Alberta Politics: Alberta political roundup: The paper-pile premier, furious doctors, rebel ’Roser rumours, Total disaster, and more …

Having rammed through two controversial bills Tuesday night, one opening the door to more health care privatization and the other eliminating workplace fairness and declaring war on unions, the Alberta Legislature wrapped up its business just after 8 o’clock yesterday morning. United Conservative Party social media spent the afternoon bragging

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Alberta Politics: Side deals with specialists emerge as latest UCP tactic in escalating war with Alberta Medical Association

The Kenney Government yesterday again escalated its continuing war with the Alberta Medical Association, indicating it would consider letting rival groups representing medical specialties quit the doctors’ collective bargaining association and negotiate directly with the government. In a statement obviously intended to rock the AMA, Health Minister Tyler Shandro commented

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Alberta Politics: Apparently desperate, health minister tells College of Physicians and Surgeons it can’t let doctors quit

Tyler Shandro’s on fire! Not in a good way, though. There was a strong signal yesterday that Alberta’s health minister has completely lost control of the fight he’s picked with the province’s physicians. Yesterday’s AMA newspaper advertisement (Image: Alberta Medical Association). It turns out that while the minister and the

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Alberta Politics: Whether or not half of Alberta’s doctors are thinking of leaving, even a much smaller exodus would be a disaster

Publication by the Alberta Medical Association of poll results showing close to half the province’s physicians are thinking about leaving Alberta in response to the United Conservative Party’s War on Doctors seems to have enraged Premier Jason Kenney’s strategic brain trust. Leastways, the UCP’s immediate response — threatening to publish

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Alberta Politics: Coronavirus has U.S. physicians eyeing politics — will COVID-19 and the UCP’s War on Doctors spur the same thing here?

The New York Times reported yesterday how the coronavirus crisis is prodding a wave of mostly progressive American physicians to enter politics. Many are women and most have connected the dots between the United States’ appalling Third World health care system and the disastrous rate of COVID-19 infection and death

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Alberta Politics: Docs fight Alberta pay cuts in court, seeking $250 million, while battling COVID-19 on the front lines of health care

Yesterday morning, Christine Molnar, president of the Alberta Medical Association, announced that the province’s doctors are launching a constitutional challenge and seeking $250 million in compensation from the United Conservative Party Government for the way it tore up their contract two months ago. Yesterday afternoon, Health Minister Tyler Shandro showed

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Alberta Politics: Layoffs one day, billion-dollar pipeline giveaways the next — it’s not easy keeping up with the Kenneys!

Keeping up with the Kenneys will make your head spin. Yesterday, the Kenney Government was justifying the layoffs of 26,000 public-sector education workers by claiming there are limits to Alberta’s capacity to borrow during an economic downturn caused by a global pandemic. Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews (Photo: David J.

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Alberta Politics: Alberta Health gives way on docs’ billing for virtual services, but plunges ahead with controversial Babylon app

Bowing to pressure from the Alberta Medical Association and critics of the controversial Babylon “virtual care” app that’s created significant disruption to public health care in the United Kingdom, the United Conservative Party Government agreed yesterday to pay doctors already practicing medicine in Alberta the same rate for online and

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