Friday Focus: While Eyes Focus Elsewhere

Posted on April 17, 2025

Most everyone is focused on the federal election, but the UCP is busy pressing forward with its stealthy agenda to remake Alberta–not for the better.

  • Surgical shenanigans  
    The UCP is blissfully moving ahead with a new funding model for surgeries in Alberta, despite being knee deep in a scandal over sweetheart deals with private surgery companies.  These publicly funded, privately operated surgical centres can choose easy, efficient, profitable surgeries and leave the costly ones to be handled in the public system. This is another step in the UCP’s move to privatize health care by making the public system look inefficient, and weakening public support for it.  
  • A provincial police force
    The UCP has also brought forward a bill establishing a provincial police force no one wants. The new force is to be made up from about half of those people currently working as sheriffs, supposedly to supplement the RCMP, but without proper training. Rural municipalities are unhappy and say it will cost them more. This is a bad idea but it is a pillar of the Free Alberta Strategy cooked up by Smith’s chief of staff, former Airdrie MLA Rob Anderson, and U of C professor Barry Cooper.
  • Legal Aid switcheroo
    The Financial Statutes Amendment Act 2025 sounds innocuous, but cuts back on legal advice available to ordinary Albertans. Legal Aid funds will decrease significantly, legal assistance programs will lose funding, the Indigenous Law Centre at the U of A won’t proceed and, because government approval is required for grants exceeding $250,000, the Alberta Law Foundation’s independence is compromised.
  • Involuntary drug treatments
    This week, the UCP government introduced a bill that will force people into involuntary, experimental drug treatment programs. Aside from the treatments having no proven scientific basis, this law is likely unconstitutional as a violation of individuals’ Charter rights. We believe all treatments must be voluntary.    

All this as children’s doctors worry children’s health care will collapse from underfunding, the government has decided registered nurses aren’t needed in long term care homes, and we no longer have a Chief Medical Officer of Health.