Recent Research
Dentistry in Alberta
Time for a Checkup?
This report examines access to dental care in Alberta and across Canada and calls for solutions to improve population health. Alberta is the top private funder of dental care in Canada, and while it's the second highest spender on public dental care, only nine per cent of Albertans receive government-sponsored dental insurance benefits. More than 20 per cent of Albertans lack dental insurance, leading to serious implications for oral health, particularly among lower-income Albertans.
Whistleblowers Not Protected
While the second scheduled review of the Public Interest Disclosure (Whistleblower Protection) Act (PIDA) is underway, this timely report by Cameron Hutchison, a professor of law at the University of Alberta, outlines how the current PIDA falls far short of international best practices for whistleblower protection and is laced with pitfalls through which few whistleblowers should ever dare to venture.
Recent Blog Posts
For Alberta's carbon tax and pipeline problems, hope is not a plan
After Canada’s Supreme Court ruled the federal government’s carbon tax is constitutional, Premier Kenney made the astonishing admission that his government didn’t prepare a fallback plan on implementing a consumer carbon tax because they were hoping to win in the country’s top court. For the UCP, apparently hope springs eternal, even when the fiscal boat itself is springing leaks.
Immigrant women's painful experiences of mental health services in Lethbridge, Alta.
Shahina Parvin's PhD research examines the structural issues around immigrant women's access to mental health services in Lethbridge, Alta., as well as gaps in health care. Parvin believes it's essential to reframe psychiatric care and acknowledge that discrimination and power relations contribute to humans’ suffering must be taken into account when providing mental health services to racialized immigrant women and other marginalized individuals in Alberta.
Alberta Budget 2021
Tax Giveaways for Corporations, Service Cuts for Albertans
The compounded impact of years of cuts will be catastrophic. The United Conservative government is cutting or privatizing services that Albertans rely on in order to pay for their 33 per cent tax giveaway to large profitable corporations and for their mistakes of cancelling the crude-by-rail contracts and gambling on Keystone XL. On par with Premier Klein’s massive cuts in the late 1990s, the result will be deep structural changes and a legacy of lasting damage.