Update, November 25: Twelve days ago Kenney finally recognized the threat of COVID, and took some limited steps. However, it was too little and today he was forced to take more thorough actions. Even still his actions are too little and too late. Dr. Joe Vipond, a Calgary emergency room physician, stated “Now that our house is on fire, throwing a couple of buckets on it is not going to put it out. It’s a five-alarm fire.”
Kenney earlier had stated that “It would also be an unprecedented violation of fundamental, constitutionally protected rights and freedoms.” But maybe, finally, the United Conservatives are beginning to recognize that killing people is an attack on their freedom.
COVID has forced Alberta’s Premier Kenney to do an about-face. Presumably, he finally listened to public health staff who explained the COVID facts of life, and death, to him. Until now, while cases soared in Alberta to the second worst rates in Canada, Kenney resisted any restrictions.
Instead of action he simply urged “personal responsibility.” Yet he has had meetings indoors with people not wearing masks and he is now in his second period of isolation. He made irresponsible and incorrect statements to justify letting the pandemic get out of control. He said “we’ve seen other jurisdictions implement sweeping lockdowns, indiscriminately violating people’s rights and destroying livelihoods. Nobody wants that to happen here in Alberta.” Indiscriminately killing people by inaction, is a real violation of people’s rights. Health workers and many Albertans actually want action to contain COVID.
All across Canada, apart from Atlantic Canada, COVID cases and rates of infection are now worse than they were in the spring. The Premiers of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, all hardcore ideological conservatives, until very recently have acted like Trump in the US, arguing against any mandatory constraints. These provinces had three of the four worst rates of Canadian provinces; Québec has the third worst rate.
On Nov 10, Manitoba’s Pallister cracked as Manitoba had the worst rate in Canada and put the province into a lockdown. In Saskatchewan 300 doctors have written to the government demanding much stricter actions.
Alberta’s health workers had warned at the start of November that the health system, especially hospitals, was getting dangerously stretched. On the morning of November 12, over 430 Alberta doctors and three major health unions wrote to Kenney urging action to halt the exploding number of COVID cases. Later that day, Kenney finally changed course and introduced some restrictions, but too little, too late. Already deaths are climbing and COVID is stalking the halls of seniors’ homes. Doctors fear that Kenney’s actions are only a “half measure” and things will get worse.
COVID Not Only Disaster
Kenney and the United Conservative Party’s (UCP) disaster is not limited to COVID inaction. In the first year after being elected in April 2019 they based their budget on the assumption that Alberta’s bitumen would sell at $58 a barrel, a figure based on magic not realism. This is a dream even if ten pipelines are built. While the budget was bleeding money, they cut corporate taxes by over $4 billion a year and froze royalties on oil and gas.
They attacked workers’ rights in Bills 2 and 32, and exempted farm workers from even these gutted rights in Bill 26. They forced, through Bill 22, the teachers’ $18 billion pension fund and several other government agencies to use Alberta Investment Management Corporation, (AIMCo) as their sole investment manager rather than invest with managers of their choice. Kenney has suggested that Alberta could withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan in favour of a new Alberta created fund. This has angered teachers and the Alberta Federation of Labour, which is worried that its retirement funds will essentially be funnelled to desperate Alberta petroleum companies.
The UCP government has studied Orwell’s “doublespeak,” saying one thing and meaning the opposite. The latest attack on workers, Bill 47, is called “Ensuring Safety and Cutting Red Tape Act.” What it does is attack the rights and income of sick and injured workers. This is the second “Red Tape” Act, the first being the Red Tape Reduction Implementation Act, passed in July, which, among other things, speeds up approval of new oil sands projects.
As COVID soared, Kenney picked a fight with the province’s doctors and followed that up with a proposal to fire 11,000 health workers and plans to build a $100 million private surgical facility. They have banned many forms of protest to protect big oil. They plan to change the school curriculum to remove references to residential schools, as including it is a “fad.”
Kenney’s government ended restrictions introduced by conservative Peter Lougheed on open-pit coal mining in the Rockies. This can poison the rivers that provide drinking and irrigation water vital to people and agriculture across the prairies.
Kenny launches attack after attack on the Federal government, trying to distract from his own many failures. While the Federal government has many failings, it has provided support for many Alberta people and companies during COVID. Alberta gets approximately $6.6 billion in health, social and equalization transfer payments from Canada, almost exactly the same per head of population as BC or Ontario. If Alberta left Canada, its economy would be in an even deeper hole and it would be harder to export oil, grain or anything else.
Perhaps the most outrageous act was spending $1.1 billion to buy a share of the Keystone pipeline, which may well never be built, especially now that Biden is elected US president. This money is needed to provide jobs in Alberta, not a chasing phantom of oil. Even if these pipelines are built, the price of bitumen will still be below the cost of production, and certainly nowhere near the hoped-for $58 a barrel.
Drive Kenney Out
Kenney’s government has lost support and is facing opposition on many fronts. Health workers in several hospitals walked off the job in a wildcat strike on October 26 and they were flooded with messages of support from other workers. Although ordered back to work by the Labour Board (no surprise there), this is a warning shot. There will be future larger actions.
The Alberta Federation of Labour is organizing support for action to stop the many Kenney attacks and has raised the idea of a general strike. The power of workers would teach Kenney the facts of life in Alberta – nothing moves or gets done without workers.
Alberta needs an emergency plan to get it out of an economic disaster with an economy over-reliant on oil that has no market. The unions, community groups, Indigenous people and the NDP should call a conference to hammer out a new path forward for Alberta.
Socialist Alternative argues for:
- Taxing the rich
- Taking over the oil industry
- Rapid conversion to clean energy with a massive union jobs program
- Strengthening public health and services and building homes
- Driving the Tories out of office
- Planning the economy democratically to provide good jobs and services for Albertans
