Alberta
Province spending $36 million to free up hospital space for Covid patients
More funding to increase health-care capacity
Up to $36 million in new funding will improve wages and create additional workforce capacity to allow more Albertans to receive care outside of hospitals and free up resources to treat COVID-19 patients during the fourth wave.
Improving home care and facility-based continuing care will mean more Albertans will get the care they need in their homes and communities. This will help reduce pressure on all parts of the health-care system, namely acute care, during a time when hospitalizations are increasing due to COVID-19.
More than 400 Albertans are currently waiting in hospitals to move into continuing care facilities, with many more waiting to return to their homes outside of facility-based care with the support of home care services.
“We know that home care agencies are experiencing staffing challenges. Increasing the pool of available staff will mean we can move additional patients from hospitals to their homes when it is safe to do so. This is a benefit to patients who would rather get the care they need in the comfort of their own homes. It also benefits hospitals as they manage the increasing number of patients who need beds because of COVID-19 complications.”
“Supporting home care agencies recruit and retain staff will enable more patients to receive high-quality care in their homes, improving capacity in our hospitals and allowing more patients to stay close to their loved ones.”
Wage increases for health-care aides
Contracted home care agencies will receive $22 million over two years in additional funding to provide wage increases to their certified health-care aides. The additional funding will provide a pay increase of $2 an hour for the next 13 months for health-care aides working in home care agencies contracted with Alberta Health Services. The purpose of providing this increase in funding rates is to help retain current and recruit additional staff, which will allow more Albertans to be cared for in their own homes. There are currently hundreds of vacant health-care aide positions in the home care system.
Alberta Health Services is also increasing home care hours authorized for agencies; the funding increase will help the agencies meet these hours. This supports the shift to more care in the community, as recommended in the facility-based continuing care review.
Expanding the home care workforce
An additional $14 million is being provided to expand workforce capacity to support home care and continuing care facilities on a short-term basis until March 31, 2022. There is a need to be able to respond quickly to new health system pressures arising from COVID-19. Similar to the comfort care aide program that provided a staffing pool for continuing care facilities, this additional funding will support a variety of innovative approaches to mobilize existing or new staff to where they are most needed for short periods of time.
“The Alberta Continuing Care Association welcomes this additional funding to improve Alberta’s continuing care system as a whole. Our members provide care and services for over 13,000 individuals in long-term care and designated supportive living settings and over 5.2 million hours of home care to Albertans.”
“Our caregivers provide exceptional client-focused home support services and go the extra mile to make our clients feel special, comfortable and safe. This additional funding will help to sustain the home care sector and our dedicated staff who deliver high-quality care to Albertans every day.”
“We thank the Alberta government for their recognition and support of the ever-important work our home care health-care aides provide to keep our clients safe and well in their homes. This announcement is a positive step forward to developing a sustainable funding model to make home care a desirable career choice.”
Quick facts
- A Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) study found that a growing number of seniors in Canada could have been supported in their homes through home care, helping to delay or avoid admission to continuing care residences.
- There are more than 132,000 Albertans who receive home care services annually and nearly 28,000 Albertans residing in continuing care facilities.
- The $22 million for the health-care aide wage increase will be provided over two years; $12 million in 2021-22 and $10 million in 2022-23.
- The home care aide salary increase is for staff working in contracted home care agencies. This increase does not apply to Alberta Health Services or Covenant Health home care staff.
Alberta
Premier Danielle Smith hints Alberta may begin ‘path’ toward greater autonomy after Mark Carney’s win
From LifeSiteNews
Alberta’s premier said her government will be holding a special caucus meeting on Friday to discuss Alberta’s independence.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith hinted her province could soon consider taking serious steps toward greater autonomy from Canada in light of Mark Carney and the Liberal Party winning yesterday’s federal election.
In a statement posted to her social media channels today, Smith, who is head of Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party, warned that “In the weeks and months ahead, Albertans will have an opportunity to discuss our province’s future, assess various options for strengthening and protecting our province against future hostile acts from Ottawa, and to ultimately choose a path forward.”
“As Premier, I will facilitate and lead this discussion and process with the sincere hope of securing a prosperous future for our province within a united Canada that respects our province’s constitutional rights, facilitates rather than blocks the development and export of our abundant resources, and treats us as a valued and respected partner within confederation,” she noted.
While Smith stopped short of saying that Alberta would consider triggering a referendum on independence from Canada, she did say her government will be holding a “special caucus meeting this Friday to discuss this matter further.”
“I will have more to say after that meeting is concluded,” she noted.
Smith’s warning comes at the same time some pre-election polls have shown Alberta’s independence from Canada sentiment at just over 30 percent.
Monday’s election saw Liberal leader Mark Carney beat out Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre, who also lost his seat. The Conservatives managed to pick up over 20 new seats, however, and Poilievre has vowed to stay on as party leader, for now.
In Alberta, almost all of the seats save two at press time went to conservatives.
Carney, like former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before him, said he is opposed to new pipeline projects that would allow Alberta oil and gas to be unleashed. Also, his green agenda, like Trudeau’s, is at odds with Alberta’s main economic driver, its oil and gas industry.
The federal government under Trudeau pushed since 2015 a radical environmental agenda similar to the agendas being pushed the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the United Nations “Sustainable Development Goals.”
The Carney government has also pledged to mandate that all new cars and trucks by 2035 be electric, effectively banning the sale of new gasoline- or diesel-only powered vehicles after that year.
The reduction and eventual elimination of the use of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda – an organization in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet are involved.
Smith: ‘I will not permit the status quo to continue’
In her statement, Smith noted that she invited Carney to “immediately commence working with our government to reset the relationship between Ottawa and Alberta with meaningful action rather than hollow rhetoric.”
She noted that a large majority of Albertans are “deeply frustrated that the same government that overtly attacked our provincial economy almost unabated for the past 10 years has been returned to government.”
Smith then promised that she would “not permit the status quo to continue.”
“Albertans are proud Canadians that want this nation to be strong, prosperous, and united, but we will no longer tolerate having our industries threatened and our resources landlocked by Ottawa,” she said.
Smith praised Poilievre for empowering “Albertans and our energy sector as a cornerstone of his campaign.”
Smith was against forced COVID jabs, and her United Conservative government has in recent months banned men from competing in women’s sports and passed a bill banning so-called “top and bottom” surgeries for minors as well as other extreme forms of transgender ideology.
Alberta
Hours after Liberal election win, Alberta Prosperity Project drumming up interest in referendum
News release from the Alberta Prosperity Project
Carney’s In. Now what?You’ve been paying attention. You understand this is really bad. Worse than that, it’s dangerous. The country has somehow chosen several more years of a decade-long Trudeau Travesty…on steroids. Because this new Prime Minister has a three digit IQ, deep and questionable connections and a momentum to accelerate the further dis-integration of a nation we all once proudly belonged to. It’s untrue to say the country is dying. But it’s also not a stretch to say it’s on life support. The era of Carney Carnage is here. While every province will experience it, there’s no secret he’s placed an extra big bulls-eye on Alberta. It’s not personal, it’s financial.His plan includes continuing to limit three of Alberta’s most prosperous sectors: energy, agriculture and, by extension, innovation. To acknowledge this requires we abandon our sense of romanticized national nostalgia. Nostalgia is a trap that prevents us from assessing the reality we exist in. For instance, GDP is considered the financial heartbeat of a country. Over the past decade of Liberal Leadership, the national GDP has been an abysmal 1.1%. By relatable comparison, Mexico was 4%, the UK was 6%, Australia had 8% growth and the US was a whopping 19%. That’s great information for an economist, but what does it mean to your pay cheque? The everyday impact on the average Albertan —say, a teacher or mechanic— of 10 long years of 1% GDP means rent’s up at least 25%, a trip to the grocery store always stings, and driving an older car is the norm because an upgrade is out of reach. Does this sound like your reality? We aren’t starving, but we’re not thriving, either.Does this make sense for 4.5 million people living with the third most abundant energy deposits in the world? There’s an absurdity to the situation Albertans find themselves in. It’s akin to being chronically dehydrated while having a fresh water spring in the backyard. The life you’ve invested for, the future you believed was ahead, isn’t happening. If Alberta stays on this path. So what can you, as an Albertan, do about it? This Fall, we’ll be provided an opportunity. A life raft in the form of a referendum. It requires curiosity, imagination and courage to step into it, but the option will be there — a once in a lifetime shot at prosperity for you and your family: Alberta Sovereignty. A successful bid means Albertans can finally paddle out of the perilous economic current that’s battered us for ten long years. Alberta has the resources, talent and spirit of collaboration to create a prosperous future for our families and communities. |
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UPCOMING EVENTS: |
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WHAT CAN ALBERTANS DO?Register Your Intent To Vote “YES” |
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