Alberta Politics: Australian state’s four-point plan to eliminate COVID-19 worked; Alberta did the opposite on every count

A few Albertans may still remember Stephen Duckett, the remarkably undiplomatic Australian health economist hired by Premier Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservative government to run the then-just-created Alberta Health Services in 2009. Dr. Duckett had a stellar resume and was obviously great in an interview. However, it turned out, he didn’t

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Alberta Politics: Corporate lobbyist and former aide to two Conservative premiers named University of Alberta external relations VP

A high-profile lobbyist with connections to past Alberta Conservative governments and involvement in a controversial effort to open a large private hospital in Edmonton has been named as the University of Alberta’s new vice-president of external relations. U of A leadership, presumably, concluded lobbyist Elan MacDonald has the connections necessary

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Alberta Politics: Thanks to a public-spirited leaker, a risky health-care privatization scheme is exposed

Panicky sounding United Conservative Party “issues managers” were frantically insisting yesterday everything is copacetic and above board with secret plans to build a $200-million private orthopedic surgical hospital in Edmonton. No way will this result in two-tier health care, they contended, often shrilly calling anyone who suggested otherwise a liar,

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Alberta Politics: Regardless of Tyler Shandro’s promises, private clinics won’t shorten surgical wait times — they’ll make them longer

Using private medical clinics to remedy long wait times for surgeries in Alberta’s public health care system, as the United Conservative Party Government says it expects to do, is about as likely to work as treating iron-poor blood by attaching blood-sucking leeches to patients’ arms and legs. That is to

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Alberta 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

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Alberta 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

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Alberta Politics: Enough already! It’s time for the NDP to implement the Bighorn park plan immediately

Were provincial officials taking part in town hall meetings on the Alberta Government’s plan to create a park in west central Alberta’s Bighorn Country really harassed and threatened by all-terrain-vehicle enthusiasts opposed to restrictions on their motorized activity in the environmentally sensitive Rocky Mountain Foothills between Banff and Jasper national

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Alberta Politics: Highwood Conservative discloses past conviction for failure to provide breath sample; UCP seems untroubled

With an investigation by the Alberta Elections Commissioner under way into allegations of irregularities in the United Conservative Party’s conduct of its nomination vote in the Highwood Constituency last fall, the winning candidate published a statement Friday admitting he was convicted and fined for failing to provide a breathalyzer sample

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Alberta Politics: Professors protest Moe Government plan to shutter archives in four locations, including University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon

SASKATOON, Sask. No sooner did the government of Saskatchewan oh-so-discreetly announce it is about to close four branches of the provincial archives and consolidate it all in one location in Regina than more than 30 Canadian scholars had an open letter of protest circulating on the Internet. When the branch

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