Western Standard - January 04, 2024


Premier Smith’s willingness to take on the healthcare status quo

Mentioned
Danielle Smith Alberta Premier Dina Hinshaw Verna Yu Hooray
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Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

201.95

Word count

1,038

Sentence count

75

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Danielle Smith has a mandate to take on Alberta s bloated, intractable healthcare bureaucracy, and her success or failure in that task is going to impact how healthcare is managed across all of Canada, because you can rest assured, every Premier in Canada is watching her closely.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith, she's charging into 2024 with a mandate to take on Alberta's bloated, intractable healthcare bureaucracy. 1.00
00:00:10.400 And her success or failure in that task is going to impact how healthcare has managed across all of Canada.
00:00:16.440 Because you can rest assured, every Premier in Canada is watching Smith closely on this one.
00:00:22.060 I mean, let's face it, Canada's healthcare system stinks, and no province is an exception.
00:00:26.480 Costs are going up every year, while access is going down.
00:00:30.320 People are dying on waiting lists, and the lists are only getting longer.
00:00:34.460 Citizens are finally realizing it, and I think that's what's encouraging, you know, and empowering some politicians.
00:00:38.840 They're realizing the vaunted reputation of Canada's healthcare system is a myth.
00:00:42.940 But still, we've got defenders of the status quo fighting tooth and nail whenever anybody speaks of reforming the system or even changing a few little things, much less acting on it.
00:00:52.080 Unions, bureaucrats, assorted socialist activists, they refuse to accept that the system's broken, and they're doing everything possible to prevent anybody from fixing it.
00:01:00.400 Now, as more and more Canadians find themselves and their loved ones suffering under the broken system, the appetite for change is finally growing.
00:01:06.320 And Daniel Smith is the first Premier to really stick her neck out on the issue, and her battle low is just beginning.
00:01:11.400 I mean, she began by cutting from the top with Alberta's massive healthcare management bureaucracy. 1.00
00:01:16.680 Shortly after she became Premier a little over a year ago, her government fired Chief Medical Officer Dina Hinshaw. 0.99
00:01:22.160 Then she fired the entire Alberta Health Services Board.
00:01:25.620 That's the bureaucracy that runs Alberta's healthcare. 1.00
00:01:28.800 And finally, she fired Dr. Verna Yu from a position of CEO at AHS.
00:01:33.880 Not Premier Smith personally doing all this, but under her guidance, the government did.
00:01:37.980 Now, the NDP and the unions and the rest of the usual suspects, of course, they were apoplectic.
00:01:42.120 Look, legacy media members and activists alike, they rallied in 2023 in the spring election to ensure Smith didn't win.
00:01:49.120 They failed.
00:01:50.160 Smith won.
00:01:50.920 And now she does have a real mandate to reform that system. 1.00
00:01:53.480 And it looks like she's going to go for it.
00:01:54.740 Since the election, Premier Smith has split Alberta Health Services into several different entities.
00:02:00.640 Now, ostensibly, this is to allow for more specialized policies in different aspects of healthcare, but there's likely, and there likely is some merit to that.
00:02:07.100 But more importantly, and more likely, that organization is split up because it makes it harder for the bureaucrats to put up an organized front in hindering reforms. 0.87
00:02:15.900 Premier Smith warned when she won the last election in one of her speeches.
00:02:19.360 She said she won't let herself be slow-rolled by the bureaucracy.
00:02:22.040 But it appears that Alberta Health Services managers didn't get the message as they've been dragging their heels on mandates to improve service.
00:02:29.360 I mean, one simple mandate, for example, was with ambulance services.
00:02:32.300 Tens of thousands of trips are made every year using fully equipped ambulances crewed by paramedics to transport non-emergency patients.
00:02:39.840 It's a terrible waste of resources, and it ties up highly trained workers and highly specialized equipment when we don't need to.
00:02:46.040 The mandate was handed down for AHS to seek some private contractors to take over some of the role of the non-emergency patient transports.
00:02:53.440 It's simple, common sense, and it's a big problem, and it frees up ambulances.
00:02:57.500 Instead of taking the mandate seriously, though, AHS bureaucrats devised a ridiculous set of conditions and created a number of barriers for any private contractors trying to seek the contracts.
00:03:06.060 They're moving as slowly as possible, and they're continuing to find excuses not to approve applications.
00:03:11.500 Meanwhile, Alberta's literally hitting situations where regions have run out of ambulance service, including just on New Year's Eve this year in major cities.
00:03:19.220 Premier Smith has had enough of it, and she's laying down the law.
00:03:21.900 In a recent interview, she made no bones about it, and she said, that's what our focus is.
00:03:25.580 This is a quote from her.
00:03:26.300 It's firing the managers who we have paid to solve these problems, and they've allowed the problems to perpetuate, and they've done nothing about them.
00:03:32.900 Yeah, the premier is bold, to the point, and unequivocable.
00:03:37.020 Managers have better proved they're getting things done, or they're going to be fired.
00:03:40.160 It only makes sense.
00:03:41.840 It's not an unreasonable expectation in the private sector, and it shouldn't be with healthcare bureaucrats either.
00:03:46.580 Of course, again, the usual suspects have gone wild.
00:03:48.600 They're claiming Smith has overstepped her role or mandate, and that she hasn't had the right to make those decisions. 0.50
00:03:53.620 Well, I call BS on that.
00:03:55.920 Daniel Smith was elected as Alberta's premier to do exactly this sort of thing.
00:03:59.040 If an elected premier can't call the shots with the largest public bureaucracy in the province, who can?
00:04:03.920 And who should?
00:04:04.920 Union heads?
00:04:05.780 Activists?
00:04:06.500 The leader of the opposition?
00:04:07.940 No. 0.98
00:04:08.600 You guys didn't win the bloody election, so too damn bad. 0.96
00:04:11.160 The tail's been wagging the dog for too long at all levels of government. 0.97
00:04:14.700 I mean, we watched that in Calgary's City Hall.
00:04:16.200 It was almost nauseating watching elected councillors being called under the carpet for questioning senior bureaucrats and city managers.
00:04:23.220 If elected officials don't hold the bureaucrats to account, who will?
00:04:26.140 Nobody.
00:04:26.420 In fact, nobody has for years, and look where it got us.
00:04:29.660 Shaking up the Canadian health care system has been considered political blasphemy for way too long.
00:04:34.420 The system's failing, and thankfully, Premier Smith is willing to break away from Canadian dogma, become an apostate, and get the job done.
00:04:41.480 The battle of wills is just beginning, though, but I'm betting on Smith winning it.
00:04:44.800 And when Smith wins, and health care begins to improve in Alberta, rest assured, other Premiers who are too cowardly to put their necks on the line will follow.
00:04:54.700 Alberta's lucky to be in a province with a Premier willing to lead.
00:04:58.280 Her actions and tenacity are going to benefit us all within and outside of Alberta, and it's about time.
00:05:02.800 Hooray.
00:05:06.600 All right.
00:05:07.140 Thank you.
00:05:07.800 You're welcome.
00:05:08.360 Good to see you next time.