“Hi, I’m Danielle Smith, and I believe no one should ever have to pay out of pocket to see a family doctor.” So said Alberta’s premier in a 30-second pre-election video posted to the Internet on April 12, 2023.
The video continued, with Ms. Smith explaining in her chirpy, personable, reassuring public voice: “That’s why United Conservatives created the Public Health Care Guarantee. So every Albertan has confidence that they are always covered for the medical care they need. In Alberta, we’ve brought down surgical wait times, improved ambulance response, and are hiring thousands of new doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health workers. Our UCP team is improving health care for Albertans. So, together, let’s keep moving Alberta forward!”
In the background, an ethnically diverse group of friendly people, reassuring smiles on their faces, nod encouragingly in apparent agreement. Some readers will recognize among the happy faces former cabinet minister Kaycee Madu, who held the Justice, Labour, and Municipal Affairs portfolios in UCP governments despite some controversies along the way.
The video was posted on a website pumping the UCP’s “Public Health Care Guarantee.”
“A UCP government will remain committed to ensuring Albertans have access to world-class health care, where and when they need it, through a publicly funded health care system,” the website promised. “Under a re-elected UCP government, no Albertan will ever have to pay for a doctor out of pocket.”
The statement continued with a canned quote for Ms. Smith: “‘I want to be clear: under the UCP’s Public Health Care Guarantee, we are committing to all Albertans that under no circumstances will any Albertan ever have to pay out-of-pocket to see their family doctor or to get the medical treatment they need,’ said UCP Leaders (sic) Danielle Smith. ‘It means that a UCP government, under my leadership, will not de-list any medical services or prescriptions now covered by Alberta Health Insurance. No exceptions.’”
According to a Postmedia report at the time, when Ms. Smith revived Jason Kenney’s widely mocked Canadian-Taxpayer-Federation-style health care guarantee gimmick she was reacting to voter skepticism about the government’s record on health care and what the reporter called “a growing tide of controversies.”
Obviously reassured, large numbers of Albertans, who polling consistently suggests take pride in their public health care system and want it to continue, voted for her UCP government in the May 29 election that year.
Astonishingly, at least as of last night, that website and video remain online, where anyone can see them, although a UCP news release linked from the page has disappeared. I’d suggest you watch the video quickly, though. I imagine it won’t stick around for long. After all, it’s prima facie evidence of Ms. Smith’s and the United Conservative Party’s bad faith.
For those promises have been broken. April 12, 2023, obviously, was then. This is now.
To quickly recap, in the fall of 2025, Ms. Smith’s Government imposed on most Albertans a $100 fee for COVID-19 vaccinations.
In December 2025, the UCP passed legislation allowing physicians to charge patients out of pocket for speedy care while continuing to bill the public health care system, sending those who can’t pay extra to the back of the line. It moved in the same law to create a private health insurance market, allow private-hospital operators, force public hospitals to compete for revenue, and add other measures that will increase costs for patients and lengthen wait times for those unwilling or unable to pay.
In May this year, the UCP passed another law permitting private companies to charge patients without a physician’s referral for complex medical tests – a measure that can be expected to pull specialists and resources out of the public system and lengthen wait times even more for the rest of us.
In June, the UCP introduced regulatory changes to allow the government to proceed this September with creating its planned two-tier health care system. As Friends of Medicare Director Chris Gallaway said then, “Telling Albertans to choose between cleaning out your retirement fund and waiting years in pain for a needed surgery is frankly insulting, and goes against the principles of equitability and universality on which our public medicare system is founded.”
But while the changes are widely seen as violating the Canada Health Act, which creates nationwide public health care standards, so far Prime Minister Mark Carney and his health minister have sat on their hands.
Last week, the UCP took another step toward U.S.-style private health care, publishing without the usual boastful press release Orders in Council that reclassify all preventive health testing services as non-insured extended health services.
To be fair, the cabinet orders are murky and unclear. But this very much sounds like the end of the promise the premier’s government would never delist medical procedures from public funding.
All of which raises the question, did Ms. Smith really believe her re-election fairy tale in 2023, or was she deceiving us?
Her record suggests she already planned to do exactly what she’s doing and successfully played Albertans for suckers.
“My view is that the entire budget for general practitioners should be paid from Health Spending Accounts,” Ms. Smith said in a 2021 article for the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. “If the government funded the account to $375 a year, that’s the equivalent of 10 trips to a GP, so there can be no argument that this would compromise access on the basis of ability to pay.”
At the time the paper was published, Ms. Smith was still the president of the Alberta Enterprise Group, a business advocacy organization with extensive ties to conservative parties. “We can no longer afford universal social programs that are 100 per cent paid by taxpayers,” she asserted in her rather unscholarly paper. “The only option is to allow people to use more of their own money to pay their own way and to use the power of innovation to deliver better services at lower cost.”
“Once people get used to the concept of paying out of pocket for more things themselves then we can change the conversation on health care,” she added.
So as we can see, once she was premier – her election promises notwithstanding – Ms. Smith proceeded directly with the program she outlined in her 2021 private health care manifesto.
Well, one of these days we’ll have another election, and despite all the distractions it might even be possible that health care becomes an issue once again.
So the important question is this: Will anybody believe her promises this time?
They shouldn’t. But Alberta political history suggests they probably will.
Marlaina is a world-class liar. If her lips are moving, she’s lying.
I see the Premier of Manitoba struck another win (and some may view it as a cheap shot) against Dingy Smith last week during the Premiers conference when interviewed indicated the Premiers wanted more money from the Feds for totally publicly funded health care. Seems there is no love loss between Wab and Dingy.
Funny how the UCP prefer to quietly like to sneak in Orders in Council instead of a grand banner showcase when it comes to privatizing or cutting previously paid for things. Another example was in February of 2025, where optical service re-imbursement for eye doctors was slashed. This was done without any talks or knowledge of eye doctors, they simply published the list with reductions. As a result, eye exams for those on AISH and seniors is no longer free, nor are exams for medical conditions such as glaucoma. Given the total privatization at once approach has not worked for the PC’s or UCP, they are clearly on the chip away at this and then that path. As noted it is clear Smith is a total LIAR when comes to not having to pay for health care.
Of course she meant cash. No one will pay cash. They will pay with a credit card or E-transfer. See how easy it is to twist the truth? Why else did she get your banking information with that $100 payola?
It’s kind of like how, on a 34°C. day while the wildfire smoke gave us 10+ “red” air quality, I listened to Danielle Smith tell a reporter that Alberta is cold, so that’s why AI data centres are locating here. It’s so cold. That’s why it’s easy to cool them. Note to self: insulate my summer igloo.
Also, remember how she lied that solar panels don’t work in the winter, even though Calgary is Canada’s sunniest big city year-round? And how she told a solar industry conference that energy cannot be stored in things called “batteries”? Who has ever heard of a horse and buggy with a battery? What’s a battery?
Soon she’ll tell us that AI data centres preserve pristine viewscapes, especially on prime farm land.
Here’s a joke. What do you call a person who lies without blinking? Albertans, you are the punchline.
Abs: Many websites name Calgary as the sunniest city in Canada. It would seem this is not actually correct, though. It’s Medicine Hat, followed by Lethbridge, followed by Calgary. My source for that was a CBC radio interview years ago with an Environment Canada meteorologist. But on checking, Google’s AI and the links it provides appear to back this up. DJC
I believe they said “sunniest big city”, not sunniest city. Calgary is a big city, so that is correct. The others are small cities.
AI is confused. In response to a question about Edmonton weather, Gemini informed me that Edmonton is the sunniest city in Alberta. Being from Calgary, I knew that could not be true!!
LAS: The AI is definitely confused if it thinks Edmonton is sunny. This year’s it’s about as sunny as Ireland. DJC
Fraulein Smith, when she was leader of the WildRose, she campaigned on privatizing health care. She never changed her position, she just lied to Albertans, which doesn’t seem to bother her at all. Smith is a liar and un-trust worthy. it’s as simple as that.
Every year when I have my physical, my doctor orders a FIT test to screen for possible colon cancer. The FIT test looks for blood in a sample, and if found it is followed up with a colonoscopy. As I understand it, the great thing about the colonoscopy is instead of simply looking for cancer, the procedure actually removes any cancerous spots. As a result, when they put you out you don’t know if you have cancer or not, but when you wake up they either tell you you never had cancer, or they tell you you no longer have cancer. This all happens well before you have any symptoms of cancer.
Until now this has all been done as part of an AHS initiative (https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/info/Page8343.aspx). I expect the cost of doing the tests is much less than what the government pays to treat a patient with advanced stage colon cancer, so presumably this also saves AHS money. That said, it probably saves the government even more money to have someone with advanced stage cancer die waiting for treatment.
If I pay out of pocket for a FIT test, and it comes back positive, how is the resulting colonoscopy classified? Does the positive FIT test render the colonoscopy medically necessary, and covered by AHS, or is it still considered preventative health testing, and the patient pays for that as well? I expect the FIT test itself isn’t very expensive, so it is easy to imagine someone paying for a FIT test, then having all subsequent treatment covered, but someone who doesn’t have the spare $50 for a fit test dying of colon cancer.
Sigh. Remember the good old days when Jason Kenney was the worst premier Alberta ever had?
Typo alert: “In December 2025, the UCP passed legislation allowing physicians to charge patients out of pocket for speedy care while continuing to bill the pubic health care system, sending those who can’t pay extra to the back of the line.” Pubic health care system? Suggests these changes only apply to urologists and OB/Gyns lol.
On the substance: governments only need to make these kinds of pledges when they face accusations that they might or will do exactly what they’re denying. It reminds me of Harper having to deny up and down that his government had a “secret agenda” … even though, especially as they went into the 2015 election, they clearly did.
Nobody asked Rachel Notley or Naheed Nenshi for a “public care guarantee”, because the NDP are the guardians of medicare. So their opponents demand they “take the pledge” on pipelines instead — somewhat like the fictional US Presidential primary candidates in Season 6 of The West Wing when they went to Iowa and told the corn growers they supported ethanol as an alternative fuel.
Thanks, Jerry. Fixed. WP seems to have removed that word as an automatic alert, which is a pity. DJC
At first I thought it was Tyler Shandro standing behind Danielle Smith in that photo, while Smith made her squinty-eyed health care “promise”. Remember, Tyler Shandro who was Alberta’s former Health Minister, and the same one whose wife started up (and still owns) Vital Partners, a health insurance brokerage? The same Tyler Shandro who went ballistic in Calgary Dr. Mukarram Zaidi’s driveway because said doctor posted a meme about him and his wife, “‘The photo of Shandro, with a thought bubble caption, said: “So every Albertan that I can kick off health care is another client we can sign up for Vital Partners. We’re going to be RICH”. Shandro’s wife, Andrea, is the co-founder of Vital Partners, a health insurance agency.'” This is quoted from the St. Albert Gazette. You can read the whole article which describes the situation in a Law Society complaint made against Shandro whom you know is a lawyer. https://www.stalbertgazette.com/politics/intimidating-doctor-tells-law-society-former-health-minister-visited-his-home-6427352
Being a lawyer comes in handy, I guess, when you’re getting around to changing laws to benefit the private health insurance industry. Or helping an entrepreneurial relation get huge public contracts for children’s pain medication, or his private surgical companies, or his dabbling in the building of addictions facilities … but that’s a whole other can of worms involving another UCP government minister who is a lawyer as well. But I digress. You’ve blogged before about the Globe and Mail’s sleuthing reporters’ coverage on all that corruption.
If you look at Vital Partners website, as an example, you see one thing they specialize in is “health spending accounts”. It’s all been a set-up for a long time and I sincerely believe Danielle Smith would consider it a big feather in her cap to blow Canadian Medicare to smithereens, and if she wins the next provincial election it will be full-steam ahead, and we won’t know what hit us. Mark Carney knows, but apparently doesn’t care. His Health Minister Marjorie Michel certainly doesn’t have a problem with it even though that’s why her whole portfolio even exists! We are in big trouble and it looks like similar to the knock-down of pay-to-play health care that happened in the B.C. courts with the double-billing Cambie Clinic, this is going to end up in a court challenge. Involving lawyers. Hopefully the ones in the white hats will win again. But in the meantime there is going to be a heck of a lot more suffering for Albertans. I know the NDP have fought, and will fight for public health care but if they can’t win Calgary we’re hooped. The “country folk” who vote UCP I’m afraid don’t care enough, or don’t realize the stakes, and if Smith has Carney promising pipelines and oil profits continue to spill over into cowtown those folks will vote UCP and all hope for Medicare will go up in smoke. Particularly with the giant smokescreen provided by the farce of the “separation” referendum and all the other stupid questions tagged on to it. The battle for Canada’s Medicare will be here, in Alberta. This is ground zero and we will have to fight like hell for it. Once it’s gone, we ain’t getting it back. We cannot lose, the stakes are too high. I have to have faith that Calgarians will see through the smoke; indeed Tyler Shandro lost his Calgary-Acadia seat to the NDP’s Diana Batten (a nurse btw) and the subsequent Health Minister, Jason Copping,who held the portfolio when Smith made this so-called “guarantee” lost his Calgary-Varsity seat to the NDP’s Luanne Metz- who happens to be a doctor. A specialist, yet. A prominent specialist, who headed up Neurology at the Calgary Foothills Hospital. As always, health care is as Ralph Klein famously said, “the Third Rail” and this latest brazen attack by the UCP on the principles of equitable, accessible health care could be, and should be their downfall.
Betts: Just to be clear, you are referring to a different lawyer, not Mr. Shandro, in the second paragraph of this comment. I mention this because it might not be obvious to all readers. Many years ago now, while employed by an Alberta health care union (not the one I work for now), we did focus groups on health care in rural Alberta and participants clearly understood the value of health care and the risk of privatization to rural health care services. So I have trouble believing that “The ‘country folk’ who vote UCP I’m afraid don’t care enough, or don’t realize the stakes.” As many city folk do, they may still be inclined, foolishly, to give Ms. Smith the benefit of the doubt. They may think Conservatives will always find a way to favour rural residents. Or they may be motivated by pure tribalism. The Calgary focus groups, by the way, were much more likely to be enthusiastic about privarization of health care than the rural ones or the ones in Edmonton. DJC
Thank you David, for challenging yet another culture wars cliche!!
Rural Albertans per se are NOT the only, or even the main problem, though gerrymandering exacerbates aspects of it. I believe, (and perhaps we might hear from professor Jared Wesley on this)that the Common Ground research project did focus groups a few years back with similar results.
And, believe it or not, there are a significant number of smooth-talking urbanites who are good neoliberals and would cheerfully throw the old, the sick, and the poor under the bus!!
Alberta’s rural suckers are known to sleazy UCP politicians as the Alberta Advantage.
Best definition of Alberta Advantage! I agree wholeheartedly with “suckers”.
@ Cool Xenu
Funded by those same reputable American insurance companies who sell Medicare Advantage.
So now, not only has Dixie Dani sold Albertans out to the American oiligarchs, she’s sold them out to the same greedweasles who are busy profiting off America’s healthcare fiasco.
Good luck grabbing that back out of their grubby paws.
“Nobody should have to pay to see a family doctor”
But you have to pay for the nurse, the medication, the band-aid, the receptionist the hospital room, the specialist they sent you to, the x-rays, the blood work, the time we spend listening to your heart with a stethoscope and the elevator muzik fees–all while we funnel the taxes you pay for it, into our friends’ bank accounts.
Welcome to Alberta’s new healthcare plan!
A visit to the family doctor for $37.50? 10 visits for $375. REALLY?
Past, present, and future, Smith and the UCP (in all of its manifestations) lie! Pure bullshit, and Alberta Trumpers lap it up like rodeo candy.
Eyes and ears open means that the trajectory was entirely predictable and it was easily foreseeable; where, a belief in unlimited economic growth and profits dictates an unlimited expansion in profit generating markets and new market opportunities.
So expanding the floor of the cage is inevitable in such a system; where, “freedom” means being “free” to choose between, for example, paying the rent, paying for transportation, buying food, or paying for medical care. They are truncated choices that are both marketed and designed to generate the most profit with outcomes a consumer citizen has little or no control over, i.e., by being governed and constrained by an economy, its market(s), and their profit imperatives. Further, they are all meaningless choices if individuals simply cannot afford them.
Therefore it is no surprise that, “behind the scenes, private health insurance giants—Manulife, Canada Life, and Sun Life—and their lobbyists are, in their own words, “key partners” of the Smith government’s efforts to craft a two-tier health-care system.”
https://breachmedia.ca/pandoras-box-danielle-smith-and-insurance-giants-unleash-attack-on-healthcare/
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/the-end-of-canadian-medicare-alberta-legislation-opens-the-door-to-u-s-health-care/
Which is consistent with the fact that, “clues to her agenda can be found in her record as a lobbyist for one of the province’s most powerful business groups”. . . . including “a “free enterprise approach to delivering public services such as health spending accounts and vouchers in child care.””
Also see and listen to the following:
“Better Treatment, Better Care | Fraser Forum #5”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYBd_1-mow0
To date her lies have cost my wife and I around $1,000. The big question is when will we be forced to pay for the operations, we know this government will never be able to afford them, that’s just another lie.
As one who has wondered for years “Is our Blue Cross Plan safe or is that on the chopping block as well”? I will never forget the Conservative MLAs saying “Don’t ever trust a Reformer, there is nothing Conservative about them, and boy were they right.
They can’t even help municipalities fix our roads properly and paint lines on them, that’s how stupid this has become, they have put this province in financial ruin whether we want to believe it or not. Us former Bankers know all about bankruptcies and this is the biggest one we have ever seen.
After living and working in rural Alberta for 24 years as a banker I find it hard to believe that they are so naive that they would allow these fake conservatives Reformers to treat them like morons and that’s exactly what they are doing.
Other farmers and ranchers that I have talked to are as disgusted as I am with them for allowing Ralph Klein to deliberately allow the oil industry to pollute their farmland with abandoned oil wells and ignore paying their taxes owing to their farm communities. Why are they doing it? Because they know they can.
Maybe when they lose their health care services they will wake up but I doubt it. Smiths two-tiered healthcare system will do that as retired doctors point out. Doctors and nurses will never stay in rural Alberta when they can make more money working in the private for profit system in the cities, why would they?
This woman reminds me of my gaslighting, narcissistic ex, someone with whom it was impossible to have a discussion or debate with because of the intentional twisting and turning of phrases that always made me feel like I was losing my mind. But maybe I am an idiot, because after listening to Smith’s presser today, I’m under the impression from what was said that public testing will always take priority over private/self referral testing. So if that is the case, why is this government implementing out of pocket/self referral testing at all? There seems to be no advantage right, other than for the private clinics and other friends of the UCP government. What am I missing or misunderstanding? Quicker diagnosis equals faster treatment, according to Smith, the very same woman who in the past has said people cause their own cancer? And now we’re supposed to believe that she cares about people being treating for it sooner than before, only as long as they’re willing and able to pay for it. Right?