Alberta
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith promises bill protecting rights to refuse vaccines is coming
From LifeSiteNews
The plan is to introduce an amended Bill of Rights this fall that includes protections for individuals’ personal medical decisions.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has promised that the province’s Bill of Rights will be amended this fall so that there are protections added for people’s personal medical decisions that most likely will include one having the right to refuse a vaccine.
Smith’s promise to add protections for personal choice on vaccinations comes because of the COVID jab mandates put in place for a time in Alberta under former Premier Jason Kenney.
Speaking to Albertans at a recent town hall in Bonnyville, Smith said that the COVID crisis resulted in many people being discriminated against for their own medical decisions and that “it shouldn’t have happened.”
Smith, who leads the United Conservative Party (UCP), said that she believes “every person has to be able to do their own assessment, their own health assessment, to be able to make those decisions.”
The original plan by Smith was to add protections for one’s vaccine status directly Alberta Human Rights Act (AHRA). However, this plan was nixed after she was advised by Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel chair Preston Manning that this was not the right legislation for an additional protection.
Instead, Smith promised that a better “law” dealing directly with vaccine status will be forthcoming.
On Monday, Smith confirmed on X that an updated version of the Bill of Rights is coming.
“It’s time. Let’s get this done,” she wrote.
Last year, Smith, as reported by LifeSiteNews, promised to enshrine into “law” protections for people in her province who choose not to be vaccinated as well as strengthen gun rights and safeguard free speech by beefing up the provincial Bill of Rights.
“You have my commitment, no one’s going to be forced to be vaccinated,” Smith told Alberta blogger Shaun Newman.
On Smith’s first day on the job and only minutes after being sworn in, she said that during the COVID years the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.
She took over from Kenney as leader of the UCP on October 11, 2022, after winning the party leadership. The UCP then won a general election in May 2023. Kenney was ousted due to low approval ratings and for reneging on promises not to lock Alberta down during COVID.
Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire Alberta Health Services board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates.
Under Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs.
While Smith has not said much regarding the COVID shots since taking office, she has allowed her caucus members to have broad views when it comes to known safety issues related to the jabs.
UCP MLA Eric Bouchard hosted a sold-out event titled “An Injection of Truth” that featured prominent doctors and experts speaking out against COVID vaccines and mandates.
“Injection of Truth” included well-known speakers critical of COVID mandates and the shots, including Dr. Byram Bridle, Dr. William Makis, canceled doctor Mark Trozzi and pediatric neurologist Eric Payne.
The COVID shots were heavily promoted by the federal government and all provincial governments in Canada, with the Alberta government under Kenney being no exception.
The mRNA shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children.
From the Fraser Institute
On Monday, the Smith government announced that beginning next year it will change the way it funds surgeries in Alberta. This is a big step towards unlocking the ability of Alberta’s health-care system to provide more, better and faster services for the same or possibly fewer dollars.
To understand the significance of this change, you must understand the consequences of the current (and outdated) approach.
Currently, the Alberta government pays a lump sum of money to hospitals each year. Consequently, hospitals perceive patients as a drain on their budgets. From the hospital’s perspective, there’s little financial incentive to serve more patients, operate more efficiently and provide superior quality services.
Consider what would happen if your local grocery store received a giant bag of money each year to feed people. The number of items would quickly decline to whatever was most convenient for the store to provide. (Have a favourite cereal? Too bad.) Store hours would become less convenient for customers, alongside a general decline in overall service. This type of grocery store, like an Alberta hospital, is actually financially better off (that is, it saves money) if you go elsewhere.
The Smith government plans to flip this entire system on its head, to the benefit of patients and taxpayers. Instead of handing out bags of money each year to providers, the new system—known as “activity-based funding”—will pay health-care providers for each patient they treat, based on the patient’s particular condition and important factors that may add complexity or cost to their care.
This turns patients from a drain on budgets into a source of additional revenue. The result, as has been demonstrated in other universal health-care systems worldwide, is more services delivered using existing health-care infrastructure, lower wait times, improved quality of care, improved access to medical technologies, and less waste.
In other words, Albertans will receive far better value from their health-care system, which is currently among the most expensive in the world. And relief can’t come soon enough—for example, last year in Alberta the median wait time for orthopedic surgeries including hip and knee replacements was 66.8 weeks.
The naysayers argue this approach will undermine the province’s universal system and hurt patients. But by allowing a spectrum of providers to compete for the delivery of quality care, Alberta will follow the lead of other more successful universal health-care systems in countries such as Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland and create greater accountability for hospitals and other health-care providers. Taxpayers will get a much better picture of what they’re paying for and how much they pay.
Again, Alberta is not exploring an untested policy. Almost every other developed country with universal health care uses some form of “activity-based funding” for hospital and surgical care. And remember, we already spend more on health care than our counterparts in nearly all of these countries yet endure longer wait times and poorer access to services generally, in part because of how we pay for surgical care.
While the devil is always in the details, and while it’s still possible for the Alberta government to get this wrong, Monday’s announcement is a big step in the right direction. A funding model that puts patients first will get Albertans more of the high-quality health care they already pay for in a timelier fashion. And provide to other provinces an example of bold health-care reform.
Nadeem Esmail
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
From the Montreal Economic Institute
Alberta’s move to fund acute care services through activity-based funding follows best practices internationally, points out an MEI researcher following an announcement made by Premier Danielle Smith earlier today.
“For too long, the way hospitals were funded in Alberta incentivized treating fewer patients, contributing to our long wait times,” explains Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI. “International experience has shown that, with the proper funding models in place, health systems become more efficient to the benefit of patients.”
Currently, Alberta’s hospitals are financed under a system called “global budgeting.” This involves allocating a pre-set amount of funding to pay for a specific number of services based on previous years’ budgets.
Under the government’s newly proposed funding system, hospitals receive a fixed payment for each treatment delivered.
An Economic Note published by the MEI last year showed that Quebec’s gradual adoption of activity-based funding led to higher productivity and lower costs in the province’s health system.
Notably, the province observed that the per-procedure cost of MRIs fell by four per cent as the number of procedures performed increased by 22 per cent.
In the radiology and oncology sector, it observed productivity increases of 26 per cent while procedure costs decreased by seven per cent.
“Being able to perform more surgeries, at lower costs, and within shorter timelines is exactly what Alberta’s patients need, and Premier Smith understands that,” continued Mrs. Wittevrongel. “Today’s announcement is a good first step, and we look forward to seeing a successful roll-out once appropriate funding levels per procedure are set.”
The governments expects to roll-out this new funding model for select procedures starting in 2026.
* * *
The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.
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