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.
Continue readingTag: Tyler Shandro
Susan on the Soapbox: The Leader and His Team
It’s been a tough week for everyone; especially that “young, energetic and diverse team with deep experience” that Jason Kenney (his words by the way) appointed to Cabinet. Health Minister Shandro took it upon himself to turn up at a Calgary doctor’s house and yell at him for reposting a
Continue readingAlberta Politics: No warning, no consultation, UCP yanks school funding using COVID-19 pandemic as excuse, costing 20,000 jobs
Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m., Alberta school trustees learned funding about to be yanked by the provincial government with no notice or discussion with boards. Massive layoffs are expected to result — up to 20,000 Substitute teachers, educational assistants, non-essential support staff and bus drivers will all face layoffs immediately. CUPE
Continue readingAlberta Politics: No one should fault Jason Kenney for his Hope Mission photo op — but that N95 mask is another matter
No one should fault Premier Jason Kenney too much for visiting Edmonton’s Hope Mission, having a few photos taken and posting them on social media with an uplifting message about pitching in to fight COVID-19. It’s what politicians of all stripes do, and arguably it’s not a terrible use of
Continue readingAlberta 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
Continue readingThe Daveberta Podcast: Episode 51: A new Alberta. Responding to COVID-19 and Oil Crash with Chris Henderson.
Wash your hands, don’t touch your face, stay at home. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the plummeting price of oil has sent shockwaves through Alberta politics over the past two weeks. Chris Henderson, Chief Strategist and Partner at Y Station Communications and Research, joins Dave Cournoyer and Adam
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If Health Minister Tyler Shandro were smart, he’d walk back that Babylon by Telus deal pronto
This whole Babylon smartphone app partnership between the Alberta government and Telus Corp. is starting to look like a major blunder. If he’s smart, Health Minister Tyler Shandro will recognize he needs to walk back Thursday’s gee-whiz news release announcing the deal with Telus, quickly. Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The new two-tier medicine: real physicians for the rich, an Internet app for the rest of us?
Get ready for the new two-tier medicine! Real doctors for the rich; Internet apps of the rest of us. Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro (Photo: Government of Alberta). You think I’m kidding? Wednesday night, I found an email in my inbox from Telus Corp., the corporate monstrosity based in the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: With COVID-19 in Alberta, Health Minister Tyler Shandro caves to docs on ‘complex billing’ battle
As Lyndon B. Johnson famously explained, in politics, chicken poop can turn over night into chicken salad. Those weren’t exactly the words used by the late United States Senator from Texas, Senate Majority Leader, Vice-President and then, in tragic circumstances after Nov. 22, 1963, Democratic Party President of the United
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Alberta COVID-19 cases rise to 74; UCP to push budget through; Jason Kenney visits the airport
Faced with the embarrassment of having to rewrite Alberta’s budget to acknowledge economic reality and public health necessity in the midst of a global pandemic or stick with one that fails to meet even that low bar and sets the stage for a attacks on public health care in the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Community transmission of COVID-19 seen in Alberta; all classes cancelled; no layoffs of health workers — for now
Community transmission of COVID-19 is now taking place in Alberta as numbers of cases grew by 17 over the past 24 hours to 56, Premier Jason Kenney told the province’s daily briefing on the local spread of the global pandemic today. Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw said seven
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Coronavirus pandemic? What a peculiar time for the health minister to pursue a fight with Alberta’s physicians
Hey! It’s Friday the 13th in the age of the coronavirus. Are you feeling lucky? Apparently Tyler Shandro and Tara Jago are. Alberta Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw (Photo: Screenshot of Government of Alberta video). Leastways, Alberta’s heath minister and his “issues manager” were yesterday when, global coronavirus
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Talks between Alberta’s docs and government, which went off the rails on Valentine’s Day, are back on again
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 readingAlberta 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: UCP launches blitzkrieg on physicians as health care in Alberta returns to its normal state of chaos
If you’ve been operating under the misapprehension the United Conservative Party is just the latest version of the Progressive Conservative Party that ran Alberta from 1971 to 2015, yesterday’s blitzkrieg attack on the province’s 11,000 physicians should disabuse you of that notion. No, this crowd is unique in the history
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Inside Jason Kenney’s troll factory: the UCP propaganda ecosystem goes after Alberta’s registered nurses
The president of the Alberta Federation of Labour called out the Canadian Taxpayers Federation yesterday for the partisan role it plays supporting of the Kenney Government’s contract demands in negotiations with the union that represents the province’s front-line registered nurses. Calling the CTF “a secretive anti-union lobby group,” Gil McGowan
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: Arbitrator’s decision awarding 1% pay increase to some AUPE members undermines UCP austerity arguments
An independent labour arbitrator yesterday awarded unionized Alberta government employees and health care support workers a modest 1-per-cent pay increase for 2019. Having gone into wage-reopener negotiations in the final year of their current collective agreements seeking much higher pay increases ranging from 6.5 to 7.85 per cent, the Alberta
Continue readingAlberta 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
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
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