We’ve been far from labour peace for months now in Alberta, and the conflict is about to escalate again. Eight of the largest locals with the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) have voted to strike.

Locals 001, 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 009 and 012 represent a significant fraction of Government of Alberta employees, including admin staff, correctional services workers, health-care workers. Their support for the strike was overwhelming. Eighty per cent of their members voted, says AUPE, and the strike measure got over 90% support.

“Going on strike is not a certainty. Our strike vote is valid for the next 120 days, but your bargaining committee’s primary focus is reaching a good deal at the bargaining table,” reads an update AUPE sent to its membership on Monday.

Expect to see AUPE demonstrate in the near future that these members aren’t just willing to strike, but logistically ready, too, by flexing their muscle at demonstrations like this week's rally at the Regional Hospital in Red Deer.

Opposition and labour change targets: from separatism to Bill 55

For two weeks, the discourse in Alberta has been flooded with coverage of separatists—unwarranted coverage, as I argued in our last newsletter. But over the weekend, the Alberta NDP and their labour allies did a hard pivot to a new matter of concern: the Health Statutes Amendment Act, otherwise known as Bill 55.

Bill 55 is a large piece of legislation and touches on a variety of matters. A solid chunk of it consists of simple corrections: the UCP’s carve-up and “re-focus” of Alberta Health Services (AHS) means that a lot of terminology in the health statutes need to be updated to remove things like references to regional health authorities, which haven’t existed since AHS was created in 2008.

But the substantive changes the legislation makes are outlined in its section specifying who is allowed to operate hospitals in Alberta. The first draft of Bill 55 would amend the law to now say that “the oversight Minister, by order, may designate … a person other than a provincial health agency or provincial health corporation” to manage hospitals under certain circumstances, one of which simply being that the minister deems it a good idea.

The NDP Opposition warns that this would allow the UCP to hand over control of hospitals to private management. Is this line of attack by the NDP and their allies in labour legitimate? By my reading, absolutely. It’s right there in the draft in very plain language.

But the UCP contest this. Since the first draft of Bill 55 was released they have consistently maintained that granting the minister power to put hospitals under private operation won’t increase the risk of the minister doing just that. In legislative debate over Bill 55, Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange called the NDP characterization of the bill “misinformation.”

“We are not privatizing health care,” asserted LaGrange in reply to criticism from NDP MLA Brooks Arcand-Paul. “In fact, we are making sure that there is a strong, publicly funded health care system available to all Albertans.”

Bill 55 passed third reading on Wednesday night.

(This post has been corrected from an initial version which incorrectly said that Bill 55's debate would continue into the next session. Sorry—it's a done deal. Apologies for the error.) 

From the Report

• From me: Anne Stevenson launches municipal re-election bid. More coverage of the Edmonton municipal race, including an interview with Ashley Salvador, is on the way.
  
  
• From Jeremy: LERB “reluctantly” dismisses allegations that CPS is attempting to cover up an officer’s repeated use of racial slurs

Sundries

• Despite years of heavy public opposition, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) has approved the Grassy Mountain coal exploration project. It’s a major win for Australian coal magnate Gina Rinehart, the world’s 78th-richest billionaire, and for Brian Jean who expended significant political capital to resurrect it. It is not a major win for anyone in the region who likes to drink water.
  
  
• The UCP cast a flurry of cabinet appointments to its caucus this week, promoting so many that now over half of its sitting MLAs—27 out of 47—are cabinet ministers. We now effectively have four Ministers of Health, one for each of the new agencies that the UCP carved out of Alberta Health Services. Hilariously, this means Adriana LaGrange’s portfolio is now vaccines.
  
  
• Dave Cournoyer over at daveberta.ca did a great and very thorough write-up of the separatism situation this week. On the same topic, Stephen Magusiak interviewed Dr. Roberta Lexier for Press Progress’ podcast Sources.
  
  
• The counter-attack against Athana Mentzelopoulos is escalating: anti-harm-reduction ghoul and former chief of staff to Premier Smith, Marshall Smith (no relation), is suing Mentzelopoulos now too.
  
  
• The Court of King’s Bench has ordered Alberta’s police to stop doing business with Clearview AI—and for Clearview to scrub its servers of all the files it has been building on Albertans. Clearview was building facial recognition databases by scraping people’s social media accounts and then selling them to police. The ruling also found that Alberta’s personal information privacy laws desperately need updating, because in their current form, they’re unconstitutional.
  
  
• Underscoring just how impossible secession would be in the face of the treaties, representatives of several treaty nations led a rally at the Legislature on Thursday to denounce Danielle Smith’s proposed separation referendum.
  
  
• Nathan Cooper, having successfully secured his silly hat, has stepped down as Speaker at the Legislature and will be replaced by Ric McIver. Cooper is being sent down south as Alberta’s new envoy to the United States.
  
  
• Take Back Alberta leader David Parker claimed on Twitter this week that Elections Alberta has nailed him with another $20,000 fine. If true, this brings his running tally to at least $140,000.
  
  
• I’m happy to report that Ezra Levant and Rebel Media have discontinued their lawsuit against me concerning his 2019 book launch. While everyone else in the suit was eventually forced to settle out, I was able to stand my ground, and that’s largely to the credit of readers like you who pitched in to my legal defense fund. Thank you!

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