Turns out having a governing party dominated by MAGA-influenced anti-vaxxers and ideological privatizers like Premier Danielle Smith isn’t actually good for health care!
Who could have seen that coming?
Alberta’s United Conservative Party seems to have been having trouble coming up with outrageous stuff to attack Ottawa about this week – since Monday they’ve only put out a news release about a minister going on a two-day junket to Montana, another on how the government will pay (only) half the cost of a new therapeutic pool in a rehab hospital, and one about a new website touting pipelines. Not exactly earth-shattering stuff.
But when the UCP decided to stop flooding the zone, it looks as if the zone decided to flood itself. On the health care file alone, yesterday was a busy day.
Measles was back in the news, reminding us that it may be a new year, but it’s the same old measles epidemic that embarrassingly got wildly out of control in this province thanks to the UCP government’s hostility to vaccinations and its shambolic response to the more than 2,000 cases of the highly infectious disease since North America’s worst outbreak started a year ago.
At one point last summer, the number of reported measles cases in Alberta actually surpassed those in the entire United States, and, as we all know, Robert F. Kennedy’s American health care system is no slouch when it comes to ignoring sensible public health measures and spreading ridiculous lies about vaccines and immunization.
This is something the U.S. secretary of health and human services shares with Alberta’s premier, a former right-wing talk radio host who frequently expressed her skepticism about COVID vaccines and enthusiasm about quack COVID cures on the air.
As of this week by the sound of it, though, the U.S. had pulled ahead … microscopically.
According to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control yesterday, there were 2,144 confirmed cases of measles in 2025 throughout the entire country – which has a population of approximately 343,000,000 souls.
Meanwhile, in approximately the same time frame back here in Wild Rose Country, there were 2,008 cases – among a population just a hair over 5,000,000.
That’s an impressive accomplishment. No one can say the Alberta Advantage isn’t very real … if you’re a virus.
Meanwhile, last night The Globe and Mail reported that a group of Edmonton doctors have called on the provincial government to declare a state of emergency under the province’s Public Health Act because there’s no more room for patients in the city’s hospitals.
Moreover, the Globe discovered that the Edmonton man who died waiting in the Emergency Room of Covenant Health’s Grey Nuns Hospital on Dec. 22 wasn’t the only person who died there the same day. “He was actually one of three people who died in the Grey Nuns ER that day,” wrote journalist Alanna Smith.
Covenant Health, owned by the Roman Catholic Church, is held up by the UCP as a model of how public health care should be run while the government’s massive “refocusing” of health care is concentrating on breaking up Alberta Health Services into smaller and easier-to-privatize chunks.
The story, which is unfortunately behind a paywall, is pretty dire. It quotes Dr. Paul Parks, president-elect of the emergency physicians section of the Alberta Medical Association and a sharp critic of the UCP’s health policies, saying “emergency and internal medicine physicians in Edmonton have exhausted all options to meet patient demand.” He noted that the so-called refocusing of the health care system has left hospitals in a state of constant chaos.
The story also quotes the press secretary for Primary and Preventative Health Services Minister Adriana LaGrange – one of Alberta’s four health ministers under Premier Danielle Smith’s bizarre restructuring program – blowing off Dr. Parks’ concerns. “Calls for a ‘state of emergency’ are misguided and would add nothing to what is already being done,” sniffed Maddison McKee.
In addition, the Globe sought out Raj Sherman, the former Alberta Liberal Leader and ER physician, who still practices in a public hospital in Stony Plain, a town just west of Edmonton. Dr. Sherman was probably not the most accomplished politician in Alberta history, but he is respected as an emergency physician. “I have never seen it this bad in 35 years of front-line medical practice in the Emergency Department,” he told the newspaper.
So it’s bad, mostly thanks to the UCP. And since it’s respiratory disease season, it’s quite possible it’s going to get a lot worse. But, hey, at least the worst measles outbreak on the continent finally appears to be petering out on its own.
When it comes to spreading infection and bringing health care to the brink of collapse, Danielle Smith’s Alberta punches above its weight!
