Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ray Grigg explains how Idle No More and other decentralized social movements may make for a crucial counterweight to the Harper Cons and…
Health Care
must-watch video: how canadian women won abortion rights and what we must do to keep them
The Harper anti-choice brigade is back in the news, this time taking aim at a different abortion controversy to try to chip away at our fundamental rights. Wladyslaw Lizon –…
Is Premier Alison Redford’s bitter fight with the docs about money, or control?
Who’s in change here? Progressive Conservative MLAs get ready to supervise the work of an Alberta Health Services medical team while Alberta voters look on. Health officials, physicians and electors…
Why is Alberta studying seniors’ care at the same time as it’s privatizing it?
Coming soon to seniors’ centres in Alberta, a new model of elder care? Below: Health Minister Fred Horne. On Monday, Alberta Health Minister Fred Horne announced a year-long project to…
The dubious case for casinos
I got way off my usual research agenda this morning for a business panel on CBC radio. The topic was the economics of casinos, the result of the City of…
Inquiry testimony suggests pricey private clinics – nudge-nudge, wink-wink – really can engineer preferential access
Wheeling and dealing: Staff of private clinics use advanced clinical techniques to decide which patients go to the front of the line for quick medical tests. Alberta medical insiders may…
Misleading with statistics: the Fraser Institute on health care and ‘value for money’
This just in! The latest mainstream media news straight from the Vancouver studios of the Fraser Institute, complete with no fact checking! No sooner noted than illuminated – yesterday morning…
updates: acupuncture, slow cooker, star trek
I decided to try acupuncture again. In October, I saw my nephew and niece-in-law who practice Traditional Chinese Medicine and other holistic healing methods. They encouraged me to use our…
Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, close personal…
Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, close personal friend of murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet, and idol of capitalist extremists everywhere, was in hospital just before Christmas to have a growth…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Thomas Walkom discusses the meaning of the Ontario Libs’ attempt to take collective bargaining rights away from teachers in the context of…
Is Canadian Progressivism a Farce?
The topic came up recently in a discussion I had with a prolific and thoroughly progressive blogger who will go unnamed. He lamented that he had become fed up with…
"Sousa sounded and looked very much like a man who would be comfortable as the next premier of the province."
Like the Sousa campaign on Facebook!Follow Charles on Twitter! This article is a couple days old now, but I wanted to post it to show the extremely positive reception Charles…
Scenes from an Inquiry: No fireworks as Ron Liepert and Lynn Redford testify
Lynn Redford, the Alberta Premier’s sister, stars in Scenes from an Inquiry, directed by Ingmar Bergman, or someone with a similarly Nordic directorial touch. Below: Former Alberta health minister Ron…
doctors vs jason kenney: the fight continues
The Harper Government continues to scapegoat the most vulnerable among us, demonizing refugee claimants, denying them due process, forcing them out of Canada. Yesterday we heard that four people arrested…
Docs call health minister liar, liar, scrubs on fire, but their ad fails to persuade
The docs’ advertisement. Below: AMA President Dr. Michael Giuffre. The Alberta Medical Association, the province’s most powerful trade union, has gone back to the familiar ground of buying newspaper advertisements…
New column day
Here, giving credit to the Saskatchewan Party for eventually doing the right thing in funding refugee health expenses - but questioning their selective and PR-motivated claim to compassion.For further reading...The…
Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading.- Michael Geist notes that even as the Harper Cons have done nothing but hand more free money to big pharma through ever more generous…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Diana Carney discusses the public's growing recognition of inequality in Canada:I see three root causes of our concern with inequality in Canada (three…
Expense account outrages? Only in government, you say? Puleeze!
Executives of Covenant Health enjoy a bottle of 2001 Il Piggione over lunch at Edmonton’s Characters Restaurant. Catholic health care executives may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Liberalbertaliberal Leader…