An enema of misinformation
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This week in AB
UCP sponsors quack vaccine panel called “Injection of Truth”
The United Conservative Party is promoting a panel discussion that initially included the wholly unsubstantiated — but utterly terrifying — claim that deaths of children from vaccination had increased “350 per cent”. That claim has since been removed but the party is moving forward with the panel, which will be hosted in the space where all celebrated scientific discussions take place: a local church.
The panel consists of one academic researcher, one researcher from an “institute” promoting vaccine hesitancy, a “radiation oncologist” who had his hospital privileges revoked in 2019, one practicing Calgary paediatrician, and a veterinarian.
No, that is not a typo. Joining the UCP’s panel on childhood vaccination fear factor is an actual veterinarian.
A few months back, I saw one of those movies from long, long ago pop up on one of my streaming services and I curled up with some fat-free but heavily seasoned Styrofoam-like snacks and was wistfully transported back to the carefree days of my youth.
In one scene, after fainting, Diane Keaton wakes up in a doctor’s office. Everything that has been overwhelming her for the past few months pours out as the doctor listens sympathetically. She hears a horse whinny and asks what that was. The doctor replies, “my next patient… I’m a vet.”
“You’re a what?” She squeals, as she jumps off the table.
“I’m a veterinarian.”
“I’m spilling my guts out to a vet?!”
“I thought you knew,” he replies.
“Based on what? What?!” She says incredulously. “You’re wearing a white jacket, you look like a real doctor, you’ve got diplomas, and a stethoscope…”
And that, in a nutshell, is the only logical reason I can think of that Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party felt Albertans would benefit from his presence on a panel to talk about childhood vaccinations.
UCP continues its power grab from local decision-makers
Bill 21 has hit the legislative assembly, detailing how the province will assume authority in the event that a municipality declares a state of emergency. It’s not unlike how, when a province declares a state of emergency, the federal government issues a statement that they are prepared to provide assistance at the province’s request.
Oh, wait; it’s not even remotely similar.
Rural municipalities have said they’re worried the move will cut them out of the process and expel them from the rooms where pertinent information that affects their constituents is reviewed and shared.
It’s almost as if they know they can’t trust the UCP government to tell them.
Rural Municipalities Association (RMA) President Paul McLauchlin says with the introduction of the third Bill aimed at usurping municipal authority, his members feel as though the UCP-led provincial government is “picking a fight with them”.
Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis responded that the province already has this power but wants to doubly and triply ensure municipalities understand that they have absolutely no authority to make any decision at the municipal-level, ever. Basically.
Alberta Hospital Services: if AHS can’t handle it, maybe the contracts can go to someone else
“Sure, we can grandfather in their contracts, for now, but then we would have the Alberta Health Quality Council do us an auditor function and tell us whether or not Alberta Health Services should continue running the Lougheed Hospital, or the Rocky View Hospital, or South (Health) Campus, or any of the hundred hospitals they currently run in the majority of the province.
And if they can’t meet the terms we want them to, we can do an RFP (Request for Proposal) and then the Alberta Health Insurance can give a different contract to a different group of doctors (because we have so many extras around) and a different group of patients (beg your pardon????) and a different entity to run all of our hospitals — and that is completely compliant with the Canada Health Act.
It’s a structure issue and a political will issue and we’ve got none of that, actually.”
-Danielle Smith, practicing her Monsters Inc. scare pose, pre-Premier
Sure, Danielle Smith Premier has said no one should listen to Danielle Smith pundit/radio host/purveyor of opinions because, as Premier, she could wipe the slate clean of her horrendous takes in the past. Except when she doesn’t.
And we’ll never know ahead of time if Premier Danielle is taking cues from pundit Danielle, because no matter what hat she assumes, Danielle Smith has no problem lying about what her decisions are based upon.
Take the ongoing saga of the renewable energy pause for example. Back in 2023, Smith claimed that both the Alberta Utilities Commission and Alberta Electricity Systems Operator asked for a pause, but that didn’t happen.
Despite the excellent digging by Drew Anderson, and evidence that neither organization asked for a pause but produced letters after the fact saying they would abide by the government’s decision, Smith continues to claim otherwise.
Unfortunately, the only way Smith could be held accountable is through the leadership review process and Albertans who are unhappy with Smith’s leadership voicing their opinion by purchasing a membership in the UCP to do so.
I’ve been through that can of worms before — partisanship prevents such participation in our political system, even if it effects every Albertan. But I digress.
On the matter of potentially outsourcing hospital administration to private interests, I have one word: Dynalife.
Rescuing the failed privatization plan for Alberta’s public lab services cost Albertans just shy of $100 million, and caused so many issues for doctors and patients that the company began lobbying the UCP to take it back.
Alberta’s Auditor General was set to look into the procurement and contracting processes back in October, slating the report’s release for early 2024, but it has yet to be published.
How much would rescuing a hundred hospitals cost? Who would be lost in the ensuing “mayhem”?
The only thing that should be run like a business is a business. Government is not a business and those who treat it like one somehow only use the power and access to public funds to enrich the private interests of their friends and donors.
Speaking of the stupidest things I heard last week
I accidentally misquoted.
Look, sometimes you need to have decision-makers, and more than one decision-maker. I guess I take a bit of a different view because I come from a world where I’ve looked at how free-enterprise works and in free-enterprise, the reason why you end up with innovation is because you’ve got a thousand different decision-makers— a thousand people trying a thousand different things.
~Danielle Smith on Alberta’s taxpayer-funded misinformation show, May 18, 2024
She comes “from a world where” — I wish I came from a world where the threat of my eyes getting stuck after rolling back into my head didn’t exist.
Yet another excellent segue to offer my periodic reminder that one of the intros to the Danielle Smith Show on QR770 was “there’s two sides to every story; and then there’s hers”: completely out to effing lunch.
I digress.
Smith was responding to a question about the move to add more managers to the new Health silos her government is creating. For giggles, I passed that clip around to a few people who had decision-maker experience within the “free enterprise system” and seriously enjoyed the almost universal reaction of utter disbelief.
I have to get my kicks somehow.
Canada
Winds of change
There’s been a consistent theme I’ve picked up on in Alberta: vengeance. When Jason Kenney led the UCP to government in 2019, the hammer swung swiftly to undo everything the NDP had brought in as government and, effectively, erase the memory of a non-conservative government from the Alberta consciousness.
The UCP did have to bring back some NDP policies that weren’t — apparently — attempts to ruin the province; however, it was all fine and good because the new legislation was introduced under a conservative government.
Before I get carried away, the point is simply that some conservatives are very, very angry, and one of the motivations for attaining government is with a desire to “get back at” Canadians who they feel betrayed them.
Federally, that would be “payback” for pandemic policies in support of the people who are still camping out on the side of the road, waving “Fcuk Trudeau” flags and lazing about with the like-minded and flexibly employed in defence of our rights and freedoms.
Being oblivious to this scattered but devoted “movement” is reasonable since most people have to work for a living.
Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada keeps in touch, however, and he’s now suggesting that a government led by him is open to bending the Charter to his will.
This desire is, of course, pay back for Trudeau invoking the Emergencies Act to clear the occupation in Ottawa in 2022, but Poilievre isn’t talking about using existing legislation to stomp on the rights of Canadians — he’s seeking to introduce a host of new legislation that will ignore Canadian’s rights within the law.
Harper tried this as well, and I’m sure that the bolder CPC of today has spent their time in opposition looking for the loopholes that will allow the “reasonable” limitation of rights — such as how pandemic policies were seen by the courts as a legitimate limitation of our freedoms due to the overarching issue of a global pandemic.
Potato/international monetary policy.
Final thoughts
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