It was a speech that symbolized Alberta’s pandemic politics in 2021: the boastful, loud megaphone victory and the first out of Prime Minister Jason Kenney’s doorstep on COVID-19 that preceded a crushing hospital crisis.
In 2022, Kenney and his united Conservative government aim to advance the economy and catch up on the thousands of canceled surgeries as hospitals were overwhelmed during the fourth wave of COVID-19 in the fall.
Health Minister Jason Copping said it will take some time. The goal is to catch up on the 68,000 pre-pandemic surgery waiting list by the middle of next year.
“That’s my number one job aside from responding to COVID, of course,” Copping said earlier this month, announcing that the number of canceled surgeries had stabilized at around 81,000. “We are going to lower that waiting list.”
The wind is in the sails of the PCU, at least in the short term, with a payoff from oil and gas revenues at the end of the year that cut the projected budget deficit by two-thirds to less than $ 6 billion.
There was other good economic news.
Tech giant Amazon Web Services announced in November that it had begun construction of a $ 4.3 billion cloud computing server center in Calgary.
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Alberta’s unemployment fell below eight percent.
Big-budget film productions took advantage of tax credits to shoot in the province, including HBO’s “The Last of Us,” and injected millions of dollars into local economies.
“Albertans are optimistic by nature. They just need one reason for their optimism. Well, there are many reasons right now, including the fact that we are leading Canada with a lot of economic growth,” Kenney told the Chamber of Commerce. from Calgary this month.
Alberta Prime Minister @jkenney is betting on a strong #economy in 2022 after a rough year of COVID. #ABpoli # Covid19
There was a $ 3.8 billion settlement with the federal government that will see daycare costs start falling in January and drop to $ 10 a day by 2026.
Doug Schweitzer, Minister of Employment, Economy and Innovation, announced: “This was the year that Alberta regained our arrogance.”
Kenney struck a similar triumphant tone on June 18 in his speech on a sunny day near the Edmonton River Valley.
COVID-19 did not receive the memo.
The government then did not act when cases exploded in August and did not change course until September. Deaths soared, officials rushed to double the capacity of the intensive care unit, army doctors were called in and 15,000 surgeries reported across the province, including cancer operations, were delayed.
Kenney introduced a vaccine passport form and other restrictions that increased vaccinations and reduced hospital cases. It seemed to help pull the system off the edge of the abyss.
The prime minister took responsibility and said that “the ball is over with me.”
But the mea culpa had asterisks: other provinces also had problems; He didn’t act earlier because he wasn’t sure Albertans, weary of COVID-19, would follow the rules; I would have acted sooner, but I was waiting for Dr. Deena Hinshaw, chief medical officer for health, to propose changes.
The COVID-19 conflicts and controversies sent Kenney’s popularity numbers plummeting and opened deep and sometimes public rifts within his group and party.
Critics said Kenney was slow to enforce health rules over the past three waves, jeopardizing the capacity of the health system because he feared alienating anti-vaccine elements from his party.
Kenney tried to contain the infighting. Dissidents Todd Loewen and Drew Barnes were removed from the caucus. Cabinet Minister Leela Aheer became a former Cabinet Minister.
Kenney, under pressure from the Cabinet and later by some two dozen constituencies, agreed to advance a review of his leadership to a one-day vote on April 9 in Red Deer beginning in late 2022.
Problems persist, beginning with his longtime rival for PCU leadership, Brian Jean.
Jean, one of the party’s co-founders, won the nomination to represent Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche in an upcoming by-election. He is running on a platform to end Kenney’s time as leader, saying that Kenney’s top-down style and failed decisions on COVID-19 cannot be redeemed and that the party needs a new leader if it hopes to win the 2023 elections.
“Kenney is imposing it all (on oil and gas prices),” said political scientist Duane Bratt of Mount Royal University in Calgary. “The other 2021 story, obviously, is COVID.
“At almost every step of the way, the government acts later than anyone else in the country and responds weaker than everyone else in the country, it’s defiant about what they’re doing and then gradually changes course. We’ll have to see what What happens in January if Omicron (variant of COVID-19) becomes as serious as some believe. “
This Canadian Press report was first published on December 29, 2021.
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com