From the opening bell last New Year’s Day, this has been a tumultuous, scandal-plagued, divisive year in Alberta politics.
Premier Danielle Smith can only hope 2024 doesn’t start the same way.
From the opening bell last New Year’s Day, this has been a tumultuous, scandal-plagued, divisive year in Alberta politics.
Premier Danielle Smith can only hope 2024 doesn’t start the same way.
In January, Smith took a phone call during which street preacher Artur Pawlowski pressured her to drop charges against him for his COVID protest activities.
The premier not only sympathized with Pawlowski’s request (although uncomfortably), she immediately consulted by phone with her then-Justice minister Tyler Shandro.
An ethics investigation ensued with the election creeping ever closer.
On May 19, right in mid-campaign, commissioner Marguerite Trussler released her report.
It found Smith had been in conflict of interest because she talked to Shandro. At the same time, Trussler ruled there was no evidence that Smith’s office communicated with Crown prosecutors to get charges dropped.
The NDP could hardly have invented a script more likely to damage the premier on voting day.
And yet, the polls never showed that the scandal was seriously hurting Smith and the UCP.
Some people liked her stance against COVID prosecutions and didn’t see anything wrong with talking to Pawlowski. Many conservatives dismissed the scandal as media-driven.
Along the bumpy road to the election, Smith also directed the government to buy children’s pain medication because of a shortage.
Five million bottles — from Turkey — cost the province $80 million. Delivery was much delayed. In the end, the whole experiment was an expensive flop.
Smith also fired the entire board of Alberta Health Services and installed Dr. John Cowell as official administrator. He was paid $360,000 for six months and then renewed for another term, same paycheque.
That was only the beginning of Smith’s uprooting of the AHS system.
April brought the first signs of a truly disastrous policy failure in health care — the inability of Dynalife Labs to provide timely testing at clinics in Calgary and across southern Alberta.
Late in 2022, the government had agreed to privatize southern testing, then in the hands of Alberta Precision Laboratories, the public body created by the NDP.
Dynalife had done that work successfully in Edmonton and the north for decades. But the expansion to southern Alberta was a fiasco, leaving patients unable to get simple lab appointments for weeks and even months.
The government threw support at Dynalife but the problems persisted.
August brought a dramatic conclusion; Health Minister Adriana LaGrange announced that Dynalife would leave lab testing entirely. The company was withdrawing not just from southern Alberta, but from Edmonton and the north.
This surely cost the government a great deal of money. But no details are public of the costs, process or what went wrong with the contract announced early in the year.
Many other pre-election challenges were flying at Smith, mostly from her past. She promised nobody would ever pay personally for health care, but her own record showed she supported private payment, even writing a university paper about it.
She favoured an Alberta pension plan but abruptly stopped talking about it as the election approached. It was not included in the party platform.
By election day, some UCP supporters and even MLAs saw Smith as their biggest problem. But on May 29, the party captured 48 seats to the NDP’s 38.
One reason was surely the premier’s introduction of the Sovereignty Act the previous December. For her large anti-Ottawa base, this offset other issues.
In March, the government brought in a crowd-pleaser for many UCP adherents, a bill that claims to remove all firearms enforcement from federal control, even saying that federal officials cannot seize weapons in Alberta.
The UCP stopped collecting 13 cents per litre of gasoline tax and extended that break to Dec. 31. It deferred some electricity costs, although the savings would have to be repaid when rates dropped.
The UCP led off its election campaign with a promise to lower personal income tax on income up to $60,000. This would save individuals more than $700 a year, and families more than $1,500.
Those pocketbook measures probably did the trick for the UCP, although the NDP hurt its own chances by promising to raise taxes on big companies. This was no campaign to talk about hiking anybody’s expenses.
Since the election, Smith has reverted to many of her previous plans.
The pension scheme is pressed resolutely by the government, with $7.5 million in advertising and a panel that technically consults but doesn’t care to meet Albertans in person.
Just before Christmas, Smith and Finance Minister Nate Horner said the income tax break will probably be phased in over several years, not applied all at once as most people expected from the original promise.
In November, she announced that giant Alberta Health Services will be responsible only for acute care rather than most of the provincial health system.
AHS will be co-equal with three new authorities overseeing primary care, continuing care, and mental health and addictions.
This strips AHS of overall provincial health responsibility that it assumed in 2008.
During the COVID pandemic, many people in rural Alberta blamed AHS for restrictions.
The premier shares that distaste, both for the reach of AHS and its bureaucratic padding.
Smith has also ramped up her attack on Ottawa climate measures, especially electricity regulations and the new emissions cap for the oil and gas industry.
She demands the resignation of federal Climate Change and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, saying he is “treacherous” and impossible to work with.
In late November, the government finally introduced a motion for action under the Sovereignty Act.
It empowers provincial officials not to co-operate with federal regulations regarding net-zero electricity.
This year began with Danielle Smith in trouble and ends with her firmly in charge. But tranquillity is not in the cards for 2024.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Quebec wants to curb excessive tipping.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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