Balancing lives with fertility options
In the suite of anti-trans legislation the UCP tabled last week, alongside banning trans youth from female sport in junior and senior high as well as ensuring school is only as safe and welcoming as their home life, is the government’s decision to deny doctors the ability to treat trans youth with approved medication. They also banned gender-affirming surgery for anyone under 18 which is not new; it’s simply codifying what doctors have already recommended in Canada.
The UCP claims their support for the removal of healthcare access for trans youth is to preserve their choices about fertility. Long-term use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy together may cause difficulties reproducing later in life, and the government has decided that those future choices are worth preserving more than lives today. Notwithstanding all of the reasons why that decision shouldn’t belong to the government, of course.
This idea of “preserving fertility” decisions sparked another thought, even before Jason Stephan, the MLA for Red Deer South, encouraged a petition to put limits on “late term” abortions in a member’s statement on Thursday. Because the UCP front bench has claimed that Albertans under the age of 16 are not mature enough to make the decision of whether they want to have children later in life as justification for removing their access to gender affirming care prior to age 16, I fully expect them to next declare they don’t possess the maturity to decide whether they should become a parent before then either.
They did extend the sitting until December 11, and I know I’m on the edge of my seat wondering whose rights the UCP will stomp on next.
A premium on health
There’s a lot of support for healthcare reform in Canada. For some reason, there’s less support for expanding access to training staff to support the expansion we so desperately need, but increasing profit margins will take care of that, apparently. It has helped make the U.S. system the most expensive in the world, so…
A Globe and Mail editorial in support of the UCP’s plan was curious because they highlighted how allowing people to pay for an MRI in Saskatchewan reduced overall wait times there. I say it was curious because Alberta also offers queue jumping for those with deeper pockets and our wait times have done nothing but worsen. Saskatchewan also pays about $1000 more per person than Alberta, though the UCP is trying to increase that amount by paying some contracted service providers almost triple what they will pay for the same surgery in a hospital. To be fair, service providers who didn’t partner with businessmen that showered the premier and her ministers with gifts are paid less than what Alberta pays the same surgeries in hospital. I don’t imagine that will be the case next time they go into contract negotiations, however.
That isn’t a collectivist strategy, or a fiscally responsible way to do business; that’s just mirroring U.S. favouritism. If you’re willing to spend on the influence, the UCP is willing to pad the profit margin with public dollars. In the U.S., hospitals rely on the wealthiest in society to donate. I would be shocked to discover that those donors have to wait like everyone else for tests or treatment when they need them.
All that is to say that when Danielle Smith and Adriana LaGrange, Matt Jones, or either of the other two health pillar ministers, claim they think Albertans deserve the same successful parallels of public and private care offered in European countries, they’re just words. This government’s actions have consistently demonstrated they are more interested in the pay for play model in the U.S. than anything else.
Speaking of which…
The Auditor General released the report on the UCP’s disastrous decision to privatize lab services. Under Premier Jason Kenney and Health Minister Tyler Shandro, a request for proposal to take over public lab services was sought. Only one proposal came in; from DynaLIFE.
The report pointed to a lack of procedural compliance by AHS management, but also indicated that none of the warnings from AHS were deemed relevant enough for the government to change course.
“Evidence demonstrated that the Minister and the Department of Health expected AHS to proceed with community laboratory services outsourcing even as concerns about cost savings, COVID-19 pressures, and only having one proponent were raised by AHS,” the report read (page 14).
“Despite the indicators that the projected annual cost savings—the apparent primary rationale for the procurement—were overstated, the procurement proceeded at the direction of the Minister and the Department of Health.” (page 19)
The report added that more than 1200 pages of documents were partially or fully redacted.
Danielle Smith says it wasn’t her decision. Adriana LaGrange says it wasn’t hers either, however, Ms. LaGrange says that she “was tasked on day one, when I became the minister of health in June of 2023, to look at DynaLife” (Hansard, page 420).
The report notes that DynaLIFE was already overwhelmed between its start date of December 2022 and the spring of 2023 when it was seeking additional funding to support the added costs of the transition prior to the 2023 general election (page 32).
In the end, it saved nothing— as AHS warned the UCP— and only stuck Albertans with another $125 million bill.
Considering the very costly decisions politicians have made on the health file, it would be— at the very least— considerate of the Ministry of Health to back up their decision to plunge Albertans into the private care model. Hopefully the opposition will have more luck tracking the paper trail if they begin asking before the UCP makes a mess and records are destroyed again.
More recall petitions approved
To date, Elections Alberta has approved recall petitions for the following MLAs:
Demetrios Nicolaides, Calgary Bow 2025/10/14, member statement
Angela Pitt, Airdrie East 2025/10/22, member statement (on X)
Nolan Dyck, Grande Prairie 2025/11/10, member statement
Myles McDougall, Calgary-Fish Creek 2025/11/17, member statement
Speaker, Ric McIver, Calgary-Hays, 2025/11/14, member statement
Muhammad Yaseen, Calgary-North, 2025/11/14, no statement
Rajan Sawhney, Calgary-North West, 2025/11/14, no statement
RJ Sigurdson, Highwood, 2025/11/14, member statement
Dale Nally, Morinville-St.Albert, 2025/11/14, member statement
Recall legislation was brought in by Jason Kenney during his 3/4 of a term. The legislation was spun as a way to “strengthen democracy by allowing Albertans to hold elected officials accountable throughout their term, not just during elections” at the time. Blinded by the indignity of Albertans rejecting the naturally governing party of the province, Premier Kenney wanted to ensure that any Albertan, for any reason, could launch a recall petition against a democratically elected official of the provincial legislature.
Doubling down on the unfairness of anyone other than conservatives being elected at any level in the province, Danielle Smith reduced the number of signatures required for citizen initiatives and recall petitions earlier this year.
The fact of the matter is that the responses from MLAs detailing how they’ve been a responsive and attentive representatives are irrelevant. The legislation requires only that the petitioner include, in less than 100 words, their own reasoning for filing the petition. I completely understand why Elections Alberta would not want to be the arbiter of whether or not those reasons are “valid”.
Most responses attack the reasoning for the recall petition, and a few suggest that those offering support are the problem. Dale Nally, however, took it to another level.
“According to Elections Alberta data, Joshua Eberhart (the petitioner in the Morinville-St.Albert riding) doesn’t vote in provincial elections,” Mr. Nally wrote.
This isn’t a violation of privacy, necessarily.
Anyone who has voted has likely watched as the elections official grabs a ruler and crosses their name off the list before handing them a ballot. Elections Alberta knows whether someone showed up to vote.
However, it seems to me as if Mr. Nally did not necessarily require that information for any justifiable purpose.
I think it’s entirely fair that Mr. Nally would want to confirm that the petitioner was indeed an eligible elector and resident of his riding, however, I don’t think Elections Alberta should have included (or confirmed) whether the petitioner voted in 2023, or any other year—that information is, in my opinion, no one else’s business.
After writing it out, I decided to send in a complaint/request for information to Elections Alberta. Feel free to add your concerns.
Final thoughts
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Unbelievable that so many UCP MLAs (lawmakers??) are unable to read and understand the recall legislation that many of them voted to revise. MLA Dale Nally needs an extra special explainer, apparently. The voting records of any of his constituents are irrelevant to the recall process. It isn’t dawning on him or any of the others that they truly fail to grasp the extent of Albertans’ objections to repeated egregious overstepping, incompetence, negligence and corruption. Oh and by the way, Bill 10. Gaslighting Albertans about the reasons for “critical” harvest of fenced-in domestic cervids, isn’t working. Just call it what it is: trophy slaughter. Making sure that a couple of game farm operators can swap $40,000 and upwards for a pair of elk antlers, is NOT saving Alberta’s “diversified livestock industry” and it does not “bring in tourism.” And you don’t get to call it hunting. I don’t even have to oppose the policy to justify the claim of ministerial malfeasance. The lying is enough. Before you ask, no, I am not in Nally’s riding but yes as an Albertan I do have a right to oppose legislation, especially when Albertans have given this government a mandate for none of it. This is what is behind the recalls, plain and simple.
I never vote for a party that consistently underfunds our universal healthcare and education. Why Albertan’s keep voting against their own best interests is beyond me. They hear oil and gas and vote for that party. How in the world does that help any Albertan personally? I pray Albertan’s stop voting the same party in over and over as they ignore the electorate since they know they will get elected in no matter how they screw Albertan’s over. It is ludicrous. As well they better wake up to the fact there is no Conservative party in Alberta currently. There hasn’t been for a decade now. UCP is an authoritarian government wrapped in Conservative banner to disguise itself. A platform where all decisions are to further their ideologies which are not even based on fact or proper due diligence. We are really being screwed over and our costs are rising with ever horrid decision they make. The CorruptCare investigation should halt their being able to further mess with our healthcare system until investigation is complete as there surely was corruption involved there to line their pockets.