A big fight with Alberta’s doctors might have seemed like a good idea when the United Conservative Party’s strategic braintrust came up with the plan a few weeks ago. But that was then. This is now. With the docs primed for action, their constitutional lawyers loaded for bear, full-page advertisements
Continue readingTag: Alberta Health Services
Alberta Politics: Coronavirus discovered in Alberta just as politics trumps science in supervised drug clinic report
COVID-19 has arrived in Alberta. But first, we need to talk about how the United Conservative Party Government has found a nearly perfect formula for dealing with science when it reaches inconvenient conclusions running counter either to the ruling party’s ideology or its political calculations. Jason Luan, junior minister of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Budget Day: Creatures of the night return to the hallways of Alberta’s Legislature as boisterous protesters chant outside
The thing about Budget Day at the Legislature that news media seldom gets across is that the real news usually isn’t the budget. The budget’s broad strokes are all known long before the details roll off the press at the Queen’s Printer or its privatized equivalent. Alberta Finance Minister Travis
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Ernst & Young review of Alberta Health Services gives UCP cover to do lots, flexibility to do little
We’re not closing any rural hospitals, have you got that? Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro strove to make that point perfectly clear at his news conference in Edmonton yesterday on how Ernst & Young, the multinational management consulting firm based in London, England, thinks Alberta Health Services could save nearly
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What’s with the United Conservative Party’s emerging fury at nurses, of all people?
What’s with the sudden hate on for nurses by United Conservative Party supporters? It comes from somewhere. Your average UCP internet troll doesn’t just come up with this stuff on his – or occasionally her – own. The traditional Conservative approach to attacking nurses and other predominantly public and female
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Groundhog Day on Black Friday! With 5,000 job cuts planned, perpetual chaos returns to health care in Alberta
With yesterday’s announcement the Alberta Government intends to wipe out close to 5,000 jobs in public health care by 2023, and another 2,500 or so in other parts of the public service, perpetual chaos has returned to health care in Alberta. Get used to it. It won’t be getting better
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Canadian Taxpayers Federation commentary on nurse salaries isn’t research so much as an echo chamber
Has anyone noticed how the propaganda produced by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation seems to be growing more inept of late? Misleading arguments and anti-union bias have long characterized many of the claims made by the Regina-based CTF, which claims to be a non-partisan “citizens’ group,” although its only legal members
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Plan to roll back public employees’ pay is no surprise, but the way it’s being rolled out seems surprisingly inept
When Alberta’s finance minister announced the Kenney Government’s plan to roll back unionized public employees’ pay by 2 to 5 per cent yesterday, he blamed Alberta’s debt and deficit, not the huge hole he’d just blown in the province’s budget with $4.5-billion in tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Appointment of Stephen Mandel to AHS board proves failure’s no barrier to success in Jason Kenney’s Alberta
Who says Premier Jason Kenney can’t unite Albertans? Sometime today, Mr. Kenney will appoint Stephen Mandel to the governing board of Alberta Health Services. Well, the announcement will be made by Health Minister Tyler Shandro. Late yesterday, as the word of the appointment leaked out, moans of despair could be
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Conservative mismanagement of health care, which we’re about to see return to Alberta, is a feature, not a bug
Last Thursday, Tyler Shandro advised Albertans that the promised United Conservative Party review of Alberta Health Services is rolling ahead. Well, he did once tell us that things tend to happen in due course. This is pretty much the first we’ve heard from Alberta’s baby-faced health minister since he famously demonstrated
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The strategy behind the UCP’s Public Sector Arbitration Deferral Act explained
Albertans who don’t pay much attention to labour relations may be forgiven for wondering about the harsh reaction yesterday to the Alberta Government’s introduction of legislation to delay arbitration for thousands of public employees. Many readers not directly hostile to unions nevertheless may have wondered, “What’s the big deal? The
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Here’s a bet: Alberta Health Services review announced yesterday will cost more than any savings it finds
Tyler Shandro was pretty bold yesterday when he put out a Government of Alberta news release announcing the United Conservative Party Government’s promised review of Alberta Health Services. Mr. Shandro is the baby-faced MLA for Calgary-Acadia who was made minister of health by Premier Jason Kenney. He is a lawyer
Continue readingAlberta Politics: UCP posturing around public sector wages portends a return to perpetual crisis in health care
The United Conservative Party Government’s transparent early manoeuvres around public sector wage negotiations and the heavy hints found in a paper by the chair of Premier Jason Kenney’s “blue ribbon panel” on Alberta’s finances portend a stormy period ahead in public sector labour relations, especially in health care. Since health
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The UCP health platform: mostly spin, some two-tier medicine, and scraps of red meat for the base
Jason Kenney’s health care policy announcement yesterday was a typical conservative political speech – a mish-mash of anodyne sentiment, misleading spin, market-fundamentalist nostrums, scraps of red meat for the base, cheap shots at the federal government, terrible ideas he’ll implement if he gets the chance, and even a couple of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: You can’t slash Alberta Health Services’ lean and efficient management without hurting front-line care
Just a reminder, folks: You can’t cut Alberta Health Services management without cutting front-line health care. One of Opposition Leader Jason Kenney’s standard talking points is that he’ll never cut front-line health care, only needless, redundant, expensive managers cluttering up the system. And since I’m a good union guy, some
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney’s ‘Public Health Guarantee’ isn’t worth much, but that may be good enough for many voters
No one ever said Jason Kenney isn’t a shrewd politician who knows how to run a campaign, so give the man some credit for his clever effort yesterday to look strong on a weak file for his party and make the NDP look a little weaker on its strongest. The
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Free votes’ on ‘matters of conscience’ may seem incongruous for a guy like Jason Kenney, but then again, maybe not …
Last Thursday, presumably hoping to distract from the NDP’s launch of an advertising campaign illuminating the dark side of Jason Kenney, the United Conservative Party leader announced a passel of policy ideas that would include significant changes to how the Legislature operates. Among Mr. Kenney’s ideas were a ban on
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Death of Gene Zwozdesky, the mellifluous smoothie of Alberta politics, an apt symbol of the end of the Progressive Conservative Era
The death Sunday of Gene Zwozdesky – first elected as a Liberal but for many years afterward a Conservative, a cabinet minister who could be counted on to smooth over messes made by others, and eventually Speaker of the Legislature – can be said to mark the symbolic end of
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Message to my American Cousins: It’s mellow up here; there is no communist revolution yet; no one wants to take Manhattan
Dear American Cousins, literal and metaphorical: The day before yesterday, medical and recreational cannabis became legal in Canada. The Canada correspondent for the New York Times reported excitedly that we Canadians were calling this C-Day. We were? Beats the hell outta me where she got that idea. I’m pretty sure
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta Government and AUPE sign tentative agreement for three-year public service contract
The Alberta Government and the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees both announced yesterday they’ve signed a tentative agreement on a new collective agreement covering the union’s approximately 23,000 members who work directly for the provincial government. This is the group of public employees the union accurately calls “front-line government service
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