Juno News - Dr. Hinshaw gets a $227,911 Covid bonus

00:00:00.000 hey everyone welcome back to the alberta roundup with rachel emmanuel some of you watching on

00:00:16.380 video might notice i'm coming to you from a different background today that's because i'm

00:00:20.420 at home in ontario visiting family in fact the room i'm coming to you from right now is the room

00:00:25.300 where i spent almost the entire two years of the covet 19 pandemic like alberta ontario underwent

00:00:31.000 a series of lockdowns and i spent most of them right here in this bedroom so it's certainly a

00:00:35.620 little bit bittersweet to be here right now on that note let's move into today's topic starting

00:00:40.120 with the ucp leadership race it's been a quiet front on the ucp leadership race this week seems

00:00:45.720 like candidates are taking a little bit easy after the intensive week last week which included the

00:00:50.200 first ucp leadership debate as we've previously discussed that being said we're seeing some

00:00:54.920 interesting policy proposals come forward rebecca schultz has been doing a lot on the health care

00:00:59.620 front and she now says if she's elected premier she would like to implement a funding model for

00:01:04.500 fertility treatments her campaign said they've received a lot of really positive feedback about

00:01:09.180 this policy i don't think that's super surprising a lot of women have fertility issues nowadays there's 1.00

00:01:13.740 a lot of hormonal conditions out there so it's great to see this policy hopefully we see some more

00:01:17.660 discussion on it from some of the other candidates schultz also said that she would not support a

00:01:22.080 provincial police force if she's elected premier she follows brian gene who's already said he doesn't

00:01:26.920 favor a provincial police force some of the other candidates have promised to enact one including

00:01:31.200 danielle smith todd lowen and travis taves with the caveat that tave said he's not going to force one

00:01:36.780 down people's throat but he's going to work to bring people along and get agreement on it meanwhile ucp

00:01:42.040 leadership candidates raj and sani and leela here haven't been quite as clear if they'd like to see

00:01:46.980 one they've shown some skepticism about the idea of a provincial police force they've said there hasn't been

00:01:51.960 enough consultation on one and the province hasn't really proved the burden of why one is needed

00:01:56.480 danielle smith has been busy meeting with supporters again this week and she's also reminded them that

00:02:01.340 just her and todd lowen have so far agreed to never lock down the province again meanwhile ucp leadership

00:02:06.760 candidate todd lowen is now releasing vlogs every day so people can see what he's up to

00:02:10.800 his campaign told me people are really enjoying watching the vlogs and being able to support lowen

00:02:15.500 by following him along the campaign trail let's talk about leela here for a minute this is a

00:02:20.000 totally crazy story at the strathmore stampede last weekend leela here helped a boy who was being

00:02:25.880 trampled by a bull just go ahead and take a look at this video for a second

00:02:29.880 you can even hear the panic of the crowd in the background i think this is one of those things

00:02:58.820 where we all like to think we would have been the person to jump in and to save the boy who was

00:03:03.120 being trampled by the bull but let's be honest how many of us actually would have done that so kudos

00:03:07.560 to leela i think this was a really brave action um i spoke to her about it earlier this week she

00:03:12.880 seemed pretty shocked by it to be honest there was a lot of emotion in her voice when we spoke

00:03:16.760 and she just kept saying you know i couldn't even remember what had happened i didn't even know what i

00:03:21.320 had done and i was so shocked when i saw video footage of the incident later which i think is how we all feel

00:03:26.740 when something kind of traumatic or shocking happens to us fortunately the boy seems okay

00:03:31.280 leela said he definitely had some scrapes but he was also out partying later that night so good for

00:03:36.600 him let's move into the controversy of the week i'm sure you guys can already guess what this is going

00:03:40.680 to be chief medical health officer dr dina hinsha walked home with a 227 000 covid bonus this year

00:03:48.040 now that's in addition to her 363 000 salary that she already earns i'm seeing a lot of commentary

00:03:54.580 about this online people are really upset that she was able to pocket so much of taxpayers money

00:03:59.360 in addition to her already pretty hefty salary a lot of the ucp leadership candidates are coming out

00:04:04.280 brian gene said people are unsettled by it danielle smith said people are rightly stunned and outraged

00:04:09.340 and todd lowen keeps asking did cabinet have any control over this decisions who let the money out

00:04:14.880 and is there going to be some answers on it i think that's the question we're all asking ourselves

00:04:19.100 right now how is this bonus approved now the public sector keeps on saying that there was an

00:04:24.120 existing formula that was used to approve the bonus for her overtime work but at the end of the day it 0.98

00:04:29.300 seems like someone from cabinet really should have signed off on this and we haven't gotten any answers

00:04:33.280 on who that was so i'm sure we're going to continue to see more about the story in the coming weeks

00:04:38.020 but for now i think the thing that really gets all of us is that we were asked to sacrifice during the

00:04:43.120 covid19 pandemic we stayed home people you know lost their jobs they lost their businesses that

00:04:48.380 were closed some people lost their jobs because they were unwilling to get the covid19 vaccine as

00:04:53.240 is their right and so many of us sacrifices especially in financial ways and then to see you know the

00:04:58.420 civil servant who was in charge of making those decisions benefit and take home over half a million

00:05:03.680 at the end of the day it just sits not well with a lot of people let's move into what we're watching

00:05:08.480 so there's two stories that i think we're going to be watching headed into next week and the week

00:05:12.660 after the first is that the cutoff to purchase a ucp membership is on august 12th so that's next

00:05:18.280 friday so if you guys don't already have your ucp membership you should absolutely get one this is a

00:05:23.100 really important race because you're not just voting for the leader of a party you're actually

00:05:26.940 voting for a premier and campaigns that i've spoken to have said they expect less than a hundred

00:05:31.660 thousand people to be involved in making this decision so now there's over four million people in

00:05:36.760 alberta so if you make a vote you know you're actually going to have a lot of say with that vote so

00:05:40.480 you know even if you're not a conservative might be worth it to to get a ballot and to cast one in

00:05:44.620 there for your favorite candidate another thing that i want to talk to you guys about is nominations

00:05:48.720 so i've heard so many complaints from people about nominations being open during an ongoing

00:05:53.800 ucp leadership race you know danielle smith has said she would consider reopening some of those

00:05:58.680 nominations in the areas where local members felt like the process wasn't fair or where someone was

00:06:03.380 disqualified improperly that being said we currently have a nomination contest ongoing where the sitting

00:06:09.200 education minister adriana lagrange is being challenged for her seat by andrew cluse now cluse

00:06:15.460 he's the co-founder of a group called hold the line and he's very well known in the region there's

00:06:20.600 about a thousand members in the region that are part of his group and there's 996 ucp members in his

00:06:26.480 writing so he has a lot of publicity for the work that he's done with this group which basically sought

00:06:30.980 to help people impacted by the covid19 pandemic and by vaccine coercion for example you know someone lost

00:06:37.040 their job because they were unwilling to get the vaccine the group would provide financial support

00:06:41.280 or otherwise help them find a job things like that he said he was motivated to run in the race because

00:06:47.200 he thinks lagrange showed a complete lack of support for the freedom movement he's going to be running

00:06:52.160 against lagrange on august 18th and it's already too late to purchase a membership for that contest

00:06:56.820 you had to purchase a membership 21 days ahead of the vote similar to how if you want to vote for the

00:07:01.600 ucp leader you have to have a membership by august 12 so that's definitely something to keep our eye

00:07:06.700 out for this could be the first time where we see you know a sitting ucp mla lose their nomination to

00:07:12.140 a new candidate so i will keep you guys updated with how many members we see in the ucp as of next

00:07:17.900 friday when the cutoff is done and we'll have some results for you in about two weeks as to who won that

00:07:22.160 nomination contest there's any stories you think i missed today and would like to chat about feel free to

00:07:27.040 reach me online you can find me on twitter or facebook i hope you guys enjoyed the show and i'll see you next week

Juno News - August 06, 2022

Dr. Hinshaw gets a $227,911 Covid bonus

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