Braid: Private companies running hospitals? All part of Smith campaign to soothe restless UCP base

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Unhappy UCP types who will vote on Premier Danielle Smith’s leadership in November are a fraction of one per cent of Alberta’s population.

And yet, a major political campaign has been aimed at these few people all summer.

The fear is that UCP history will repeat itself. Smith is in the premier’s office only because the party she now leads overthrew Jason Kenney.

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So, for the next two months, we’ll have government for a minority on the activist edge of the UCP.

From hospital management to taxes and provincial policing, Smith is regularly throwing red meat to this group.

Many are furious at her decision to defer an income tax break, promised in the 2023 election campaign, to 2027.

They’re not the only ones. This was a betrayal of a promise for quick tax relief.

The justification — a sudden threat of budget deficits — was always shaky. There was no hint of trouble in budget numbers.

This was confirmed Thursday, when the latest quarterly budget figures showed a surplus of $2.9 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year. Revenue is rising from every major source.

But it wasn’t until the base got antsy that Smith spoke of restoring the tax break before 2027.

In her latest meanderings, she talked at a private meeting with party members about turning groups of AHS hospitals over to third-party managers.

She said one facility, in La Crete, has already been handed to Covenant Health.

This is a religious organization that does not do abortions or in vitro fertilization, and discourages contraception. The board is appointed by the Catholic Bishops of Alberta.

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Those appointees now include board chair Ed Stelmach, the former PC premier who created the very AHS system Smith is now dismantling. Also on the board is Tyler Shandro, the former Kenney health minister who lost his seat in the 2023 election.

Covenant runs about 20 facilities, including two major hospitals in Edmonton: the Misericordia and Grey Nuns. AHS manages more than 100 provincewide. Despite this wide disparity in size and responsibility, the CEOs of the two organizations are paid at the same level, about $600,000 a year.

Smith suggested that Covenant, unlike AHS, hasn’t been shutting rural hospitals. But Covenant has also suspended services due to staff shortages.

She trumpets the value of competition (and even fear). Some doctors say that doesn’t work so well in Edmonton, where wait times and other metrics are worse than Calgary’s.

One reason, they say, is that Covenant is adept at shifting overflow to the two AHS hospitals, the University and Royal Alexandra. That increases pressure on their ERs from Edmontonians and northern rural transfers.

“In the only place where there’s already two hospital managers and a kind of competition, the results are actually worse,” says Dr. Paul Parks, president of the Alberta Medical Association.

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“For a long time, there’s been concern about the lack of co-ordination in the Edmonton zone.”

Like many other health professionals, Parks believes the real problem is staff shortages across the province. Rural centres close when they can’t find doctors to cover hospital shifts, especially overnight.

“It doesn’t really matter who’s running the hospital if you don’t have the people you need to staff it,” he says.

“We’ve had a detailed proposal for stabilizing hospital staff before the government for 10 months but haven’t seen any action or movement on it.”

Smith mentioned Covenant as a possible alternative operator, but her comments opened the door to management of hospital groups by private, for-profit companies.

Health Minister Adriana LaGrange’s office, asked specifically about this, promised fine hospital care without responding to the question.

Smith also pledged a new agency to govern the sheriffs. While the government says there’s no plan to replace the RCMP, this is a clear move toward a provincial force.

That plan is unpopular with the public and many rural municipal politicians, but it’s an article of faith with UCP members who back the sovereignty agenda.

We know who counts in this province right now. It sure isn’t the majority of Albertans.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

X: @DonBraid

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