Government news release fails to mention the omission actually breaks the law, but there’s no penalty, so why worry?
Happy Canada Day!
The summer solstice has already come and gone. So has the deadline for Alberta’s fiscal-year-end update!
The next summer solstice won’t be back till June 21, 2027, of course, but we can be reasonably certain it will appear on schedule.
Alberta’s fiscal year-end update is absent without leave, and we can’t be sure when it will show up. It’ll be a surprise, the United Conservative Government’s new finance minister, Jason Nixon, said in a news release Monday. Hey, maybe some time in the fall!
Mr. Nixon’s statement included two dumb excuses and one big fib.
Excuse No. 1, which actually was placed second in the news release but was supposed to be the substantial one that would persuade us all that a later report is OK, reads as follows: “Through the 2025-26 fiscal year, Alberta’s government undertook significant, necessary restructuring of the health care system to improve quality of care for Albertans. As a result of the associated complexities, more time is needed for the health entities to finalize their numbers before the 2025-26 Annual Report can be released.”
It is certainly true that that the UCP has undertaken a significant reorganization of the health care system. Indeed, it’s so significant that we don’t really have a health care system any more in Alberta.
“There is NO system left. All broken and disintegrated with many many fragmented ‘leads,’” former Alberta Medical Association president Dr. Paul Parks said bitterly on social media on Monday. “But there is NO ONE coordinating or leading the ‘system’… can’t call it a system if they can’t show you the organizational operational control structure (Hint: there isn’t 1).”
But was the massive and expensive demolition of the health care system necessary? Obviously not. So that’s the big fib.
The restructuring of health care, as Mr. Nixon called it – “refocusing” was the original talking point; “dismantling” would be more accurate – is the opposite of necessary, notwithstanding the imperfections of Alberta Health Services. Still, the lack of meaningful figures about the restructuring strongly suggests the reorganization is in a state of utter chaos.
Even so, using this year-long act of institutional vandalism – prompted largely to placate the UCP’s MAGA base and the premier’s anti-vaxx sentiments because AHS was the agency responsible for public health measures during the pandemic – as an excuse is just lame.
Public corporations don’t get to put off their annual reports at the end of their fiscal year because they’re in the middle of a reorganization, and governments don’t either – except when they do, in Alberta.
Remember, as researcher Tony Clark explained on social media yesterday, the UCP is straight up breaking the law by not publishing the province’s fiscal year-end report. Section 8.(1) of the Sustainable Fiscal Planning and Reporting Act states: “The responsible Minister must prepare and make public on or before June 30 of each year an annual report for the fiscal year ending on March 31.”
As Mr. Clark observed, accurately it would seem, when it comes to the enforcement of Alberta laws that are inconvenient to the UCP, “There are no penalties, so … shrug.”
Which brings us to Excuse No. 2: “With the earliest timeline in the country, Alberta releases its annual reports in early summer, while most other provinces release results in the fall.”
So what? Didn’t Mr. Nixon’s mama tell him that what all the other kids are doing is no excuse for him to do the same thing? If the previously noted excuse is lame, this one is pathetic! And you’ll note that, whether they report in the fall or not, Mr. Nixon doesn’t pretend that all the other finance ministers miss their deadlines. They just have different ones.
“We will publish a complete, quality annual report as soon as possible,” Mr. Nixon said in his new release’s canned quote. If I may be so bold, I would point out to him that the only kind of quality he needs to worry about is that the work is done according to generally accepted accounting principles. It doesn’t have to be printed on shiny paper or accompanied by pretty photographs to meet the standard.
We can speculate about the real reasons for this delay. Perhaps the government doesn’t want us to know about what kind of fiscal shape the province is in until after our sovereign lady the preem’s precious separation referendum on Oct. 19. Or maybe when Nate Horner quit or was fired as finance minister in late May he didn’t bother to remind Mr. Nixon about the looming deadline. Who can know?
Anyway, waiting till almost the last minute to make the announcement, right on the eve of Canada Day when even Alberta separatists take the day off, means the premier will be able to distract from her finance minister’s law-breaking when we all start paying attention again tomorrow.
After all, that’s when she makes her big announcement about Alberta’s submission to the federal government’s Major Projects Office “for a new one-million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline to Canada’s West Coast.”
Since the pipeline is thought to still lack a private-sector proponent, presumably we’re learn tomorrow that we Alberta taxpayers will have the honour of financing this project all on our own.
And since the northern route to Prince Rupert is the one least likely to be received well by anyone west of the Rocky Mountains, what do you want to bet that’s the one Ms. Smith continues to push, all the better to keep her chief of staff’s Free Alberta Strategy on life support, along with her approval by the UCP’s separatist base?
Proposed class action filed in purloined List of Electors case
An Alberta law firm has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit with the Alberta Court of King’s Bench, “arising from the alleged unauthorized access, disclosure and use of personal information contained in Alberta’s List of Electors,” Cooper Regel LLP said in a news release yesterday.
Since the names and personal information of 2.9 million Albertans are thought to be on the purloined list, this may generate a considerable amount of interest. If nothing else, it keeps an issue that the Smith Government would really prefer we forgot about bubbling on the front burner.
The firm’s statement of claim names as defendants the Government of Alberta, the chief electoral officer, Centurion Project Ltd., Centurion’s David Parker, the Republican Party of Alberta, as well as parties in illegal possession of the list, identified as John Doe. The statement of claim, if accepted by the court, would seek “general, aggregate, and punitive damages” from the defendants.
It just keeps getting worse for smith as the days go by.
Once the cat is out of the bag how expensive all this tinkering with health care has cost and going totally backwards, perhaps more people will wake up to what she is doing, that being privatizing health care to US (pay for everything style).
I anticipated many times over the last while that Smith wants to use the CPP (turned into a APP) to fund the pipeline. Her gaslighting continues and it will be interesting what Carney’s response to all of this will be, given: there is no private sector money involved, no agreement or consultation with First Nations, no agreed upon route and no buy in by B.C. Sounds to me that Smith just expects everyone to just fall in line and she doesn’t have to do any work to get there.
Happy Canada Day readers and to you too David! It is no surprise that the fiscal update was not completed in time and that the same government responsible for the report should shirk their responsibilities. The UCP are experts at gaslighting, undertaking questionable shenanigans to further feather their personal nest eggs; not so much credibility on the accountability front, honesty, nor competence. Smith opens her putrid mouth and spews out her vitriol, lies, deceit, and unbridled greed, and Post Media laps it up like a kitten to milk. Are all UCP people like kittens? Nay, kittens are at least cute and, if one likes cats, wants to ensure their survival. However, UCP people are kitten like as far as following their mother around, they are unlike kittens because they eat their own and wreck everything they think of doing for the purposes of causing despair chaos, and death. At least one person has unnecessarily died directly due to UCP policy – ADAP for example. The UCP has fumbled the budget, broken the law regarding petrol price rebates, dismally offered Albertans 100 bucks to soothe their financial pain which is really a slap in the face an a call to spend even more money that we do not have and worse. The UCP need to be voted out in order to return to a rational, for the people, government. I do think that the class action suit will at least draw attention to the illegal behaviour of this cabal of miscreants. A class action suit is a good start. Next Albertans must wake up and refute smith’s illegal referendum, vote the UCP out of power and the next government must begin legal proceedings against Smith in particular for her illegal manipulation of Canadian law to suit her separatist needs as opposed to meeting the needs of the public that which she was sworn into office to do – she has done the opposite of govern. Well, maybe you can destroy the province and take the country down with you and perhaps get away with it because there are no laws to protect the general public against an internal enemy if the enemy is your own government for crying out loud. Happy Canada Day!
They are just ‘cooking the books’
An INDEPENDENT audit is required. !!!
Okay so lemme get this straight.
One day late and social service agencies, Native agencies/nations, healthcare facilities, clinics, etc etc all lose their funding unless they have a legitimate reason for tardiness.
But the Alberta gov’t hacks can just shove it off into some vague future timeline and that’s perfectly okay in their books?
Colour me, confused.
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Good on John Doe/s for suing over the unlawful spreading of the voting rolls. It’s long past time there was a price to pay for sleazy, blackmailing, political tactics.
I’ve been waiting for a class action lawsuit. What has surprised me, is, to my knowledge, the lack of scam activity linked to the list. I rather thought a lawsuit would be launched in late May, especially if some immediate harm caused by the list had occurred. I hope the proposal is approved, but worry that the current lack of harm will jeopardize it.
Should the class action proceed, I can see it being the end of David Parker’s political action career, the Centurion Project, and probably the Republican Party of Alberta. I don’t expect there will ever be any financial penalties paid by Parker, but a loss will pave the way for Elections Act penal time. As for the Centurion Project and Republican Party, a loss would equivalent to a vampire getting staked.
What a gong show!!
Marlaina and her minions couldn’t run a railcar greasy spoon sandwich bar if they had to!
Hub: As I recall, they tried and gave up. DJC
Two major questions arise:
What are the available estimates of the cost of unnecessarily restructuring health serves?
Have there been any improvements in the metrics related to the delivery of health services?
A follow up question might be whether the original promises by the UCP have been met by the timelines originally promised.
Isn’t that bastion of personal responsibility, David Parker, currently on the run in Texas?