- cross-posted to:
- alberta
- cross-posted to:
- alberta
The campaign by Alberta’s United Conservative Party to remake the province’s health-care system has created chaos with patients dying in overcrowded hospital emergency rooms.
But there has also been a steep financial cost to the overhaul. A Tyee analysis of Alberta Health financial data found at least $30 million has been paid out in severance between 2019 and June 2025.
The data shows the government paid out about $29.45 million between 2019 and June 2025 to 150 former employees. But that figure doesn’t account for payouts made in the second half of 2025, nor does it capture the payouts for executives and others who opted out of the public reporting of their severance.
A third of that amount — nearly $10 million — was paid out in 2023 to 33 people as Smith made good on an election campaign promise to eliminate what she characterized as a bloated bureaucracy and ineffective executive managers.
Smith had made no secret of her animus toward officials at Alberta Health Services, or AHS, whom she accused of underperforming and of mismanaging the COVID pandemic by too stringently applying mandates.
They want the money that was to be spent on healthcare siphoned off to billionaires.
The part of all this that puzzles me most is that ordinary citizens who support these parties seem to think they’ll benefit from the Conservatives’ cuts to public services.
Ultimately, these people, through their support, are causing people to lose services to the benefit of billionaires…for nothing?
they think they benefit in some nebulous and convoluted way. “trickle down economics”
I think it resembles the mindset of cultists, where they will do and accept whatever their cult leaders demand of them. Even though the lie sits there spread-eagle for all to see, they turn their eyes to it. It’s bizarre.
I remember reading (relatively recently) research showing conservatives literally believe badvthingscdo not happen to good people. If they know someone personally who they know is good, and something bad happens to them, they either think it is a rare example of bad luck and they will help out, or they will decide that person must not have been a good person.
It allows them to justify the mental gymnastics of being anti-abortion but paying for their daughter’s “procedure” at the same time. A “good” family member who gets cancer deserves help, but why should they fund cancer care for those morally bankrupt <fill in the “other”> people?
Apparently they have overactive amygdalas, among other issues, and a reduced ability to engage critical thinking towards their own beliefs.
So, yes, they kind of are cult members. But they can’t be easily deprogrammed, and even if we purged this lot, we would still end up with some cropping up again.
Rampant, unfettered capitalism above all.