Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[you&me]

Originally Posted by Slava

This is an excellent example of (l)iberals who think they're right and have no care actually to get elected. Reading this kind of thing is so hilariously naive. Do you remember the last election where the NDP announced their tax increase on the day of the debate, and it essentially cost them the election?

It's this kind of complete lack of awareness that sets us up for four more years of wondering why people could vote for the UCP, and how in the world we end up with a separatist-pandering government.

It also shows a (not surprising) complete lack of familiarity with the broader Alberta O&G industry, which is fairly unique in the world.

See, in most regions, companies set capex budgets and use that money to hire workers and drill wells... rinse and repeat as new discoveries are made and new wells drilled... You need this many people to find the oil, this many people to drill the well, etc etc

With the oil sands in Alberta, enormous capex budgets are set in order to design and construct facilities (by hiring many, many people) that are many magnitudes of scale larger than your typical single rig well... This front loads the vast majority of the expense (capex) of the projects to get things up and running, but after that the ongoing opex is relatively minimal and unfortunately, a lot of the personnel required to get things up and running are no longer needed.

Alberta oil is now some of the lowest cost per barrel out there.

I'm not saying the royalty formula is perfect (and would welcome a review), but decrying the job losses and "doing more with less" belies a (again, not surprising) lack of basic familiarity of the business structure some are so keen to attack.

[Duruss]

More newspapers running articles about how bad ADAP is. This legislation is going to kill people.

Jason Nixon, the Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services, calls ADAP modernized and employment-focused and has dismissed claims of cuts as “misinformation.”

https://www.stalbertgazette.com/loca...verty-11554988

https://medicinehatnews.com/news/loc...rovinces-mind/

[Slava]

Wow, now the new CEO of AHS is out also. He was there for 10 months, and it's pretty clear that not only is this government enacting terrible policies and doing entirely disgusting things, but they're also incompetent.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Duruss

More newspapers running articles about how bad ADAP is. This legislation is going to kill people.

Jason Nixon, the Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services, calls ADAP modernized and employment-focused and has dismissed claims of cuts as “misinformation.”

https://www.stalbertgazette.com/loca...verty-11554988

https://medicinehatnews.com/news/loc...rovinces-mind/

I'd like Mr Nixon to explain to all of us why disability supports should be "employment-focused" as a priority, and why that is important enough to foist unnecessary costs(Dr's forms aren't free) on people already in poverty. Must be a good Jesus sourced reason, because it's gonna be mental hell on a lot of people.

Oh, right. The cruelty IS the point.

“The Ministry of Assisted Living and Social Services has not acknowledged the harm that Albertans with disabilities will face,” Ney said. He pointed out that the changes stem from reduced benefits, the removal of inflation indexing, tighter eligibility rules, added stress and costs from new adjudication and repeat assessments, as well as the elimination of appeal rights. “No mitigation strategies for rural communities have been made public,” he added.

https://www.stalbertgazette.com/loca...verty-11554988

How the #### do they eliminate your right to appeal? So what, you have trouble with the forms, get denied, can't appeal, so just get told you must work if you want disability supports, and if you can't because, oh, ####, I dunno, your DISABLED, you what, just go live on the streets until you die?

Gillian Petit, a senior research associate at the University of Calgary’s economics department, most people on AISH or ADAP will receive lower personal benefits than before the changes were implemented.

“Purportedly, they’re doing this on behalf of the disability community, but they haven’t talked to the disability community, and no one I’ve talked to have said this is a benefit to them. Part of the difficulty here is they’re leading with legislation, and there’s still a lot of details unknown. So I think they’ve created a lot of fear and anxiety about the future,” he said.

https://medicinehatnews.com/news/loc...rovinces-mind/

"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats it's most vulnerable members." -Mahatma Ghandi.

I guess that tells us that we are a bunch of Cuuuuuunts

[Eric Vail]

This afternoon, the Alberta Government announced they will be directing more money towards mental health supports in schools. This is funding that had already been promised in Budget 2025. In response, Alberta Teachers' Association president Jason Schilling has released the following statement.

"Today’s announcement of more money being directed to mental health supports in schools is nothing more than the government polishing up an old funding commitment that was made almost a year ago in Budget 2025. This is not new money. It’s money that was promised nine months ago but that has not been acted upon.

These budgeted funds should have been available to the school boards at the beginning of the school year, not in December. This is nothing more than an attempt to make it look like the government is doing something about an education issue that was thrust into the spotlight during the teachers’ recent job action."

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Slava

The GST is already removed from household essentials.

But overall, I’m so glad you’re not running the policy for the NDP, because I’m pretty sure that a bunch of those ideas would be politically suicidal, and I really want the UCP out ASAP.

Not charging PST and hiring Auditors to backcharge tax cheats?

Those are the only two ideas I said.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by #-3

Not charging PST and hiring Auditors to backcharge tax cheats?

Those are the only two ideas I said.

I was responding to Wolven and didn’t quote them because it’s a lengthy post and I was right under theirs.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Slava

Do you remember the last election where the NDP announced their tax increase on the day of the debate, and it essentially cost them the election?

I call bull#### on this. It's just a convenient excuse for deplorable ####s who voted for evil ####s.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

I call bull#### on this. It's just a convenient excuse for deplorable ####s who voted for evil ####s.

Well you can take that approach, but that’s plain naivety. The entire concern was that the NDP would be detrimental financially, so they being the platform out with a tax increase the morning of the debate. That definitely cost them votes and gave Smith a ton of ammo for the debate.

[Major Major]

Originally Posted by Slava

Well you can take that approach, but that’s plain naivety. The entire concern was that the NDP would be detrimental financially, so they being the platform out with a tax increase the morning of the debate. That definitely cost them votes and gave Smith a ton of ammo for the debate.

OK. But they need to build a tax base. Any mention associated with this is poison. Just ask Jim Prentice. So what do you do? Lie about it? That's a terrible idea. Be up front and hope people are getting smarter? Seems to be the only path to sustainable success.

[calf]

Originally Posted by Major Major

OK. But they need to build a tax base. Any mention associated with this is poison. Just ask Jim Prentice. So what do you do? Lie about it? That's a terrible idea. Be up front and hope people are getting smarter? Seems to be the only path to sustainable success.

I'd choose gaslighting.

During the campaign "we don't plan to increase taxes"

Soon after winning the election "the UCP left the province in worse shape than we realized due to their incompetence/corruption. Services are already bare-bone with no room left to cut, so we have to raise taxes to dig ourselves out of the mess they left us in, but we will still.be the lowest taxed.province in the country". Four years later it's a distant memory

[Mr.Coffee]

My wife, a RN, has decided to instead pursue a career in teaching (lol).

Here’s some anecdotes from her shift today for a little lens into the state of Alberta healthcare:

- Children’s hospital @ 155% capacity
- they ran out of sheets for kids, so some admitted kids don’t have blankets or sheets
- the new hospital was made too small. Calgary / AB population has obviously exploded so it’s woefully inadequate. There’s room for expansion, but the gov won’t do it because they’re ####ing brutal.
- before she can start her shift she needs access to a computer so she can see the meds her assigned patients are on. There aren’t enough computers, because of the 14 on shift nurses there’s only 8-9 functioning computers. Apparently each nurse must have their own for a variety of reasons. So she went off scouring the hallways and managed to find one but it needed IT support that didn’t exist. By the time she cobbled one together in a hallway and got it working she was well over an hour into her shift so some patients went missing meds. There are no people around to help them with this task and apparently this is a huge issue, causing a large risk for health care on her unit.
- in her experience (20 yrs at Children’s) they’ve never been this full. The Nurse manager is supposed to go call in nurses to help cover (it’s called being “mandated” and you must come in- it isn’t optional) but the nurse manager refuses to do it because it costs too much money (or the nurses off shift are resting because they literally just finished a shift).
- patients in hallways, one patient in a closet

Extremely busy place, not the best care going on. Doctors stressed to the max too. Sounds like a real #### show for sure. Hope your kid doesn’t get sick.