Alberta
Province Releases Blockbuster Review of COVID-19 Pandemic Response

A blockbuster report headed up by Dr. Gary Davidson has been released. The review should rattle the foundations of Alberta Health and very likely have huge ramifications everywhere as it’s one of only a very few reviews of this kind to be released anywhere in the world.
You can find the report here: open.alberta.ca/publications/a
Premier Danielle Smith tasked Dr. Davidson with this project over 2 years ago. Former head of Emergency Medicine for the central zone and Chief of the Emergency Department at Red Deer Regional Hospital from 2016-2020, Dr. Davidson found himself on the outside looking in during the COVID-19 pandemic when he criticized the accepted treatments and refused to take the jab. Shortly after Danielle Smith became Premier, she called on Dr. Davidson to lead a review.. and has he ever.
Released earlier today (Friday, January 24), the 250 page report is extremely critical of many aspects of the health system’s approach to the pandemic.
You can find the report here: open.alberta.ca/publications/a
The team assembled by Dr. Davidson includes some of the leading Albertans you would hope to be involved in a provincial COVID-19 review including Dr. Davison himself, Dr. Blaine Achen (who was fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine after having recovered from COVID and realizing he had immunity. He was soon reinstated.), Infectious Disease Epidemiologist Dr. David Vickers of the Centre for Health Informatics at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, as well as Dr “Rashad” Justin Chin, Emergency Medicine Specialist at the University of Alberta Emergency Department.
The team called out and received support from some of the world’s leading experts on the COVID-19 pandemic including David Speicher, a PhD and molecular virologist and clinical epidemiologist with expertise in detection and surveillance of infectious diseases. Dr. Speicher’s work has been highlighted in the U.S. Senate as well as European Parliamentary hearings.
Dr Davidson also pulled in Dr. Byram Bridle. The PhD viral immunologist and Associate Professor of Viral Immunology in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph who became renowned for his early and accurate information on the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccine response.
The review was also aided by US President Donald Trumps selection for Secretary of NIH (National Institutes of Health), Dr Jay Battacharya. Dr. Battacharya catapulted to fame for his part in the Great Barrington Declaration released early in the pandemic, which suggested a completely different approach to various aspects of the pandemic response which have all proved to be far better in retrospect.
In the coming days and perhaps hours, various media and agencies will be offering summaries of the report’s findings (including the summaries you’ll find here at Todayville.com). Undoubtedly there are AI versions already. However this is one small book you should seriously consider reading yourself from cover to cover. After a quick scan I can guarantee you it would be very difficult to overstate just how important this review is to future pandemic responses and to our health care system in general.
More on this report in the coming days.. and undoubtedly weeks and months ahead!
Do take the time to read this for yourself. It’s really too important to only know what others will tell you about this. Undoubtedly there will be extremely differing opinions. Perhaps the most important conclusion of all will be one of the recommendations made in this review… the absolute necessity for a full public inquiry into Alberta’s pandemic response.
You can find the report here: open.alberta.ca/publications/a
Alberta
Is Canada’s Federation Fair?

David Clinton
Contrasting the principle of equalization with the execution
Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).
So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light.
You’ll need to search long and hard to find a Canadian unwilling to help those less fortunate. And, so long as we identify as members of one nation¹, that feeling stretches from coast to coast.
So the basic principle of Canada’s equalization payments – where poorer provinces receive billions of dollars in special federal payments – is easy to understand. But as you can imagine, it’s not easy to apply the principle in a way that’s fair, and the current methodology has arguably lead to a very strange set of incentives.
According to Department of Finance Canada, eligibility for payments is determined based on your province’s fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity is a measure of the taxes (income, business, property, and consumption) that a province could raise (based on national average rates) along with revenues from natural resources. The idea, I suppose, is that you’re creating a realistic proxy for a province’s higher personal earnings and consumption and, with greater natural resources revenues, a reduced need to increase income tax rates.
But the devil is in the details, and I think there are some questions worth asking:
- Whichever way you measure fiscal capacity there’ll be both winners and losers, so who gets to decide?
- Should a province that effectively funds more than its “share” get proportionately greater representation for national policy² – or at least not see its policy preferences consistently overruled by its beneficiary provinces?
The problem, of course, is that the decisions that defined equalization were – because of long-standing political conditions – dominated by the region that ended up receiving the most. Had the formula been the best one possible, there would have been little room to complain. But was it?
For example, attaching so much weight to natural resource revenues is just one of many possible approaches – and far from the most obvious. Consider how the profits from natural resources already mostly show up in higher income and corporate tax revenues (including income tax paid by provincial government workers employed by energy-related ministries)?
And who said that such calculations had to be population-based, which clearly benefits Quebec (nine million residents vs around $5 billion in resource income) over Newfoundland (545,000 people vs $1.6 billion) or Alberta (4.2 million people vs $19 billion). While Alberta’s average market income is 20 percent or so higher than Quebec’s, Quebec’s is quite a bit higher than Newfoundland’s. So why should Newfoundland receive only minimal equalization payments?
To illustrate all that, here’s the most recent payment breakdown when measured per-capita:
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For clarification, the latest per-capita payments to poorer provinces ranged from $3,936 to PEI, $1,553 to Quebec, and $36 to Ontario. Only Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC received nothing.
And here’s how the total equalization payments (in millions of dollars) have played out over the past decade:
Is energy wealth the right differentiating factor because it’s there through simple dumb luck, morally compelling the fortunate provinces to share their fortune? That would be a really difficult argument to make. For one thing because Quebec – as an example – happens to be sitting on its own significant untapped oil and gas reserves. Those potential opportunities include the Utica Shale formation, the Anticosti Island basin, and the Gaspé Peninsula (along with some offshore potential in the Gulf of St. Lawrence).
So Quebec is effectively being paid billions of dollars a year to not exploit their natural resources. That places their ostensibly principled stand against energy resource exploitation in a very different light. Perhaps that stand is correct or perhaps it isn’t. But it’s a stand they probably couldn’t have afforded to take had the equalization calculation been different.
Of course, no formula could possibly please everyone, but punishing the losers with ongoing attacks on the very source of their contributions is guaranteed to inspire resentment. And that could lead to very dark places.
Note: I know this post sounds like it came from a grumpy Albertan. But I assure you that I’ve never even visited the province, instead spending most of my life in Ontario.
Which has admittedly been challenging since the former primer minister infamously described us as a post-national state without an identity.
This isn’t nearly as crazy as it sounds. After all, there are already formal mechanisms through which Indigenous communities get more than a one-person-one-vote voice.
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Alberta
Big win for Alberta and Canada: Statement from Premier Smith

Premier Danielle Smith issued the following statement on the April 2, 2025 U.S. tariff announcement:
“Today was an important win for Canada and Alberta, as it appears the United States has decided to uphold the majority of the free trade agreement (CUSMA) between our two nations. It also appears this will continue to be the case until after the Canadian federal election has concluded and the newly elected Canadian government is able to renegotiate CUSMA with the U.S. administration.
“This is precisely what I have been advocating for from the U.S. administration for months.
“It means that the majority of goods sold into the United States from Canada will have no tariffs applied to them, including zero per cent tariffs on energy, minerals, agricultural products, uranium, seafood, potash and host of other Canadian goods.
“There is still work to be done, of course. Unfortunately, tariffs previously announced by the United States on Canadian automobiles, steel and aluminum have not been removed. The efforts of premiers and the federal government should therefore shift towards removing or significantly reducing these remaining tariffs as we go forward and ensuring affected workers across Canada are generously supported until the situation is resolved.
“I again call on all involved in our national advocacy efforts to focus on diplomacy and persuasion while avoiding unnecessary escalation. Clearly, this strategy has been the most effective to this point.
“As it appears the worst of this tariff dispute is behind us (though there is still work to be done), it is my sincere hope that we, as Canadians, can abandon the disastrous policies that have made Canada vulnerable to and overly dependent on the United States, fast-track national resource corridors, get out of the way of provincial resource development and turn our country into an independent economic juggernaut and energy superpower.”
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