Last week in AB: April 19, 2026

Two-tiered healthcare, separatism, gerrymandering... so very 'Berta.

In the Leg

Bill 29: Healthcare Statutes Amendment Act, or; And how will you be paying for that?

Lorian Hardcastle is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary, with a joint appointment to the Department of Community Health Sciences in the Cumming School of Medicine and has been an excellent resource on the UCP’s health policy. Unlike some conservative politicians today, I recognize (and rely on) people who know a hell of a lot more than me.

From her thread on X:

Alberta bill will allow self-referral for diagnostic testing, which raises concerns about the worried well clogging up the system and those who need testing most urgently having to wait longer to be seen.

New preamble makes no reference to protecting public health care and instead states that the gov is committed to improving health, improving access (which private pay won't do), and supporting individual choice.

Creates new category of called "preventative health testing services" that patients can self-refer to. Minister will have power to order which goods and services are "preventative health testing services" and to set the rates of benefits payable in respect of those services.

Initially, gov announced these services would be private pay & public system would only reimburse if they revealed a serious issue, but now it seems that public system may pay. Claims will first be submitted to your insurer, with gov being the payor of last resort.

In a press conference, Lagrange claimed there would be safeguards to protect the public system, but look how well that worked with the chartered surgical facilities:

Presser also clarifies that the regulations will set out when the public system will reimburse these services and when they will be strictly private pay. It sounds like there will be a threshold whereby gov will reimburse if you self-refer and test reveals something serious.

Lorian Hardcastle on X, April 13, 2026

I’d also like to give a shout out to this brilliant piece of satire introduced in the latest Forward Canada newsletter. It is absolutely worth your time to visit the site. Yes, it’s satire; both extremely funny and not at all.

What if you could just guarantee a majority without having to be popular?

For all their pomp and blather, the UCP caucus is obviously concerned about their electoral future. You don’t decide to mess with a bi-partisan effort that made evidence-based decisions to reach a fair outcome if you’re feeling self-assured. Again, I’ll quote someone who knows more about that than I; Greg Clark, former Alberta Party leader and member of the Boundaries Commission.

In Canada, we don’t want elected officials drawing their own election maps. Instead, governments give independent commissions the job of drawing maps that reflect population trends while also respecting the challenges of representing diverse, rural and remote communities. The Canadian model isn’t one-person-one-vote, it’s what we call “effective representation.”

Commissions are non-partisan. We travelled to every corner of the province gathering input from Albertans of all political stripes, holding nearly 50 public hearings in 16 locations across the province. Including written submissions, we heard from over 2,000 people. In the end, the majority of the commission (two members appointed by the opposition and the judge appointed by the government) created recommended maps.

Our majority report balances the dramatic shift in population to urban Alberta while respecting the genuine difficulty of representing sparsely populated areas far from the Legislature. It was a fair process that created a balanced electoral map delivering effective representation to all Albertans.

The majority’s view on number of seats in the Legislature was clear; we suggested future commissions be given the power to set the number of seats in the Legislature (like they do in BC), and if so “…we may very well have proposed a map of at least 91 electoral divisions.” Or, we may not have. We would have drawn a map of 91 (or any other number) the same way we drew the map of 89; we would start with a blank map and independently consider how we could provide effective representation for all Albertans.

What we can’t do is simply drop two new seats onto an existing map. The commission goes where the data takes us, and context matters when we’re creating a map based on effective representation for all.

It’s also important to know that the recommendation that a committee of MLAs implement a map of 91 seats came from only one member of the five-member commission. I will end with what I think are the most important words in the 362-page Electoral Boundaries Report:

“…the Legislative Assembly should carefully consider the majority of this Commission’s independent, justified, and reasonable recommendations before adopting any alternative boundaries...the majority recommends the adoption of the majority report in its totality.”

Greg Clark on X, April 16, 2026

Dave Cournoyer’s piece is what really cemented to me how far the UCP has fallen from its grand unity process. Peter Lougheed’s Progressive Conservatives were massively popular for a good 20 years. They held onto power for at least as long due to the fact that they were seen as unbeatable; in a way, it’s impressive that they rode that train for as long as they did.

They did it, though, by relying on branding and the fact that they had won over Albertans and turned them into lifelong PC supporters. The UCP has won two elections and are already trying to figure out how to stack the deck. I don’t see it entirely that they’re just abusing their power— though I’ll concede some of them are probably thinking they may as well— I smell fear.

The UCP lost support with Danielle Smith at the helm, though arguably they might have been worse off had Jason Kenney remained leader. The problem is that they’ve only won two elections. To have Alberta’s natural governing name and sign colour and already be afraid of losing the next election makes me think even worse of them than I already did— because it tells me they’re going to keep pushing their unpopular agenda and they need to mess with the riding boundaries to feel like they still have a hope of winning anyway.

As much as I’d love to resign myself to the idea that we get the government we deserve, I can say without reservation that no one deserves a government who puts fanciful thinking above facts. No Albertan deserves a government that will lie to get what they want. No Albertan deserves a government that fills the pockets of those who are willing to support them at the expense of their public services.

Some Albertans might have hoped Danielle Smith was lying during the last election when she offered a mainstream conservative option but there’s no way a majority did; because if she and the UCP believed that’s what Albertans wanted, they wouldn’t have campaigned on right of centre policies. They would have campaigned on a separation referendum and two-tiered education and healthcare.

What Danielle Smith and the UCP are doing is not governing as required, responding to needs that they couldn’t have foreseen; Danielle Smith and the UCP are implementing policies and pushing an agenda that Albertans would have rejected during a general election.

Now they have to find ways to make those voters who were opposed, and have become opposed to what they’re doing as government count less.

The thing is, I still don’t think Danielle Smith cares. She doesn’t care if the UCP government falls because she’s leaving Alberta as soon as that happens. She doesn’t care if her policies are absolute garbage because they will not affect her; she’s going back to her plan to leave Alberta as soon as she’s no longer premier. Every decision her caucus stood behind is a decision they will wear— not her— because she isn’t sticking around to be held accountable.

What I get from their decision to rig the riding boundaries is that she knows someone will be, even if her caucus hasn’t figured it out yet.

How did we get here?

While it’s entirely possible that 900,000 Albertans who voted for the UCP in 2023 were hoping to pay more for healthcare when they need it and hold a separation referendum, if that were true, Danielle Smith probably wouldn’t have bothered with the little performance promising she would not bring in a U.S.-style pay-or-pray system and she would have campaigned on a separation referendum. The line from both her and the quarter-Health Minister Adriana LaGrange has been that they’re looking to implement patient-centred health systems like those successfully in place in Nordic countries; except it didn’t take much effort to discover they aren’t mimicking those at all.

I envisioned the backroom handshakes happening with insurance companies a couple of years ago. If they could no longer make money on house and car insurance, and if the government was indeed going to have to bail them out, Danielle Smith would simply switch the coverage to allow them to keep profiting.

It’s not that we didn’t need more money going into healthcare; we’re the only province in the country that doesn’t have a health premium. To Danielle “private is always better” Smith (and many Albertans, too) allowing private insurers to skim off the top of those premiums somehow makes more sense than Health getting the whole payment.

Even more perplexing is how the favoured surgical centres Ms. Smith and Ms. LaGrange put their careers on the line to give almost three times what other surgical centres were charging will be covered. While other surgical centres were approved within Alberta Health Services guidelines, somehow the deal brokered between the former AHS procurement officer and his replacement, both of whom worked for Sam Mraiche’s MHCare Medical, was approved for almost twice as much.

Insurance companies will look at the fact that a surgery can be done for $4200 in the hospital, or $3000 in a Calgary clinic, and they’re not covering $8000 for surgeries at Alberta Surgical Group clinics in Edmonton. To be fair, it does seem as though the surgeons involved had no idea they were getting the Alberta’s Top Crony deal for “people who allegedly helped get Danielle Smith elected” at the time.

Certainly, they’ll be able to offer the “obviously ours is better because you have to pay more” assurance but just like the autobody shop that doesn’t have special rates for insurance claims, they won’t be recommended either.

I’m getting too far into the weeds there.

Politically speaking, Danielle Smith and the UCP caucus broke their promise to Albertans. It’s a simple, clear message that doesn’t need all the background of how we got here.

The UCP campaigned on a public health guarantee and now they want Albertans to pay for private insurance coverage to access it.

The UCP campaigned on a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” and have given every advantage to the separatists to push Albertans into a referendum.

They broke promises they never intended to keep and now they have to try and ensure they cannot be held accountable for it.

I can’t think how it gets worse than this, but I have no doubt that if anyone can find a way, it’s Danielle freaking Smith.

Forever Canadian… and Liberal?

We needed a comedic break.

Nate Pike of the Breakdown announced last week that the Alberta Liberal Party was going to be the target of a hostile takeover. If I’d thought of it myself, I’d have chosen a hostile takeover of the Pro-Life Alberta Political Association because they’ve consistently been the third biggest fundraiser. I didn’t, though it is somewhat related.

Pro-life Alberta realized that they could get more money to advocate for policies a few people are willing to donate for and they could campaign with all the protections of a political party, offer tax deductions, and not actually have to worry about getting elected.

Well, Stephen Carter realized that the same thing could be done with any political party, so why not put the Alberta Liberal Party to good use and provide a hub for everyone fighting Danielle Smith’s referenda questions (which will most likely include separatism) without all the restrictions of becoming a third party advertizer?

If you’d like to take a front row seat there, all you have to do is buy a membership and attend the May 2 AGM (in person and online). You never know what might become the next big thing :)

Final thoughts

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