispute with FN, in Alberta or elsewhere, the screams for AUDIT AUDIT can be heard across the land. Sometimes they yap for a professional audit of a place that has 12 people; half of them children, a cat and a couple of friendly mutts.
The *reason* that some FN struggle with audits is obvious. Most programs/payments/etc do not allow them additional funds to pay for professional accounting staff and a lot of bands/nations aren’t that large. I know this from working for Native social service agencies…who BTW, often pay half or less the salary than their non-Native counterparts for exactly the same job because that’s all the funding allows them to pay. The paperwork is beyond belief and much of it is complex.
The funding for education for example, is so often late that when I went to college, over half of the Native students that came to the first class with me didn’t get their funding in time to pay the tuition and had to leave. I knew the woman who did administration for that funding and she told me that was not unusual and went on every year she’d worked there. I wonder if that’s improved since the advent of Twitter.
It’s just more disguised weapons that get used on a regular basis to undermine the treaties and rights of First Nations People.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
Thanks to Dr Feelgood for his knowledge and perspective to the Health Inspectors situation. On a quick reading of DJC’s posts/quotes, it looks as if Danielle Smith is saying that the only objection that the Health Inspectors and their union had was a loss of pay and benefits. I think that is highly unlikely. I am pretty sure that the Health Inspectors are professionals with a professional perspective.
I think that Anonymous succinctly stated the view of many.
Whenever I hear of a reorg or cut proposed by the UCP, I try to trace where or to whom the money went. Fluctuating oil prices? Well Mr. CEO, help yourself to some dough we’ve found by cutting schools, public housing, reconstituting AISH and turning down federal cash.
While we have politicians arguing about how late and with how much noise a tent full of drunks can party, in Finland they have an outdoor festival of societal discussion. Justin Trudeau was there this week talking about democracy, international relations, dealing with Trump, and stuff.
There are many other topics, the festival program is 32 pages:
https://www.suomiareena.fi/en/home/
I’ve had the odd boss over my years of employment who didn’t have a clue that they didn’t have a clue. They were the most dangerous ones. Here we are.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that call was staged. I think she would do anything for the attention. Even the city of Calgary / Cowboys dis-agreement, she’s on the news, making (in my opinion anyway) herself out to be the hero.