This government does have a plan for our health care and it is one that will serve corporate interests instead of the public interest. Zooming in on the UCP’s health omnibus Bill 30 provides crucial pieces in the puzzle of the UCP privatization agenda. This is part one of a series of blog posts about the privatization of health care in Alberta.

Most of the coverage of the tabling of Bill 32 has focused on its effects on unions and unionized workers (including Part One of this post published last week). Yet, the most far-reaching impacts of the bill will be on non-unionized workers – those who are protected only by the Employment Standards Code (ESC). 

Bill 32 will have serious impacts on unionized and non-unionized workers, and it will restrict the voices of workers in our democracy. Jason Foster, Associate Professor, Human Resources and Labour Relations at Athabasca University, explains the implications for unionized workers in the first of a two-part blog series. 

Women in Alberta are suffering the triple blow of bearing the brunt of the governing United Conservative Party’s austerity agenda and the COVID-19 economic and public health crises. In this blog Ian Hussey makes the case for an evidence-based COVID-19 response and recovery plan for Alberta that includes feminist considerations, and makes some suggestions for what such a plan might include.

Jason Kenney has celebrated the life-saving contributions of medical lab professionals in Alberta but just a few months ago he discussed plans to privatize the province's labs and label lab workers as not "frontline" medicine. Rebecca Graff-McRae digs into the current work of medical labs in Alberta, their recent political history, and what might become of them post-pandemic.

Two meat-packing plants in southern Alberta have given rise to nearly one in six of Alberta’s 3400 cases of COVID-19. Athabasca University's Bob Barnetson and Jason Foster examine what went wrong at the two meatpacking plants, what it tells us about the inadequacy of OHS policy in Alberta and how the incidents could have been avoided.

In his Address to Albertans on April 7, Premier Jason Kenney quoted Franklin Delano Roosevelt without naming him. In this blog research manager Rebecca Graff-McRae takes a deeper look at some of the context and themes of Roosevelt's "fear itself" address to find some instructive historical parallels, and some even more stark contrasts.

On March 31 Premier Jason Kenney announced that the Government of Alberta will invest $1.5 billion and provide an additional $6 billion loan guarantee to facilitate the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Research manager Ian Hussey looks at the deal to determine just who benefits from this investment and in what measure.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has suggested that the federal government should bail out oil and gas companies in response to the COVID-19 crisis and the Saudi-Russian price war. In this blog researcher Ian Hussey explains why that would be a bad idea.

Alberta Budget 2020, released on February 27, continued the UCP commitment to deep spending cuts in public services. Parkland Institute research managers Ian Hussey and Alison McIntosh outline some of the budget's key components.