Alberta’s shambolic health-care system is once again in flux. The CEO of Alberta Health Services, the agency that manages a large part of that province’s health care, is gone.
Dr. Verna Yiu, a well regarded kidney-disease specialist, has quit, resigned, left or been fired, depending on who you listen to. NDP health critic David Shepherd says Yiu was fired because she was targeted by the extreme right wing of Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party.
Apparently, Yiu was unpopular in rural circles for her strong advocacy of COVID mask mandates, a stance UCP MLA Dan Williams likened to holding “a knife to the throat” of remote communities.
The thinking behind this scenario is that Premier Jason Kenney, who’s currently undergoing a hostile leadership review, wanted to placate his party’s right wing.
Whatever the real story may be, Yiu is only the last in a string of CEOs at Alberta Health Services to leave early.
When AHS was first set up in 2008 (more of that in a moment), the first CEO, Dr. Stephen Duckett, lasted a bare 18 months. He was dismissed supposedly for refusing to answer a reporter’s question because he was “eating a cookie.”
He brandished the offending comestible to make his point.
Duckett’s own version was that he had been told not to answer politically oriented media inquiries. Three board members followed him out the door, protesting political interference in the board’s activities.
Duckett was replaced by Dr. Chris Eagle, who left after three years. He was followed by Vickie Kaminski, who was gone after 18 months.
Then followed Verna Yiu, now also departed.
This revolving-door approach to managing has dogged the province’s health-care system.
In the early 1990s, then-premier Ralph Klein abolished some 250 hospital, long-term care and public-health boards, replacing them with 17 regional health authorities.
This made some kind of sense. In a time of intense budget cutting, few if any of these small independent agencies had the in-house expertise to achieve the required economies. B.C. adopted a similar model, as did most other provinces.
In 2004, those 17 boards were reduced to nine. Again, this made a degree of sense. It was asking a lot of 17 separate health authorities to manage the significant downsizing then underway.
However, in 2008, the province blew up all nine boards and replaced them with one single authority, Alberta Health Services. And this made no sense.
The point of regionalization was to maintain some degree of sensitivity to the differing needs of urban and rural communities. This important function was lost by consolidating the entire delivery system in just one set of hands.
Moreover, if you’re going to centralize operations in this way, why not just dump them in the Health Ministry? As it is, you have two competing bureaucracies with roughly similar mandates, constantly vying for supremacy.
And it didn’t end there.
At the outset, the province’s hospital labs were in public hands. Then some were privatized. Then brought back into public hands. Then privatized again.
Adding to the disarray, in 2013, the health minister fired the entire board of Alberta Health Services, and appointed an administrator. Five senior executives were then dismissed. Six months later, that administrator was replaced. Two more followed in rapid succession.
In this manner, a succession of Alberta governments brought the province’s health-care system to its knees.
Moreover, the motivation for these constant changes was entirely political. No respectable rationale was ever presented for the endless pandemonium imposed upon the system.
If you’re wondering why Kenney has the worst approval rating among the premiers for his handling of the COVID crisis, look no further.
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.
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.
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.
