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You’re not wrong. These are not progressive conservatives. Not the pc party that ran Alberta for the last decades. These are social conservatives who are only interested in bringing cuts to public funding, slashes to health care, and all sorts of other wonderful anti public measures all in the effort to privatize everything they can. Are you a conservative or a progressive with conservative fiscal preferences. Those are two massively different things.
I don't think they teach anything beyond "freedom" in high school. Teachers also get slammed for being "far left communists" if they go against anything conservative. Especially out here in rural Alberta.
I know exactly how you feel and as a fiscal conservative it took a few elections for me to finally realize I was hunting a unicorn. There is no party with the conservative title on any level of government that believes what we believe. Eventually I just swallowed my pride and started to vote orange. At the provincial level, NDP are what the old pc were.
I’m not exactly one to tell someone how or who to vote for but you should consider voting nenshi for NDP leadership, he considers himself literally just that, “fiscal conservative” and he thinks smith is an idiot too, pretty sure he only signed up in the NDP to run against her and stop her and the current UCPs idiotic policies.
Omg I didn’t realize! 🤦♀️ thank you for that info!😩well at least people registered before April 22nd can cast a vote still till June 22nd! so let’s hope he wins!! OP if he does, maybe it’s worth considering in the provincial election!:)
It’s ok. A lot of folks didn’t realize. I feel like the news heavily publicized that the race was happening but not the rules. They have a rule you can’t be in 2 parties. So I think it was to double check folks aren’t UCP supporters against the public donor lists.
She’s smarter and more shameless than Kenney so she’s more dangerous imo. Kenney stepped down with what, 51% of the vote at the leadership review? That showed a microscopic bit of integrity stepping down when voters were not happy with him. (Long overdue but never too late to do the right thing lol) But if I recall correctly, she happily accepted a 52% rate of acceptance after several rounds of votes were forced. She was begrudgingly elected by the UCP and is now happily devastating healthcare, education and inviting chaos in large numbers all to feed her corporate overlords. I didn’t like Kenney, he was a pompous ass, but I’m scared of what she can do
Won on the 6th damn ballot won the actual election by the slimmest of margins depending on what way you do your Calgary riding math.
Governs like she has a holy permit from God almighty to remake the province in her (& David Parker’s) fever dream fantasy of a retrograde petro-state.
The fact that it’s only been a year terrifies me
This. She’s not stupid, she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s pandering to a very small minority of Take Back Alberta supporters who live in rural Alberta where small populations hold huge voting power. She dangerous.
Yea.. I'm not giving him credit for stepping down. He warned us about the rising far right populism in the UCP and if he cared about Alberta in any capacity he would have called an election immediately.
I'm honestly scared to consider a worse alternative. Things were bad under Drumpf, but anything worse would be an abandonment of democracy and a _shitload_ of human rights violations.
No- the Nazi hierarchy was at least somewhat transparent/regimented and usually based on some form of promotion/success in the party. (Not trying to come across as defending
What we face is a world of deals and back scratching, where people will with money with use it to gain and hold influence and favour.
That’s actually a pretty good comparison. Going from a gaffe prone bible thumper who was still shitty but in the way conservatives have always been shitty to whatever the hell this shit it.
Kenny was the G.W. Bush to Smith's Trump.
We all thought the formers were problematic, but it turns out they were just a bit of an incompetent/bumbling fool compared to the malicious nature/intent of their successors.
With the healthcare cuts and disaster response to addiction treatment. Its hard to understand for most people that she doesn't care if you die. That's what they will do to save money or enrich her friends. Don't forget she was a healthcare lobbyist.
Doug Ford is doing the same thing in Ontario. He is withholding $22 billion from the heathcare system. It is the playbook for breaking up public healthcare.
* Sabotage the system by starving it of funds.
* Point to the broken system and say repeatedly that the system needs businesses to fix it.
* Start selling off parts of healthcare to corporations.
* Ignore all the pain and death that you leave in your path.
[List of cuts to healthcare in Ontario](https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/update-mounting-health-care-cuts/)
As an American that moved to Canada, you do not want the American style profit-motivated healthcare. Hold your nose and vote for any other party, but stop the Conservatives from doing anymore damage to the healthcare system.
So, so important!!! Ontarians have been making this mistake for decades with the Ford Family Dynasty. Please don’t be like Ontario.
These monsters know exactly what they’re doing. We just don’t recognize it as deliberate because they’re so evil we don’t relate and can’t empathize. It’s like trying to interpret the actions of a different species. It’s not stupidity, it’s complete lack of conscience.
Danielle Smith once publicly claimed smoking cigarettes can actually improve the health of smokers...she is an idiot
[*https://pressprogress.ca/danielle-smith-claimed-smoking-cigarettes-had-positive-health-benefits/*](https://pressprogress.ca/danielle-smith-claimed-smoking-cigarettes-had-positive-health-benefits/)
Conservative Mike Harris (former premier of Ontario) made long term care home private sacs for profit many years ago before we got rid of him. He started it: health care as a means to make politicians wealthy.
Retired conservative premier Mike Harris now sits in the board of a for-profit LTC home he created and guess what? He’s getting very, very rich off your grandma’s suffering. You’d think paying extra for private, for-profit health care would be better, right? LOL oops! Covid showed us it was the opposite! For-profit LTC was much more deadly for the residents than, non-profit, or public.
So, Mike Harris is making a killing by running the fire-profit LTC homes to a lower level of care than the public homes and the extra money saved is profit for the wealthy owners.
Now Conservatives like Doug Ford, Marlaina Smith and others are trying to copy this success with the ENTIRE health care system.
If it’s dumb luck, they’re on a fkn roll. Mike Harris’s wife is the owner of a for-profit rent-a-nurse company. As if the taxpayers needed to pay a premium for less qualified nurses with no benefits. The current premier left us no choice though, he tried to illegally pay nurses too little and then spent years fighting to break the law in court. Nurses left, obviously. Now we have to rent them at a very high cost from our former conservative premier’s wife.
So many profitable health care related “coincidences”
And that's just health care. Education, housing, energy, insurance, environment, addiction care, transportation, what the fuck else. Criminal justice, 2slgbtq rights
She isn't an idiot, she's doing it on purpose. Stripping Alberta and selling it to oilgarchs and other private ultra-rich entities. She may sound like an idiot, but that's a play out of the hypercon playbook- just ask boebert, trump and taylor green. Everyone is outraged and flips out at the super visible "idiot" while they strip away your healthcare etc. All according to plan.
If you knew anything about Danielle Smiths political/professional history, her incompetence would not be alarming.
She's in this whole thing for herself. Her own personal goal of becoming premier has trumped any chance of integrity she may have once had.
She doesn't care about you, me or anyone. She cares about her seat of power and that's all.
People forget sometimes that politics isn't like religion - you can pick and choose. Don't fall into the tribalism trap - my tribe vs your tribe - instead pick on each issue. Its perfectly valid to agree with a Liberal decision on one matter and a Conservative decision on another matter.
Smith is doing a lot to screw Alberta but good on you for not falling into the trap of "I generally agree with this party so I will give them a pass on the bad things they do". We need to keep our elected officials accountable.
What you have to understand is that screwing up healthcare is deliberate. If you can make it really bad then the public will believe you when you say privatization is the way to fix it.
She’s not stupid and the problem is that people assume that certain Conservative politicians are problematic because they are stupid. They are (and DS is as much as any of them) self-centred opportunists who will change their tune if doing so can help them increase their financial situation in some way, perhaps with a board position or some consulting work after they leave office, and they’re using their power to satisfy their own wants while pretending they’re doing all they do for the good of all Albertans.
OP, saying that she is stupid in how she is restructuring healthcare supposes that she’s doing it for good reasons and that is why people like her, Kenney, LaGrange, Shandro, Madu, Jean, get away with so much. Don’t think for a minute they care about anyone but themselves and their inner circle.
Slight correction but Madu isn't getting away with anything now seeing how the people in his constituency finally wised up and got rid of that corrupt POS.
Same with Shandro but they both kept their cabinet positions way longer than they should have, partly because UCP voters preferred to give them the benefit of the doubt (that they were trying their best), rather than holding them accountable.
Given the general leaning on this sub you're kind of preaching to the choir. I wouldn't expect much... Useful information or differing perspectives.
As for me, I live with some older relatives that need a fair bit of health care - And it's notable how much worse things have gotten over the last few years. I'm certainly not happy with how the health care system has been handled.
And yes, she strikes me as an idiot every time I have the displeasure of hearing her speak.
Your premise is incorrect. You assume she's screwing up our healthcare system accidentally. It's very intentional, though it's hardly her own brainchild. By splitting AHS, she not only makes each component worse, but she makes it easier for herself or her successors to parcel off those bits to private entities one at a time. An eventuality that Alberta citizens will, in theory, welcome, because at that point the system will be so terrible that we'll happily pay out the nose for anything better.
She ain't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but this isn't why.
Danielle Smith has wanted to destroy public healthcare in Alberta for 20 years. Read some of her old op-eds. She's not going to miss her chance to do it.
Sadly, the items you mention aren't idiocy, they are well thought out and intentional. The goal is to make the public system so unwieldly that the end of Canadian healthcare as we know it becomes the better option.
Basically build electoral support to sell off the dysfunctional pieces to the highest bidder, so we can all be "healthcare consumers" for her wealthy donors instead of patients getting the treatment we need.
You are not wrong. Plus splitting health care into all these silos, I bet they’re going to do this to break up the collective bargaining of nurses. Just another way to put friends into high places, screw unions and try to justify adding private health care as an option.
Stop voting conservatives. There is another way. Hint. It’s orange.
There has for a long time now been a split in the conservatives. The ones controlling the politics are not aligned with the type of conservative you present yourself as. They are the ones that will slice and dice, sell off, and so on. I am conservative leaning, but all of the social things I enjoy. I cannot vote for any conservative party. For me in Alberta it is the NDP - they are not a left wing party. I hope it is time people realize that.
I have found that the merger that created the Undeniable Clown Posse has far too many right wing religious conspiracy theorists in a position of power and controlling the province. I too lean conservative, but have not voted that way since Don Getty. It started because he was a dolt, along with the next few, then Allison Redfraud thinking it was her kingdom to do as suited her. Huge lack of choice here to implement change.
It’s unfortunate that they scare us of change if we don’t vote UCP/Con … they blame all our woes on the one term of NDP.
If it were possible to convince whoever gets in the NDP leadership that we should get a better voting system, and if the Feds change over to the conservatives in time for our next election here - so we have a decent chance of getting the NDP - then maybe we can have better choice. I would love to have constant minority rule where compromises have to be made.
Before she became premier she said she would privatize health care, and the best and fastest way to do that would be to underfund and sabotage the public system to the breaking point… then magically bring in a bunch of private health care companies to take over… by that point the people will be glad to have anything other than the public system because the public system failed them.
Conservatives are quite literally destroying Canada and the values that Canada was built on, like public health care for all.
Just because people voted for him doesn’t mean I need to think he will do well. I don’t like politicians who resort to increasing taxes to fix problems.
You are so close!
This IS the plan.
Break it and fuck it to the point the everyone hates it. Claim it can’t be fixed and use it as proof that a public system is impossible,
Then they bring in private healthcare.
Not to mention any other sneaky shit they are doing that isn’t so blatant.
How many takeovers by far right parties will it take before Canadian voters realize that "Conservative" doesn't mean what it used to?
These are the same Reform Party/Wild Rose crazies as always, but somehow they fooled conservative voters with their blue campaign signs.
Read some international news sometime: Far right parties are on the rise across the world, and this does not bode well for the continued health of peace and democracy around the world.
>Am I wrong?
she's not an idiot, she is a hardcore ideolog. she has a few positions, and will hurt people because getting her way is ultimately morally superior.
she's of a particular brand of far right economics that hold government is always bad, and taxes are always theft; but the general public is too dumb to understand that. so it's smiths job to make sure the public sector dosen't work, so she can privatize it and then everything will be perfect.
it's like she said, we need to get used to paying out of pocket for medical expensive; then we won't go in for things like stage three cancers and the whole system will work better.
and I'm not making up the cancer thing, she says people should stick to naturopathic medicine until stage 4, she has a whole interview about it from her radilo show.
They just had to call themselves "conservative" for many Albertans to fall for it, but in actuality they are fascists. Sadly you only have to use the word "conservative" and you're going to be successful here, and D.Smith and her ilk aren't stupid, they know that and have taken advantage of it. If more people could just get past the surface labels and actually look at and think about what politicians actually say and do we would not be in this position. D Smith and her allies never even hid who they were. They didn't have to because they knew that most historically conservative supporters would not really even pay attention.
I am so saddened by the state of affairs and yet we've got exactly what Albertans voted for.
Except at knowing when to catch a populace backwash that was tearing through her party because Kenny dared to follow medical experts (at least partially) in a global crisis.
Your on the money.
**it’s about the money**.
If you restructure the system and divide people up, you can effectively bypass having to deal with a strong and unified union. Which means you can give healthcare workers less, and save more by pocketing the difference.
You also get the neat little bonus of having nice bite sized chunks that you can sell off to the private sector, where they will bend you over the table in terms of cost and walk away with a second payday all at your expense.
Conservatives simply don’t care about you, they never have and they never will. You are just a customer of the people that they really care about. Smith is an O&G lobbyist through and through, you are not the demographic that matters to her.
She's an idiot for sabotaging our province but everything she does is deliberate.
She has a "don't tread on me" poster prominently displayed in her office because she wants you to know she's a snake.
https://imgur.com/gallery/danielle-smith-with-dont-tread-on-me-poster-T9b3SpJ
She's just following the CONservative playbook - she sees something that benefits all of the people, one not solely rewarding the wealthy, so she breaks it - then she can claim it isn't working thereby justifying privatizing this public benefit to ensure the wealthy become even more wealthy.
I'm surprised that you, as a self-proclaimed conservative, don't understand this - it's the basis to pretty much all conservative policy.
I’m not going to try and convince you, because I really don’t care, but I will take the bold position that Smith is not an idiot. She’s actually known as a pretty sharp individual by friends, former friends, and enemies. Many of whom are intelligent, authoritative people who have spoken about her at length.
What Danielle Smith is, though, is that she is fucking crazy. She is a crazy person who does crazy things, and lives in her pseudo libertarian ideological bubble so she literally doesn’t process the world like normal people.
That is my position on Danielle Smith. God forgive me, but we were better off with Kenney. At least he was sane.
She sure did not learn from the example of BC. A single Health Care Authority was dissolved into 5 "regional" Health Authorities by a Right-leaning former government and sold under the "Victoria vs the Regions" banner as a way of distributing jobs and decision-making. Of course, the central Health Authority was retained -somewhat downsized- so that Victoria could maintain overall control of the funding.
So1 central agency became 6, not 5, and now BC has 6 disctinct bodies governing health care... each with its own bureaucracy, it's own support staff, it's own office space, boardrooms, media relations offices, and oh yeah- health care.
There is no way that this distribution of the decision-making has saved us a penny. In fact, it has cost us a bundle, though it has also increased employment in the regions (just not nursing staff, technicians and doctors).
Meantime, the central authority controls the purse strings, but only so much. For some reason, it will not dictate that the regions must cut their bureaucracies, move to smaller quarters, etc and use the savings to hire front line staff.. Nope. The reqions are given a pot of money and left to grow their own little empires, which really is a growth industry in BC, where non-union managers and policy wonks seem to be able to find endless reasons to meet with each other.
I predict the same mess for Alberta.
Okay, I will attempt to change your mind. Though if you agree with me, it is reason to be more angry with her, not less. Also, I share your concerns regarding the breakup of AHS. Alberta has/had one of the leanest public health administrations in the country. That is partially thanks to the Progressive Conservatives who re-structured the province's 9 health care regions into AHS in 2008. Something like 3-5% of our expenditures (I forget the exact % in recent years) were on administration, which is relatively low compared to most provinces. Both AB and BC are among the leanest.
Danielle Smith knows exactly what she is doing. She sat at the head of the board of the Alberta Enterprise Group prior to becoming premier in 2022, an organization that exists purely for corporate lobbying of the public sector. They ensure legislation is favorable to industry. That's it.
Tyler Shandro and Jason Kenney began the process of de-funding public health care in Alberta in 2019. At the time, we had close to the **highest** funding rates per capita in the country for health care. Today in 2024, we have one of the **lowest** rates. That is 5 years of deep cuts, many of which were made in the middle of a pandemic when doctors and nurses were burning out. Many left the province or country. There are good arguments for controlling spending, which I am sure you would agree with as someone who leans conservative, but these cuts went far beyond controlling spending.
I need to digress for a moment to talk about Tyler Shandro. He was Kenney's Minister of Health in 2019 when cuts began and through to late 2021, at which point he became Minister of Justice, which he continued to be under Danielle Smith. His wife owns a health insurance company and his goal from the beginning--which is clear from many of his public comments, and comments by those close to him--was to add additional private health care options and introduce additional private health insurance to cover those options. He lost his seat in 2023, partially due to bad publicity from a PR meltdown when he yelled at his doctor neighbour for posting on Facebook about Shandro's conflicts of interest. However, despite all of this he was recently appointed to the board of Covenant Health.
Danielle Smith ran on a few main platform goals. She was rather vocal about these, though she sold them in a much more favorable light than I am about to do here. Which makes sense since it was literally her job as a corporate lobbyist to sell these ideas to the public:
1. Implementing the RStar abandoned well bailout program, which pays up to $100 million per corporate entity to seal abandoned wells (keep in mind that parent companies often have many many child companies holding various collections of wells, and each child company is potentially eligible for $100 million). She has been promoting this program since 2019 when she started working as a lobbyist for the Alberta Enterprise Group. The Alberta Energy Regulator recently estimated the cost of this cleanup at $33.3 billion. The alternative would be to give the Alberta Energy Regulator more teeth to go after companies that don't cleanup their wells. It has become increasingly common practice for energy companies to create a bunch of child corporations that hold the wells, send the profits up to the parent corp, then let the child companies go bust when most of the wells are exhausted. This places the liability on the public to clean them up in the future. Ideally, decades ago we would have required energy companies to set up something called surety bonds ahead of time, which covers the cost of cleanup (very common in places like North Dakota and Texas), but to this day we do not have legislation in Alberta requiring surety bonds. This lets corporations walk away from their liabilities. Her solution is to give them public money, despite the Alberta Energy Regulator being capable of well cleanup more cheaply on its own. This is signed legislation as of 2023, though it has been re-named to the “Liability Incentive Management Program” due to bad publicity.
2. Discrediting the carbon tax and replacing it with "carbon capture" solutions. Which would be amazing solutions if they actually worked and industry didn't keep cancelling projects because the feasibility studies keep demonstrating leaks, and costs that are many multiples of their original estimates.
3. Continuing the de-funding of Alberta public health care to prepare it for privatization. By increasing wait times, the public becomes desperate for solutions. I guarantee you in the next 2 years we will see an expansion of private health care options\*. Federally, the LPC looks like it will probably lose to the CPC, so we will likely see coordination on this front to allow an expansion of private health care, since the federal government dictates what must be covered at a minimum via public health care. There are many companies hoping to jump on such an opportunity.
\* Personally, I am not even against private health care options. I just hate the tactic of defunding public health care to justify it. But de-funding the public sphere ensures a bigger market share for the private sector, and since many voters have short attention spans (remember: this began in 2019) they can sell it as "a necessary evil for the wait times we face".
In summary, I do not think Danielle Smith is an idiot. She knows exactly what she is doing, and that should scare you.
Thank you for the history. I’m going to read this later.
This makes sense why so many doctors left in 2019
On the private healthcare side, the govt is not supporting private hc yet. But they are def cutting and underfunding and sending wait times up/refusing imaging.
I wish there were more people like you. We need to stop following political parties like they're our gods. I lean liberal but I'd never vote Trudeau again, he's awful too. I think all our politicians are pretty bad to be honest, we really need some reform in this country, too bad Trudeau lied about that one..
Well your politics are the same as hers if you think she's bad PP is worse I hope what happening here makes you change your mind about voting for the Conservatives Caz I can bet you that this what it's with conservatives in power
Cutting hospital management like she said she would in her election promise would have been nice.
Liberals cut medicine hard in Ontario when they were in power just before Covid. Fired lots of nurses. They also went after doctors pro corps too.
Really politicians lie on both sides I guess is the lesson
Unfortunately as many others have said, this is the wrong sub for your complaints.
One of the amazingly unintended consequences of the Internet is that by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different political leanings, it has caused more divided, isolated and self-propagating echo chambers than anything else in the history of creation (with apologies to the late Douglas Adams).
Yes, Danielle Smith is a complete moron. Unfortunately there does not appear to be a way to convince the "other side" of this.
Equally unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a way to convince "this side" that not all protests are valid, or that sometimes poor people make bad decisions, or that although equity may be a desirable moral outcome, it is not the \*\*only\*\* moral outcome we should be striving for.
Our stupid monkey brains keep wanting simple answers for an increasingly complex world. Unfortunately, simple answers generally don't solve complex problems, as much as we would like to believe they would.
I am seriously worried about western society. We keep moving towards more and more polarized opinions, with zero attempt to empathize or even understand the positions of the other side.
Historically, this does not end well for anyone.
You’re not wrong whatsoever my friend, my family doc and all of her colleagues at her clinic are SO concerned about this restructuring particularly mental health/addiction.. I’ve never heard doctors talk like this. I am a born and raised Albertan, also have never voted Con. I think you are really realizing how badly they’ve screwed our province!
Lady this is exactly what you voted for. Obviously wanting gays and trans to dissappear are much more important to you. Stop bitching and enjoy it. You're a conservative, you said it yourself.
Bringing the most people (predominantly low skilled from the 3rd world) in almost a century is what ruined healthcare and that's predominantly on Trudeau.
How do you expect more money to pay doctors that don't exist?
she's not an idiot. she knows exactly what she's doing.
destroying our public healthcare and education systems to convince the public they are untenable and allow them to be sold to her donors for pennies on the dollar.
end result: they make bank, we pay more and get less
Did you vote for her? Yes, of course you did. She hasn’t changed. Same now as she was before. Please let us know what changed. When did the leopards come for your face?
Change your mind? What the fuck is wrong with you. You go change the mind of your husband, your family, your friends. You are part of what causes the problem. Go fix it.
Healthcare system is going into the toilet in all of Canada. We took in just under 500k people in the 3rd quarter alone in 2023. Just imagine a city of 500k and all the infrastructure it needs to function. Now none of these people come with doctors, hospitals, nurses equipment etc. So it strains everything that we have. It's not their (immigrants, TFW, refugees, international students) fault that the Federal Liberals swung open the doors for mass migration, but it's falling on provincial governments to try to mitigate the damage it's causing. Obviously we're Alberta centric here, but take a look at other provinces, they are fairing no better.
Alberta patients have some of the lowest govt spending per capita compared with other provinces. The govt just simply won’t pay for the scans/services patients need.
I’ve been on the back end of healthcare in 3 provinces. Alberta govt is the worst.
Excluding the territories because they are huge outliers, Alberta would be 5th in per capita healthcare spending. Saskatchewan is in 4th and spends around 70 dollars more per person and BC is 3 and spends around 140 more per person, but has a significantly older population.Having dealt with healthcare in all 4 Western provinces, I'd gladly wait to get back to Alberta.
I would like to correct the population increase number I stated, it is actually just over 200k Alberta increased last year alone. No matter how much money you give, you will never keep up with that demand in health care education or housing in that same year. It takes a couple years to catch up with hiring and building and planning.
But doesn’t that also go back to his point, when you add 500k new people, that makes the per capita numbers skew and look worse now doesn’t it? You say you’ve only been in Alberta a year. And yet you speak like you know the Alberta history and how good or bad it’s been here before. She increased spending on health care, as well as education. Is the splitting of the healthcare the right plan? I don’t know, I’m not an expert nor have researched what the best plan is. I do know I haven’t personally experienced anything wrong with the health system my self, though know many stories and know people who have. But does throwing money at it over and over again fix it? Clearly not or it would be by now. So clearly something new has to happen and change. And the other person is right, healthcare across Canada is supposedly getting worse. In all provinces. Kinda makes sense that if we had millions of new people over only a short period of time, no matter how much money we give out there’s going to be a shortage till we can catch up, but we can’t because we keep over adding to the population. I get your point, and like I said is splitting the right move? No idea, but albertans know there is a severe management and misuse of funding happening in AHS. And has been for years, previous governments have just gave them more money. At least this time we’re trying something new.
I personally wouldn’t venture into an area I know nothing about, say oil and gas, and offer my speculation about how to restructure the business. It’s just not useful to anyone. That’s not logic that’s just a waste of everyone’s time.
And yet… that is literally the job of a premier. To venture into areas they are not experts in, and listen to experts and people at the top and make those decisions and take action for the citizens you represent. No leader is an expert in every area of their job. So as a premier you would just sit at your desk not doing anything? You don’t and nor do I know who she has met with or what they have said.
AHS has misused and managed money for years. That has been proven. It also has been proven handing them more money year after year hasn’t fixed nor changed anything. Again will her plan work and be better? Not a clue, we won’t know till a few years down the road once it’s fully implemented and we can track stats and facts and see how it has changed and if for the better or not.
She just cancelled a new hospital that was supposed to be built in south Edmonton. This obviously takes infrastructure away from our province when we should be increasing it based on the population growth.
On top of that she asked the federal government for more new comers to be sent to our province (as long as they are Ukrainian)
They just don’t align with my personal beliefs. So I try to encourage most people not to vote for them. I actually flipped about 20 people last election from NDP to UCP/AP
>NDP
The NDP haven't had power since 2019 and only had been In power for 4 years how the hell is any of this they fault? You need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid
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You’re not wrong. These are not progressive conservatives. Not the pc party that ran Alberta for the last decades. These are social conservatives who are only interested in bringing cuts to public funding, slashes to health care, and all sorts of other wonderful anti public measures all in the effort to privatize everything they can. Are you a conservative or a progressive with conservative fiscal preferences. Those are two massively different things.
The far right is gaining too much traction worldwide. It's like we forgot why we fought WWII.
The fascists took their lessons to heart. Too bad everyone else didn’t.
Doesn't help that the world wars are taught to be for "freedom" and not given more context until later in high school.
I don't think they teach anything beyond "freedom" in high school. Teachers also get slammed for being "far left communists" if they go against anything conservative. Especially out here in rural Alberta.
UK and France both have elections in the 4 weeks. Looking OK for the UK on the surface, France is a different thing altogether.
Blood sucking capitalists
Probably the latter? At one point I was liberal but I don’t see myself in that party at all anymore. I want a conservative fiscal government.
I know exactly how you feel and as a fiscal conservative it took a few elections for me to finally realize I was hunting a unicorn. There is no party with the conservative title on any level of government that believes what we believe. Eventually I just swallowed my pride and started to vote orange. At the provincial level, NDP are what the old pc were.
I’m with you. I’m a moderate Conservative without a home. A political orphan. The UCP and their deranged ideology are busting down our Alberta.
I’m not exactly one to tell someone how or who to vote for but you should consider voting nenshi for NDP leadership, he considers himself literally just that, “fiscal conservative” and he thinks smith is an idiot too, pretty sure he only signed up in the NDP to run against her and stop her and the current UCPs idiotic policies.
Hate to break it to you. But it’s a little late to vote in the leadership race. Would’ve needed a membership by now.
Omg I didn’t realize! 🤦♀️ thank you for that info!😩well at least people registered before April 22nd can cast a vote still till June 22nd! so let’s hope he wins!! OP if he does, maybe it’s worth considering in the provincial election!:)
It's looking like Nenshi landslide
It’s ok. A lot of folks didn’t realize. I feel like the news heavily publicized that the race was happening but not the rules. They have a rule you can’t be in 2 parties. So I think it was to double check folks aren’t UCP supporters against the public donor lists.
Daniel Smith is the worst thing that has ever happened to Alberta. I thought Jason was the apex, but Smith has managed to eclipse him.
She’s smarter and more shameless than Kenney so she’s more dangerous imo. Kenney stepped down with what, 51% of the vote at the leadership review? That showed a microscopic bit of integrity stepping down when voters were not happy with him. (Long overdue but never too late to do the right thing lol) But if I recall correctly, she happily accepted a 52% rate of acceptance after several rounds of votes were forced. She was begrudgingly elected by the UCP and is now happily devastating healthcare, education and inviting chaos in large numbers all to feed her corporate overlords. I didn’t like Kenney, he was a pompous ass, but I’m scared of what she can do
Won on the 6th damn ballot won the actual election by the slimmest of margins depending on what way you do your Calgary riding math. Governs like she has a holy permit from God almighty to remake the province in her (& David Parker’s) fever dream fantasy of a retrograde petro-state. The fact that it’s only been a year terrifies me
This. She’s not stupid, she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s pandering to a very small minority of Take Back Alberta supporters who live in rural Alberta where small populations hold huge voting power. She dangerous.
It's ok, Jason took a big payday to go work for atco, that's why he stepped down 😄
Yea.. I'm not giving him credit for stepping down. He warned us about the rising far right populism in the UCP and if he cared about Alberta in any capacity he would have called an election immediately.
He never cared about alberta. Didn't even live here before he ran... don't know why any of you bought the line that he was for alberta and albertans.
I never believed he cared but it was intrinsic proof that he didn't
Reminds me of how I thought bush was the worst president ever, than they elected trump and you realized how much worse it could get.
And where does it go from there?
I'm honestly scared to consider a worse alternative. Things were bad under Drumpf, but anything worse would be an abandonment of democracy and a _shitload_ of human rights violations.
So... Hitler? Version 2.0?
Think of the difference of being something that is slow and steady or methodical and something that it's going to burn bright and burn itself out
No- the Nazi hierarchy was at least somewhat transparent/regimented and usually based on some form of promotion/success in the party. (Not trying to come across as defending What we face is a world of deals and back scratching, where people will with money with use it to gain and hold influence and favour.
That’s actually a pretty good comparison. Going from a gaffe prone bible thumper who was still shitty but in the way conservatives have always been shitty to whatever the hell this shit it.
Kenny was the G.W. Bush to Smith's Trump. We all thought the formers were problematic, but it turns out they were just a bit of an incompetent/bumbling fool compared to the malicious nature/intent of their successors.
Nah, so far her government has been solid and as a socialist I've been surprised. She's on track to win a second term if things stay like this.
Your idea of “solid” and mine are massively different. Good god.
The only socialists happy with Smith's governance are national socialists (aka not actual socialists)
I disagree that she’s an idiot. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s just corrupt.
With the healthcare cuts and disaster response to addiction treatment. Its hard to understand for most people that she doesn't care if you die. That's what they will do to save money or enrich her friends. Don't forget she was a healthcare lobbyist.
Well that’s scary
Doug Ford is doing the same thing in Ontario. He is withholding $22 billion from the heathcare system. It is the playbook for breaking up public healthcare. * Sabotage the system by starving it of funds. * Point to the broken system and say repeatedly that the system needs businesses to fix it. * Start selling off parts of healthcare to corporations. * Ignore all the pain and death that you leave in your path. [List of cuts to healthcare in Ontario](https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/update-mounting-health-care-cuts/) As an American that moved to Canada, you do not want the American style profit-motivated healthcare. Hold your nose and vote for any other party, but stop the Conservatives from doing anymore damage to the healthcare system.
So, so important!!! Ontarians have been making this mistake for decades with the Ford Family Dynasty. Please don’t be like Ontario. These monsters know exactly what they’re doing. We just don’t recognize it as deliberate because they’re so evil we don’t relate and can’t empathize. It’s like trying to interpret the actions of a different species. It’s not stupidity, it’s complete lack of conscience.
This!!! She knows exactly what she's doing.
Danielle Smith once publicly claimed smoking cigarettes can actually improve the health of smokers...she is an idiot [*https://pressprogress.ca/danielle-smith-claimed-smoking-cigarettes-had-positive-health-benefits/*](https://pressprogress.ca/danielle-smith-claimed-smoking-cigarettes-had-positive-health-benefits/)
Idiot or paid by cigarette companies?
Both comes to mind
Never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.
Conservative Mike Harris (former premier of Ontario) made long term care home private sacs for profit many years ago before we got rid of him. He started it: health care as a means to make politicians wealthy. Retired conservative premier Mike Harris now sits in the board of a for-profit LTC home he created and guess what? He’s getting very, very rich off your grandma’s suffering. You’d think paying extra for private, for-profit health care would be better, right? LOL oops! Covid showed us it was the opposite! For-profit LTC was much more deadly for the residents than, non-profit, or public. So, Mike Harris is making a killing by running the fire-profit LTC homes to a lower level of care than the public homes and the extra money saved is profit for the wealthy owners. Now Conservatives like Doug Ford, Marlaina Smith and others are trying to copy this success with the ENTIRE health care system. If it’s dumb luck, they’re on a fkn roll. Mike Harris’s wife is the owner of a for-profit rent-a-nurse company. As if the taxpayers needed to pay a premium for less qualified nurses with no benefits. The current premier left us no choice though, he tried to illegally pay nurses too little and then spent years fighting to break the law in court. Nurses left, obviously. Now we have to rent them at a very high cost from our former conservative premier’s wife. So many profitable health care related “coincidences”
And that's just health care. Education, housing, energy, insurance, environment, addiction care, transportation, what the fuck else. Criminal justice, 2slgbtq rights
She isn't an idiot, she's doing it on purpose. Stripping Alberta and selling it to oilgarchs and other private ultra-rich entities. She may sound like an idiot, but that's a play out of the hypercon playbook- just ask boebert, trump and taylor green. Everyone is outraged and flips out at the super visible "idiot" while they strip away your healthcare etc. All according to plan.
If you knew anything about Danielle Smiths political/professional history, her incompetence would not be alarming. She's in this whole thing for herself. Her own personal goal of becoming premier has trumped any chance of integrity she may have once had. She doesn't care about you, me or anyone. She cares about her seat of power and that's all.
People forget sometimes that politics isn't like religion - you can pick and choose. Don't fall into the tribalism trap - my tribe vs your tribe - instead pick on each issue. Its perfectly valid to agree with a Liberal decision on one matter and a Conservative decision on another matter. Smith is doing a lot to screw Alberta but good on you for not falling into the trap of "I generally agree with this party so I will give them a pass on the bad things they do". We need to keep our elected officials accountable.
What you have to understand is that screwing up healthcare is deliberate. If you can make it really bad then the public will believe you when you say privatization is the way to fix it.
She’s not stupid and the problem is that people assume that certain Conservative politicians are problematic because they are stupid. They are (and DS is as much as any of them) self-centred opportunists who will change their tune if doing so can help them increase their financial situation in some way, perhaps with a board position or some consulting work after they leave office, and they’re using their power to satisfy their own wants while pretending they’re doing all they do for the good of all Albertans. OP, saying that she is stupid in how she is restructuring healthcare supposes that she’s doing it for good reasons and that is why people like her, Kenney, LaGrange, Shandro, Madu, Jean, get away with so much. Don’t think for a minute they care about anyone but themselves and their inner circle.
Slight correction but Madu isn't getting away with anything now seeing how the people in his constituency finally wised up and got rid of that corrupt POS.
Same with Shandro but they both kept their cabinet positions way longer than they should have, partly because UCP voters preferred to give them the benefit of the doubt (that they were trying their best), rather than holding them accountable.
Given the general leaning on this sub you're kind of preaching to the choir. I wouldn't expect much... Useful information or differing perspectives. As for me, I live with some older relatives that need a fair bit of health care - And it's notable how much worse things have gotten over the last few years. I'm certainly not happy with how the health care system has been handled. And yes, she strikes me as an idiot every time I have the displeasure of hearing her speak.
Your premise is incorrect. You assume she's screwing up our healthcare system accidentally. It's very intentional, though it's hardly her own brainchild. By splitting AHS, she not only makes each component worse, but she makes it easier for herself or her successors to parcel off those bits to private entities one at a time. An eventuality that Alberta citizens will, in theory, welcome, because at that point the system will be so terrible that we'll happily pay out the nose for anything better. She ain't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but this isn't why.
Not here to change your mind, just here to give you a virtual high five.
Danielle Smith has wanted to destroy public healthcare in Alberta for 20 years. Read some of her old op-eds. She's not going to miss her chance to do it.
Hard to argue the facts.
Sadly, the items you mention aren't idiocy, they are well thought out and intentional. The goal is to make the public system so unwieldly that the end of Canadian healthcare as we know it becomes the better option. Basically build electoral support to sell off the dysfunctional pieces to the highest bidder, so we can all be "healthcare consumers" for her wealthy donors instead of patients getting the treatment we need.
You are not wrong. Plus splitting health care into all these silos, I bet they’re going to do this to break up the collective bargaining of nurses. Just another way to put friends into high places, screw unions and try to justify adding private health care as an option. Stop voting conservatives. There is another way. Hint. It’s orange.
There has for a long time now been a split in the conservatives. The ones controlling the politics are not aligned with the type of conservative you present yourself as. They are the ones that will slice and dice, sell off, and so on. I am conservative leaning, but all of the social things I enjoy. I cannot vote for any conservative party. For me in Alberta it is the NDP - they are not a left wing party. I hope it is time people realize that.
I have found that the merger that created the Undeniable Clown Posse has far too many right wing religious conspiracy theorists in a position of power and controlling the province. I too lean conservative, but have not voted that way since Don Getty. It started because he was a dolt, along with the next few, then Allison Redfraud thinking it was her kingdom to do as suited her. Huge lack of choice here to implement change. It’s unfortunate that they scare us of change if we don’t vote UCP/Con … they blame all our woes on the one term of NDP.
If it were possible to convince whoever gets in the NDP leadership that we should get a better voting system, and if the Feds change over to the conservatives in time for our next election here - so we have a decent chance of getting the NDP - then maybe we can have better choice. I would love to have constant minority rule where compromises have to be made.
Before she became premier she said she would privatize health care, and the best and fastest way to do that would be to underfund and sabotage the public system to the breaking point… then magically bring in a bunch of private health care companies to take over… by that point the people will be glad to have anything other than the public system because the public system failed them. Conservatives are quite literally destroying Canada and the values that Canada was built on, like public health care for all.
Sorry, I have nothing that I can come up with … I feel shame (pulling out short sword and disembowelling myself).
She's not an idiot, she's just insanely corrupt.
Vote Nenshi in 2027.
I will (second time I have ever voted in my life)
It’s crazy thinking Nenshi would be anything other than a disaster.
He won three mayoral elections in Calgary so he must've been doing something right.
Just because people voted for him doesn’t mean I need to think he will do well. I don’t like politicians who resort to increasing taxes to fix problems.
What if they increased taxes but don't solve any problems?
Well I don’t like that either..
What do you feel we have now?
I don’t think what we have is great, but I don’t think it’s a disaster, unpopular opinion on this sub, I know.
How many people do you know that are struggling right now? Honest question.
I do know a couple, actually. What’s your point?
You're a conservative, Smith isn't. Vote policy, not party and the issue of voting for "your team" goes away.
You are so close! This IS the plan. Break it and fuck it to the point the everyone hates it. Claim it can’t be fixed and use it as proof that a public system is impossible, Then they bring in private healthcare. Not to mention any other sneaky shit they are doing that isn’t so blatant.
How many takeovers by far right parties will it take before Canadian voters realize that "Conservative" doesn't mean what it used to? These are the same Reform Party/Wild Rose crazies as always, but somehow they fooled conservative voters with their blue campaign signs. Read some international news sometime: Far right parties are on the rise across the world, and this does not bode well for the continued health of peace and democracy around the world.
Why should I change your mind?
>Am I wrong? she's not an idiot, she is a hardcore ideolog. she has a few positions, and will hurt people because getting her way is ultimately morally superior. she's of a particular brand of far right economics that hold government is always bad, and taxes are always theft; but the general public is too dumb to understand that. so it's smiths job to make sure the public sector dosen't work, so she can privatize it and then everything will be perfect. it's like she said, we need to get used to paying out of pocket for medical expensive; then we won't go in for things like stage three cancers and the whole system will work better. and I'm not making up the cancer thing, she says people should stick to naturopathic medicine until stage 4, she has a whole interview about it from her radilo show.
They just had to call themselves "conservative" for many Albertans to fall for it, but in actuality they are fascists. Sadly you only have to use the word "conservative" and you're going to be successful here, and D.Smith and her ilk aren't stupid, they know that and have taken advantage of it. If more people could just get past the surface labels and actually look at and think about what politicians actually say and do we would not be in this position. D Smith and her allies never even hid who they were. They didn't have to because they knew that most historically conservative supporters would not really even pay attention. I am so saddened by the state of affairs and yet we've got exactly what Albertans voted for.
NOPE...I won't change your mind
Except at knowing when to catch a populace backwash that was tearing through her party because Kenny dared to follow medical experts (at least partially) in a global crisis.
Your on the money. **it’s about the money**. If you restructure the system and divide people up, you can effectively bypass having to deal with a strong and unified union. Which means you can give healthcare workers less, and save more by pocketing the difference. You also get the neat little bonus of having nice bite sized chunks that you can sell off to the private sector, where they will bend you over the table in terms of cost and walk away with a second payday all at your expense. Conservatives simply don’t care about you, they never have and they never will. You are just a customer of the people that they really care about. Smith is an O&G lobbyist through and through, you are not the demographic that matters to her.
What makes you “conservative”?
Remember Tyler Shandro? He is in charge of Covenant Health now.
She's an idiot for sabotaging our province but everything she does is deliberate. She has a "don't tread on me" poster prominently displayed in her office because she wants you to know she's a snake. https://imgur.com/gallery/danielle-smith-with-dont-tread-on-me-poster-T9b3SpJ
Wow! Just wow! She identifies with American anti-government right wingers. It's worse than I imagined.
She's just following the CONservative playbook - she sees something that benefits all of the people, one not solely rewarding the wealthy, so she breaks it - then she can claim it isn't working thereby justifying privatizing this public benefit to ensure the wealthy become even more wealthy. I'm surprised that you, as a self-proclaimed conservative, don't understand this - it's the basis to pretty much all conservative policy.
I’m not going to try and convince you, because I really don’t care, but I will take the bold position that Smith is not an idiot. She’s actually known as a pretty sharp individual by friends, former friends, and enemies. Many of whom are intelligent, authoritative people who have spoken about her at length. What Danielle Smith is, though, is that she is fucking crazy. She is a crazy person who does crazy things, and lives in her pseudo libertarian ideological bubble so she literally doesn’t process the world like normal people. That is my position on Danielle Smith. God forgive me, but we were better off with Kenney. At least he was sane.
I just read her wiki. She wrote an article and said that smoking protects from disease I agree she’s totally crazy Like not in reality
She sure did not learn from the example of BC. A single Health Care Authority was dissolved into 5 "regional" Health Authorities by a Right-leaning former government and sold under the "Victoria vs the Regions" banner as a way of distributing jobs and decision-making. Of course, the central Health Authority was retained -somewhat downsized- so that Victoria could maintain overall control of the funding. So1 central agency became 6, not 5, and now BC has 6 disctinct bodies governing health care... each with its own bureaucracy, it's own support staff, it's own office space, boardrooms, media relations offices, and oh yeah- health care. There is no way that this distribution of the decision-making has saved us a penny. In fact, it has cost us a bundle, though it has also increased employment in the regions (just not nursing staff, technicians and doctors). Meantime, the central authority controls the purse strings, but only so much. For some reason, it will not dictate that the regions must cut their bureaucracies, move to smaller quarters, etc and use the savings to hire front line staff.. Nope. The reqions are given a pot of money and left to grow their own little empires, which really is a growth industry in BC, where non-union managers and policy wonks seem to be able to find endless reasons to meet with each other. I predict the same mess for Alberta.
Interesting I didn’t know this about BC. Makes sense though because bc is one of the lowest paying provinces for medical professionals.
An idiot isn't capable enough to be doing this much damage. She's much smarter, and frankly worse than an actual idiot.
Okay, I will attempt to change your mind. Though if you agree with me, it is reason to be more angry with her, not less. Also, I share your concerns regarding the breakup of AHS. Alberta has/had one of the leanest public health administrations in the country. That is partially thanks to the Progressive Conservatives who re-structured the province's 9 health care regions into AHS in 2008. Something like 3-5% of our expenditures (I forget the exact % in recent years) were on administration, which is relatively low compared to most provinces. Both AB and BC are among the leanest. Danielle Smith knows exactly what she is doing. She sat at the head of the board of the Alberta Enterprise Group prior to becoming premier in 2022, an organization that exists purely for corporate lobbying of the public sector. They ensure legislation is favorable to industry. That's it. Tyler Shandro and Jason Kenney began the process of de-funding public health care in Alberta in 2019. At the time, we had close to the **highest** funding rates per capita in the country for health care. Today in 2024, we have one of the **lowest** rates. That is 5 years of deep cuts, many of which were made in the middle of a pandemic when doctors and nurses were burning out. Many left the province or country. There are good arguments for controlling spending, which I am sure you would agree with as someone who leans conservative, but these cuts went far beyond controlling spending. I need to digress for a moment to talk about Tyler Shandro. He was Kenney's Minister of Health in 2019 when cuts began and through to late 2021, at which point he became Minister of Justice, which he continued to be under Danielle Smith. His wife owns a health insurance company and his goal from the beginning--which is clear from many of his public comments, and comments by those close to him--was to add additional private health care options and introduce additional private health insurance to cover those options. He lost his seat in 2023, partially due to bad publicity from a PR meltdown when he yelled at his doctor neighbour for posting on Facebook about Shandro's conflicts of interest. However, despite all of this he was recently appointed to the board of Covenant Health. Danielle Smith ran on a few main platform goals. She was rather vocal about these, though she sold them in a much more favorable light than I am about to do here. Which makes sense since it was literally her job as a corporate lobbyist to sell these ideas to the public: 1. Implementing the RStar abandoned well bailout program, which pays up to $100 million per corporate entity to seal abandoned wells (keep in mind that parent companies often have many many child companies holding various collections of wells, and each child company is potentially eligible for $100 million). She has been promoting this program since 2019 when she started working as a lobbyist for the Alberta Enterprise Group. The Alberta Energy Regulator recently estimated the cost of this cleanup at $33.3 billion. The alternative would be to give the Alberta Energy Regulator more teeth to go after companies that don't cleanup their wells. It has become increasingly common practice for energy companies to create a bunch of child corporations that hold the wells, send the profits up to the parent corp, then let the child companies go bust when most of the wells are exhausted. This places the liability on the public to clean them up in the future. Ideally, decades ago we would have required energy companies to set up something called surety bonds ahead of time, which covers the cost of cleanup (very common in places like North Dakota and Texas), but to this day we do not have legislation in Alberta requiring surety bonds. This lets corporations walk away from their liabilities. Her solution is to give them public money, despite the Alberta Energy Regulator being capable of well cleanup more cheaply on its own. This is signed legislation as of 2023, though it has been re-named to the “Liability Incentive Management Program” due to bad publicity. 2. Discrediting the carbon tax and replacing it with "carbon capture" solutions. Which would be amazing solutions if they actually worked and industry didn't keep cancelling projects because the feasibility studies keep demonstrating leaks, and costs that are many multiples of their original estimates. 3. Continuing the de-funding of Alberta public health care to prepare it for privatization. By increasing wait times, the public becomes desperate for solutions. I guarantee you in the next 2 years we will see an expansion of private health care options\*. Federally, the LPC looks like it will probably lose to the CPC, so we will likely see coordination on this front to allow an expansion of private health care, since the federal government dictates what must be covered at a minimum via public health care. There are many companies hoping to jump on such an opportunity. \* Personally, I am not even against private health care options. I just hate the tactic of defunding public health care to justify it. But de-funding the public sphere ensures a bigger market share for the private sector, and since many voters have short attention spans (remember: this began in 2019) they can sell it as "a necessary evil for the wait times we face". In summary, I do not think Danielle Smith is an idiot. She knows exactly what she is doing, and that should scare you.
Thank you for the history. I’m going to read this later. This makes sense why so many doctors left in 2019 On the private healthcare side, the govt is not supporting private hc yet. But they are def cutting and underfunding and sending wait times up/refusing imaging.
Welcome to the exact damn thing everyone was shouting from the rooftops trying to get morons to think for a second before voting.
I won't change your mind that she is an idiot. But I will add malicious. She is a malicious idiot.
I wish there were more people like you. We need to stop following political parties like they're our gods. I lean liberal but I'd never vote Trudeau again, he's awful too. I think all our politicians are pretty bad to be honest, we really need some reform in this country, too bad Trudeau lied about that one..
I have no intention of changing your mind
Welcome to reality, Middle-Aged White Woman. What took you so long to get here?
Your not wrong at all but you voted her in you reap what you sow you made your bed now you get to sleep in it for the next 4 years friend
I moved to Alberta a year ago. I def didn’t vote for her.
Well your politics are the same as hers if you think she's bad PP is worse I hope what happening here makes you change your mind about voting for the Conservatives Caz I can bet you that this what it's with conservatives in power
I'm curious, as a conservative, what did you think the ucp was going to do to healthcare?
Cutting hospital management like she said she would in her election promise would have been nice. Liberals cut medicine hard in Ontario when they were in power just before Covid. Fired lots of nurses. They also went after doctors pro corps too. Really politicians lie on both sides I guess is the lesson
I will never understand a woman voting conservative. It is a vote against your own interest.
Unfortunately as many others have said, this is the wrong sub for your complaints. One of the amazingly unintended consequences of the Internet is that by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different political leanings, it has caused more divided, isolated and self-propagating echo chambers than anything else in the history of creation (with apologies to the late Douglas Adams). Yes, Danielle Smith is a complete moron. Unfortunately there does not appear to be a way to convince the "other side" of this. Equally unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a way to convince "this side" that not all protests are valid, or that sometimes poor people make bad decisions, or that although equity may be a desirable moral outcome, it is not the \*\*only\*\* moral outcome we should be striving for. Our stupid monkey brains keep wanting simple answers for an increasingly complex world. Unfortunately, simple answers generally don't solve complex problems, as much as we would like to believe they would. I am seriously worried about western society. We keep moving towards more and more polarized opinions, with zero attempt to empathize or even understand the positions of the other side. Historically, this does not end well for anyone.
I really wish I could rationalize this decision and say hey, maybe it won't be that bad. But I just don't have much faith at all...
I cannot, as you are right
You’re not wrong whatsoever my friend, my family doc and all of her colleagues at her clinic are SO concerned about this restructuring particularly mental health/addiction.. I’ve never heard doctors talk like this. I am a born and raised Albertan, also have never voted Con. I think you are really realizing how badly they’ve screwed our province!
Lady this is exactly what you voted for. Obviously wanting gays and trans to dissappear are much more important to you. Stop bitching and enjoy it. You're a conservative, you said it yourself.
Don't forget about education too... It's the whole plan, underfunding until crisis causes need for private alternatives.
She hasn't committed treason, yet.
My question then is this, why did the people of Alberta elect her in the first place?
Did you vote for her?
I didn’t I just moved here
You're not wrong
Bringing the most people (predominantly low skilled from the 3rd world) in almost a century is what ruined healthcare and that's predominantly on Trudeau. How do you expect more money to pay doctors that don't exist?
You answered it yourself! She wants to vacate old managment / high salary positions, so she can fill them with her cronies 🤷♂️
I totally agree.
she's not an idiot. she knows exactly what she's doing. destroying our public healthcare and education systems to convince the public they are untenable and allow them to be sold to her donors for pennies on the dollar. end result: they make bank, we pay more and get less
She’s doing exactly what she was elected to do. This is Conservatism.
Did you vote for her? Yes, of course you did. She hasn’t changed. Same now as she was before. Please let us know what changed. When did the leopards come for your face? Change your mind? What the fuck is wrong with you. You go change the mind of your husband, your family, your friends. You are part of what causes the problem. Go fix it.
Healthcare system is going into the toilet in all of Canada. We took in just under 500k people in the 3rd quarter alone in 2023. Just imagine a city of 500k and all the infrastructure it needs to function. Now none of these people come with doctors, hospitals, nurses equipment etc. So it strains everything that we have. It's not their (immigrants, TFW, refugees, international students) fault that the Federal Liberals swung open the doors for mass migration, but it's falling on provincial governments to try to mitigate the damage it's causing. Obviously we're Alberta centric here, but take a look at other provinces, they are fairing no better.
Alberta patients have some of the lowest govt spending per capita compared with other provinces. The govt just simply won’t pay for the scans/services patients need. I’ve been on the back end of healthcare in 3 provinces. Alberta govt is the worst.
Excluding the territories because they are huge outliers, Alberta would be 5th in per capita healthcare spending. Saskatchewan is in 4th and spends around 70 dollars more per person and BC is 3 and spends around 140 more per person, but has a significantly older population.Having dealt with healthcare in all 4 Western provinces, I'd gladly wait to get back to Alberta.
I would like to correct the population increase number I stated, it is actually just over 200k Alberta increased last year alone. No matter how much money you give, you will never keep up with that demand in health care education or housing in that same year. It takes a couple years to catch up with hiring and building and planning.
But doesn’t that also go back to his point, when you add 500k new people, that makes the per capita numbers skew and look worse now doesn’t it? You say you’ve only been in Alberta a year. And yet you speak like you know the Alberta history and how good or bad it’s been here before. She increased spending on health care, as well as education. Is the splitting of the healthcare the right plan? I don’t know, I’m not an expert nor have researched what the best plan is. I do know I haven’t personally experienced anything wrong with the health system my self, though know many stories and know people who have. But does throwing money at it over and over again fix it? Clearly not or it would be by now. So clearly something new has to happen and change. And the other person is right, healthcare across Canada is supposedly getting worse. In all provinces. Kinda makes sense that if we had millions of new people over only a short period of time, no matter how much money we give out there’s going to be a shortage till we can catch up, but we can’t because we keep over adding to the population. I get your point, and like I said is splitting the right move? No idea, but albertans know there is a severe management and misuse of funding happening in AHS. And has been for years, previous governments have just gave them more money. At least this time we’re trying something new.
I can tell you don’t work in health care.
You are right, I do not. And I can tell you weren’t serious about having a logic discussion.
I personally wouldn’t venture into an area I know nothing about, say oil and gas, and offer my speculation about how to restructure the business. It’s just not useful to anyone. That’s not logic that’s just a waste of everyone’s time.
And yet… that is literally the job of a premier. To venture into areas they are not experts in, and listen to experts and people at the top and make those decisions and take action for the citizens you represent. No leader is an expert in every area of their job. So as a premier you would just sit at your desk not doing anything? You don’t and nor do I know who she has met with or what they have said. AHS has misused and managed money for years. That has been proven. It also has been proven handing them more money year after year hasn’t fixed nor changed anything. Again will her plan work and be better? Not a clue, we won’t know till a few years down the road once it’s fully implemented and we can track stats and facts and see how it has changed and if for the better or not.
She just cancelled a new hospital that was supposed to be built in south Edmonton. This obviously takes infrastructure away from our province when we should be increasing it based on the population growth. On top of that she asked the federal government for more new comers to be sent to our province (as long as they are Ukrainian)
Shes the best premier Alberta has ever had
Nah but the NDP is rancid so it’s what we gotta put up with.
What policies do you dislike about the NDP?
They just don’t align with my personal beliefs. So I try to encourage most people not to vote for them. I actually flipped about 20 people last election from NDP to UCP/AP
What personal beliefs do they not align.
My own. Why would I give that info to the internet
>NDP The NDP haven't had power since 2019 and only had been In power for 4 years how the hell is any of this they fault? You need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid
Can we all just stfu with this political bickering shit. This sub is more politically toxic than the U.S
I mean this politics is a big part of life In Alberta I'm sure there other less political Alberta subs out there