Timing is everything, so Dr. Sally Talbot-Jones must have been kicking herself yesterday for launching her effort to charge patients as much as $4,800 a year up front to see a doctor in a timely fashion when she did. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (Photo: Alberta Newsroom/Flickr). It must have been frustrating for the Calgary family physician when news reports revealed more than 40 medical clinics in Alberta are charging “membership fees” eight months after she sent her fateful email about the same idea to her patients, setting off a province-wide brouhaha.  However, according to the pro ..read more

When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith mused in the midst of debate over her government’s new funding turf war with Ottawa that “we could also establish our own research programs” to ensure ideological balance in academic research, many Albertans suspected they understood precisely what she had in mind. Dr. Gary Davidson, the Red Deer emergency physician once condemned for his claim COVID data was manipulated who now heads the Smith Government’s COVID data “task force” (Photo: RD News Now). They thought the United Conservative Party’s Bill 18 is about more than just keeping the Trudeau Governmen ..read more

Did a little birdie just chirp in my ear that the United Conservative Government has already picked out a name for the new provincial police force it claims it hasn’t yet decided whether or not to set up?  Officers of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police in 1900 – slated along with the RCMP for historical erasure by the United Conservative Party brain trust (Photo: Library and Archives Canada). It wasn’t a tweet, merely a chirp, but I must say it had the warble of truth.  Brace yourselves for the Alberta Rangers. This, presumably would be a bit of cowboy cosplay intended to extend the ..read more

To hear Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner tell it Monday, you’d almost think there’s been no inflation in Alberta since the pandemic.  Alberta Union of Provincial Employees President Guy Smith in a typical pose (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Well, Mr. Horner is a scion of Alberta’s enduring and (mostly) Conservative Horner political clan who says he “had the opportunity to buy my grandfather’s ranch,” so perhaps he didn’t notice it quite the way the rest of us have.  It’s also true that the United Conservative Party has had an active policy of wage suppression, and not just in the ..read more

It must seem unfair to the United Conservative Party base that flat-earth researchers consistently get the short end of the stick when it comes to federal research funds while the spherical-earth crowd so obviously favoured by Ottawa gets all the dough!  CBC Power & Politics host David Cochrane (Photo: BroadcastDialogue.com). As Premier Danielle Smith told CBC Power & Politics host David Cochrane last week, “I have been given enough indication that the federal government uses its power through researchers to only fund certain types of opinion, certain types of researchers, and I ..read more

Alberta’s hill to die on? Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault (Photo: Government of Canada). According to Premier Danielle Smith it’s our God-given right to gas-generated electricity, diesel-powered buses, and gas-heated homes. You want our forced-air gas furnaces, our diesel buses, Guilbeault? Come and take ’em! This is Wild Rose Country and no eastern bastard environment minister is gonna stuff a heat-pump down our provincial basement staircase!  … Does this sound stupid to you, dear readers? It sure sounds stupid to me. But that appeared to be the key message of Premier Smi ..read more

Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government tabled legislation yesterday to establish its previously announced Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence, which appears to be the drug-treatment equivalent of the UCP’s notorious Alberta Energy War Room.  Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence CEO designate Kym Kaufmann (Photo: Kym Kaufmann/Eden Health Services). According to the press release published by the province yesterday afternoon, Bill 17, the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence Act, 2024, will establish CORE as a Crown corporation “to inform best practices in mental health and ..read more

You might be tempted to think Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was on the right track with her obvious discomfort at the thought of her predecessor’s Critical Infrastructure Defence Act being used to prosecute the so-called anti-carbon-tax protesters impeding traffic alomg the Trans-Canada Highway west of Calgary. A few of the protesters at the Cochrane truck stop (Photo: Twitter). But we all know Ms. Smith would advocate using the problematic legislation in the blink of an eye if it were climate change activists or First Nations rights protesters who were slowing traffic on a highway on which ..read more

Let’s imagine a scenario that even a year ago would have seemed all but impossible but is now within the realm of possibility.  Participants in a pre-pandemic pro-Wexit demonstration at the Alberta Legislature in December 2020 (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). First, let’s assume that the NDP Government of British Columbia is re-elected in the provincial general election that is scheduled to take place on Oct. 19 this year.  Recent polling suggests that Premier David Eby’s New Democrats will be re-elected with a comfortable majority. This is not a sure thing, of course. The B.C. NDP has ..read more

Does anyone remember Premier Danielle Smith’s handpicked administrator of Alberta Health Services confidently predicting that wait times for surgeries in this province were about to fall and fall dramatically?  NDP Opposition Health Critic Luanne Metz (Photo: David J. Climenhaga). Reduced surgical wait times would be the biggest single mark of success for the health care system under the United Conservative Party, Dr. John Cowell said in February 2023 when he gave his interim report as Alberta Health Services’ interim administrator.  “It is my hope, and I actually believe, that we w ..read more