Basic Income for Canadians
A basic income program is coming to Canada soon, says Evelyn Forget. In June a cross-party committee of MPs agreed, calling for the government “to take a deeper look at a guaranteed minimum [...]
Greg Flanagan
Greg Flanagan
Universal Care (Some Exceptions Apply)
My uncle, Harald Skjei, was born in 1899 and died from diabetes at the age of 14. A diagnosis of diabetes meant almost certain death before the historic work of Canadian doctors Frederick [...]
An Ounce of Prevention…
According to founder of Medicare Tommy Douglas’s original vision, healthcare in Canada “should be designed to keep people well—because in the long run it’s cheaper to keep people well than to [...]
Impaired Judgement
In the provincial referendum of 1923, following seven years of prohibition, Albertans voted for government control over liquor. They chose a distribution and sales system that promised to control [...]
Can Medicare Survive?
Nearly a decade ago, the Klein government initiated massive cuts to public services, including health care. Along with those cuts came other system changes, such as the replacement of more than [...]
Shifting the Burden
A radical proposal was quietly presented by then finance minister Stockwell Day with the 1999 budget. Titled “A New Tax Plan for Albertans,” the document proposed three major changes to Alberta [...]
Cutting Health Care:
Health care reforms have left almost 50 per cent of Albertans doubtful whether the system will be able to care for them when they need it. With hospital closures, backlogs in emergency wards, [...]
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Kenney’s War on Workers
My wife and I spent our last day of our summer vacations in 2019 on a picket line with healthcare workers at Edmonton’s old General Hospital. Most of the cleaners, healthcare aides and nurses at the information picket were women of colour. Like public-sector workers across the province, they were ...
The Story of Joseph Lewis
In 1799 Joseph Lewis, a Hudson's Bay Company employee, arrived in what is now Alberta. He was 27 years old but his life had already been crammed with adventure.
Born in 1772 in Manchester, New Hampshire, at 20 he’d made his way to Montreal, where he joined the North West Company ...
Just Transition
There were times when I was taking home about $3,500 a week.” That was in the oil sands, during the boom before 2014. Lliam Hildebrand was a young welder who had come to the Athabasca oil sands for work.
Before that, the Victoria, BC, native spent his first eight years after high ...