The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - November 12, 2022


Unvaccinated woman denied organ transplant

Topics
global economic crisis in Alberta
Hosted by
Isaac Lamoureux
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Annette Lewis Justin Trudeau Thomas Dang COVID-19 Alison Pajovic Paul Alexander Common Sense Edmonton Barry Mortishita Rachel Emanuel Gwendolyn Dirk Rachel Notley Jason Copping Jason Kenney Donald Trump Steve Uick Bobby Lane
Premier Smith attacks “extreme left” climate policies Smith fires Hinshaw and AHS Board

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

170.8

Word count

1,661

Sentence count

110

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On today's show, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith will return to the Legislative Assembly, Alberta Court of Appeal upholds a decision to deny an unvaccinated woman an organ transplant, a former NDP MLA pleads guilty, and Edmonton has introduced a carbon budget. All that and more happening now on the Alberta Roundup.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.680 It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart.
00:00:03.880 Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise.
00:00:07.080 Two days only.
00:00:08.180 Tuesday, February 24th and Wednesday, February 25th.
00:00:11.700 Open your PC Optimum app to get your coupon.
00:00:26.460 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Alberta Roundup.
00:00:28.700 I'm your host, Rachel Emanuel.
00:00:30.000 I hope you're having a great weekend so far.
00:00:32.140 Let's take a look at what we're going to be talking about on today's show.
00:00:35.240 Alberta Premier Daniel Smith will return to the Legislative Assembly.
00:00:38.900 Smith also said she wants the federal government to cancel its carbon tax and federal fuel tax.
00:00:44.360 The Alberta Court of Appeal upheld a decision to deny an unvaccinated woman an organ transplant,
00:00:50.120 which she will die without.
00:00:52.120 A former NDP MLA has pled guilty.
00:00:54.520 Stay with us to find out why.
00:00:56.480 And Edmonton has introduced a carbon budget.
00:00:58.580 All that and more happening now on the Alberta Roundup.
00:01:01.540 Voters in Brooks Medicine Hat on Tuesday elected United Conservative Party leader and Premier Daniel Smith to represent them as their MLA.
00:01:11.400 Smith was elected with 54.5% of the vote, while NDP candidate Gwendolyn Dirk came second with 26.7% of the vote.
00:01:18.640 Alberta Party leader and candidate Barry Mortishita came third with 16.5%.
00:01:24.280 Independence Party of Alberta candidate Bob Leone received 1.8% of the vote.
00:01:29.340 And the Wild Rose Independence Party candidate garnered 0.4%.
00:01:33.500 Take a listen to Premier Smith's victory speech after the results came in late on Tuesday.
00:01:38.340 My friends, the people of Brooks Medicine Hat have made their choice.
00:01:43.020 And next year it will be the turn of Albertans to make their choice.
00:01:47.140 And that choice is clear.
00:01:48.780 You can choose Rachel Notley and the NDP that increasingly takes their orders from Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau at the federal level.
00:01:58.560 Or you can choose a united, confident, and energized UCP.
00:02:04.880 A UCP that will keep Alberta strong and free.
00:02:12.000 We are going to deliver more and better jobs, accessible health care, and a lower cost of living for you and your family.
00:02:17.960 That is the choice.
00:02:19.320 That is the only choice.
00:02:20.420 The Premier also said her government will take unprecedented actions over the next few months to help Albertans weather the cost of living crisis.
00:02:27.520 That includes help with electricity bills, targeted help for seniors, another fuel tax holiday, and genuine health care reform.
00:02:34.680 Just one day after that victory, Premier Smith called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to axe the carbon tax and pause the federal fuel tax.
00:02:42.440 In a letter to the Prime Minister on Wednesday, Smith said her government is taking action to help Albertans through the cost of living crisis.
00:02:49.920 Well, she accused Justin Trudeau's imprudent policies of contributing to inflation.
00:02:54.180 Then on Thursday, while speaking at the Rural Municipalities of Alberta Fall 22 Convention,
00:03:11.280 the Premier announced the creation of a Ukrainian Task Force to better engage with the Ukrainian community.
00:03:15.880 She said that Task Force has been charged with coming up for recommendations with the government by January 15.
00:03:21.440 Take a listen to some more of her comments at that conference.
00:03:24.240 Let's talk a minute, though, about our priorities.
00:03:26.800 In Canada, we are fortunate to be free of this kind of violence and conflict.
00:03:32.320 However, that doesn't mean that we are immune to global instability.
00:03:36.040 The global economy is currently facing a severe crisis of inflation and supply chain disruptions that hits all of us directly and indirectly, including right in our wallets.
00:03:47.040 And while it would be great to have a federal partner who stands with us in fighting the affordability crisis,
00:03:53.460 in truth, Alberta is on its own.
00:03:56.460 When you combine skyrocketing inflation with federal policies that target the energy industry and damage the economy,
00:04:02.320 the result is a crisis for regular working families, whether it's fuel or electricity, groceries, fertilizer for our farmers.
00:04:10.440 The cost of everything we need to live and to raise our families has soared.
00:04:15.060 We can't solve this inflation crisis on our own, but we can certainly balance the province's books,
00:04:22.400 as well as help Albertans cope with the worst financial pressures.
00:04:26.920 So in the coming weeks, and it won't be that long, this government is going to take decisive action to ensure that families don't have to choose
00:04:33.120 between buying food and keeping warm in the winter.
00:04:36.660 We're going to lower the cost of electricity to ease the financial burden for seniors and parents and vulnerable Albertans.
00:04:43.340 Our government is going to ensure that they have more money in their wallets right away
00:04:47.480 to meet the rising costs of life's necessities at this critical time.
00:04:51.340 Our government is also going to lock in removing the provincial fuel tax
00:04:56.420 and ensure that the gas stations lower the prices appropriately when we do that.
00:05:02.180 Moving into the controversy of the week.
00:05:04.460 On Tuesday, the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld a lower court's decision to deny an unvaccinated woman an organ transplant.
00:05:10.920 Some say the bubbles in an aero truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.
00:05:15.680 Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.
00:05:18.360 Rich, creamy, chocolatey aero truffle.
00:05:22.160 Feel the aero bubbles melt.
00:05:24.200 It's mind bubbling.
00:05:25.980 They argued that clinical judgments are not subject to charter scrutiny.
00:05:30.080 That ended Annette Lewis' bid to return to the top of the organ transplant list. 1.00
00:05:34.640 Health Minister Jason Copping's press secretary, Steve Uick, told me that organ transplant programs
00:05:39.180 are obligated to do all they can to ensure the best possible outcomes of a donated organ.
00:05:44.140 He said patients awaiting treatments are required to be vaccinated against infections like tetanus,
00:05:50.040 meningitis, influenza, COVID-19, and more.
00:05:53.760 Quote,
00:05:54.480 The requirements are set by clinicians to maximize the odds that organ donor recipients are able to live.
00:06:00.180 He also said that the requirements are not new, nor are they specific to COVID-19 or to Alberta,
00:06:05.440 but are comparable to other transplant programs and based on common evidence and standard.
00:06:10.140 But in response to comments from the Health Minister Office, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms,
00:06:15.380 which is representing Lewis, said the comments fail to consider that the COVID-19 vaccine is new
00:06:20.560 and there is no long-term safety data available.
00:06:23.880 Alison Pajovic, the lawyer overseeing the case, told me the government's response does not consider that the COVID-19 vaccines are new,
00:06:30.420 while the other vaccines required have been around for decades.
00:06:32.940 Forcing terminally ill transplant candidates to take a new vaccine as a condition of life-saving surgery
00:06:39.280 that is still in the testing phase for safety and efficacy is medically unethical.
00:06:44.360 Pajovic pointed to evidence put forward in court,
00:06:46.760 where both Lewis and the respondents agreed that there was no long-term safety data for the COVID-19 vaccines
00:06:52.100 because the vaccines have not been around for long enough.
00:06:54.800 She also pointed to the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines are still in phase 3 clinical testing trial for safety and efficacy.
00:07:00.160 Meanwhile, the appeal court acknowledged that it's a virtual certainty that Lewis will die without an organ transplant.
00:07:06.480 The Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms is considering an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
00:07:10.980 The ruling follows comments from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith,
00:07:14.260 who said the unvaccinated have faced the most discrimination in Canada she's witnessed in her lifetime.
00:07:19.260 She's also promised to amend the Alberta Human Rights Act to make it illegal to discriminate based on vaccination status.
00:07:24.680 Former Alberta NDP MLA Thomas Dang has pleaded guilty to a charge under the Health Information Act.
00:07:31.440 Dang was charged in June for illegally attempting to access private information contained in the Alberta Health Vaccine Portal in September 2021.
00:07:39.260 He entered a guilty plea in provincial court last week.
00:07:42.760 The Crown is seeking a $10,000 fine, while Dang's defense is asking for under $4,000.
00:07:48.220 You guys likely know the details of this story by now, but let's just do a quick refresher for those of you who are new to it.
00:07:53.000 The MLA said he accessed the site to test vulnerabilities on the newly launched Alberta Health Vaccine Portal.
00:07:58.580 He used former Premier Jason Kenney's birth date and vaccination dates, which are publicly available, to crack the site's privacy safeguards.
00:08:05.940 Between September 19 and 23, 2021, Dang's computer program made 1.78 million queries using Kenney's personal information.
00:08:15.640 Dang admitted to the RCMP the queries were randomly generated guesses, aimed at revealing the Premier's healthcare number.
00:08:21.700 Dang ended up breaching the system and uncovering a woman's private medical information in the process.
00:08:27.320 Okay guys, what we're watching in the weeks to come.
00:08:29.840 Alberta Premier Daniel Smith has said she's interested to hear what COVID-19 vaccine skeptic, Dr. Paul Alexander, has to say to officials at Alberta Health Services.
00:08:39.580 Dr. Alexander was a health advisor to former Republican President Donald Trump in the early stages of the pandemic.
00:08:44.560 He's against lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccines, which he's called a gene injection bioweapon.
00:08:50.860 And finally, you guys, moving into the Alberta politics funny moment of the week.
00:08:54.980 The city of Edmonton has developed a carbon budget to measure the energy transition required to becoming a climate resilient city.
00:09:02.120 I read this over 100 page document so that you don't have to.
00:09:05.720 You're welcome.
00:09:06.300 The 2023 to 2026 carbon budget says the city is warming at one of the fastest rates in the world and that GDP costs increase with each degree of additional warming.
00:09:16.680 The city now wants carbon budgeting to guide decisions by providing additional carbon emissions information.
00:09:22.660 The citizens advocacy group Common Sense Edmonton is calling this document a massive waste of time, resources, and taxpayers' money.
00:09:28.780 Okay, guys, thanks so much for tuning in.
00:09:30.660 That's all I have for you today.
00:09:31.880 But you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram if you want to let me know what you liked about the show or what you think I missed.
00:09:37.160 If you want to support our work over at True North, please visit donate.tnc.news.
00:09:41.360 Thanks so much.
00:09:42.100 Have a great weekend and God bless.