DANGEROUS RIGHT WING NUTBAR
Alberta Premier Smith outlines plan to 'disaggregate' provincial health system after party speechStory by Lisa Johnson •POST MEDIA
Premier Danielle Smith speaks to media at the UCP Annual General Meeting in Calgary on Saturday, November 4, 2023.© Provided by Edmonton Journal
Alberta Premier and UCP Leader Danielle Smith outlined some details of her long-promised plan to reform Alberta Health Services (AHS) Saturday.
Speaking to some 3,800 party members gathered at the BMO Centre in Calgary, Smith was met with boisterous applause when she said her government be moving forward “in the coming weeks” with health reforms that will decentralize decision-making and resources.
Speaking to reporters following the speech, Smith was asked if she planned to dismantle the provincial health authority into regional boards, a possibility that emerged out of grievances during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re not going back to the era of individual hospital boards that aren’t in an integrated network, but we’re going back to more local control, more zonal control, and then keeping the things that work in the central health region, keeping them at a central level,” she said.
The reform process could take between 18 months and two years, she said, adding that AHS will continue to be focused on providing hospital services across the province.
“The term we’re using is disaggregating AHS,” Smith said.
“Some of the things you’ve already seen, you’ll see a little bit more of. For instance, we already began the process of disaggregating mental health and addiction to a separate ministry, it’s a separate authority, and more of those resources are going to fall under mental health and addiction,” she said
“That needs to be a department-level function.”
On Oct. 18, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange announced that the government will create two new divisions within its health ministry — one dedicated to primary care, and another to Indigenous health.
Smith said the government is going to ask AHS to do a better job of managing each acute care facility, with appropriate treatment for patients while ensuring local decision-making is “optimized,” along with regional co-ordination.
“I think what happened is too many of those decisions happened at the province-wide level, and it ended up creating a lot of frustrations,” she said, noting that one advantage of the provincial health authority is in procurement of things like vaccines and medical equipment.
“We don’t want to lose some of that advantage.”
In her speech, Smith did not make mention of her government’s controversial push to pull out of the Canada Pension Plan, but she did take the opportunity to tout “educational choices” and make a nod to the long-time conservative push for more “ parental rights .”
Her address to members re-hashed much of the government’s recent throne speech that kicked off the fall legislative session, touching on issues from affordability to fiscal discipline, and again threatening to use her signature Sovereignty Act to sidestep federal laws.
“It is the eco-extreme dogmas of people like (federal environment and climate change minister) Stephen Guilbeault — such as limiting economic growth, energy scarcity and centralized control of people’s activities,” said Smith, getting a loud boo from the crowd at the mention of the federal environmental minister. “These are failed policies that lead to extreme poverty, soaring crime and addiction, poor environmental outcomes and the loss of personal freedoms and civil rights.”
Smith reiterated her opposition to Ottawa’s electricity cap and draft plan to get the electricity grid to net-zero by 2035, saying that path risks the reliability of Alberta’s power grid and will cost ratepayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
“You know what I say to them? Not a chance, not so long as I am premier,” she said.
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