Opinion: Everyday Albertans will lose in this battle

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on December 13, 2019.

Hindsight is 2020, but perhaps health care reform should have been looked at far sooner than 2020.

Jason Kenney government is keen on reducing the deficit in individual budgets, subsequently wanting to create future surpluses and then reduce the province’s accumulated debt.

According to statistics from the inaugural and now infamous 2019 provincial Alberta budget with its 2.8% cut overall, the provincial government will still have an $8.7 billion deficit on revenues. That shortfall will then have the current debt go from $63 billion to $72 billion. Billion, not million, billion.

The way to fix the problem isn’t coming easy as both the government and government workers who are being one of the first targets are posturing and digging in for a fight which looks to have a lot of political collateral damage.

With the petroleum industry in the tank, no pun intended, and no one knowing how to create new revenue, the easiest thing to do is cut expenditures while eliminating the strength of the unions and privatizing. What better way to kill two birds with one stone than to employ the classic political tactic “divide and conquer?” A real life version of the television show “Fear Factor.”

Government: Tell the public that the province is deep in debt and handcuffs government from doing anything progressive. Tell the public they are overstaffed and there needs to be some difficult choices need to be made.

Unions: Tell the public if the government cuts staff/changes programs, they will all suffer.

All of these are true, but the winner of this battle will be the one who convinces the public what fear message is scarier.

Create a fight based on fear in the public eye.

Both sides push proposals as far to the extreme as possible and then meet in the middle.

One could maybe call this union busting as this right wing, fiscally conservative government seems to be pushing to privatize some aspects of the health-care system.

While there is this turmoil, people will lose jobs or those who are vulnerable or disadvantaged may have to have to pay for services they have normally counted on as free. The sad reality of this is that it is all cronyism: Each side not wanting to give an inch and protecting their friends in high paid management.

For example, there has been no word of cuts to Alberta Health Service executive (the top 17 members) which in 2018, their salaries and benefits combined for a “paltry” $6,085,000. There was talk of a wage rollback for 2019. They did, the budget went down to a combined $6,028,000.

If one looks at the executive salaries and benefits for 2018-2019 of the Alberta Health Services Annual Report 2018-19 perhaps compare the cost of the front line workers vs. management/executive. (See pages 108-112 of the report: https://www.alberta.ca/salary-and-severance-disclosure-table.aspx_)

Unlike union members where it was trumpeted there would be job losses, no such word on executive or management position which if you see stands to be in the $449,339,000 range for (base salary and cash and non-cash benefits combined).

The union leaders are also worried about their membership. There are a lot of people employed in health related areas.

The AUPE is saying the will lose 5,900 jobs with some positions being contracted out in AHS laundry services and retail food services. Bringing it up to perhaps 7,000 jobs lost. It’s the largest provincial union with 95,000 members. The unions have done well for their members and vice versa. Besides representing them, union leaders don’t want to lose union members (less revenue and political clout). Take for example, the UNA membership is worth a tax deductible 1.5% off each pay cheque (https://www.una.ab.ca/collectiveagreements). Compare that to how much Alberta nurses combined to make in base salaries including cash and non-cash benefits (RNs; reg. Psych. Nurses-$2,544,723,000) and LPNs alone ($464,825,000) in 2019.

A study by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation released in early October stated that Alberta health-care workers are overpaid. The union stated the CTF study was flawed, ignoring a lot of key factors.

There is a battle brewing and the general population will feel the fall out.

(Ryan Dahlman is the managing editor of Prairie Post and Prairie Post West)

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