[DrCaleb]

$1:

Elise Stolte: UCP plan to kill Edmonton superlab ignores dangers of the status quo

Expert reports on the state of medical lab services in Edmonton make for grim reading.

Seventy per cent of major health decisions are based on a lab result, but Edmonton’s facilities are aging and outdated.

It’s not just the private DynaLife headquarters, which are crowded, stuck in a downtown office tower never designed to host a state-of-the-art lab. Equipment in Edmonton’s public labs is obsolete. More than three-quarters of the lab equipment owned by Alberta Health Services is considered to be at the end of its useful life, according to a 2017 report by the Health Quality Council of Alberta.

In that same report, experts call lab services the “fastest changing area of health care.” Scientists are constantly finding more precise tests, now using gene analysis to diagnose patients more accurately and earlier, with the promise of reducing overall costs.

But Alberta’s current system for regulating lab services is so fractured and political, decisions around new tests drag on and on, physicians say. It’s “as hard or harder” to get an outdated test removed. Even a simple decision, like moving all Alberta labs to the same test requisition form, had been under discussion for three years when the 2017 report was written. Alberta is falling behind.

I hope that puts UCP Leader Jason Kenney’s promise to cancel the new superlab and its new equipment in perspective.

https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/col ... status-quo

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Candidate no-shows frustrating election forum organizers

Alberta election candidates are skipping forums intended to give voters of sense of where they stand, leaving organizers puzzled and frustrated.

United Conservative Party (UCP) candidates Drew Barnes and Michaela Glasgo both skipped an education forum organized by the Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) locals in Medicine Hat on Wednesday, even though both had initially confirmed they would attend.

Organizer Scott Raible said Glasgo was invited first. He said Barnes, who is running for re-election in Cypress-Medicine Hat, dropped out after asking to be included in the event.

"To have those two empty seats from those two local UCP candidates, I think spoke volumes."

Raible said Barnes's campaign manager told him they felt that there was "very little value" in attending the forum and that the candidate would only appear at a chamber of commerce debate.

Glasgo, the candidate in Brooks-Medicine Hat, pulled out the day after the UCP announced its education platform, Raible said.

"We got a text out of the blue letting me know that Michaela would not be able to attend our forum and that her time during the week would be better spent doorknocking," he said.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.5094700

[llama66]

There was a time when this shit wouldn't have been tolerated. But now, in the time of apathy, this is the government we deserve.

[DrCaleb]

llama66 llama66:

There was a time when this shit wouldn't have been tolerated. But now, in the time of apathy, this is the government we deserve.

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Political myths fog crucial Alberta election debate over carbon taxes: economist

Between politicians who fog the truth and the ones just in a fog, Chris Ragan wants to fan fresh air into a carbon tax debate that is clouding Alberta's provincial election and drifting into an upcoming federal campaign.

"It's pretty clear this issue is warming up politically," said Ragan, head of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, a non-partisan group of academics and business leaders focused on economic and environmental solutions.

"We have been sorry to see that there's a bunch of stuff out there that is either misunderstanding or poorly explained. There are a bunch of myths out there."

The commission has just published a report on carbon tax misconceptions.

The worst, Ragan said, is that a carbon tax doesn't work.

"If you look at B.C., if you look at California, if you look at the U.K, if you look at Quebec, these policies do work. What they don't do is work overnight."

At least five different published studies have found British Columbia's carbon tax, introduced in 2008, has cut overall emissions, reduced per capita gasoline use by seven per cent, improved average vehicle efficiency by four per cent, cut residential natural gas use by seven per cent and diesel use by more than three per cent.

. . .

"We live in a democratic society where people play partisan politics. Those political debates don't always stick to the facts."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.5095236

[DrCaleb]

Alberta Party leader would build hospitals, shorten wait times, improve service

[Thanos]

llama66 llama66:

There was a time when this shit wouldn't have been tolerated. But now, in the time of apathy, this is the government we deserve.

The problem is that right now in Alberta it's a time of unreasoning anger, not one of apathy. And nothing good ever comes out of making a decision while angry. Look at the US with what the angry people have done to their own country in the last two years. Or what's happening in the UK with the Brexit catastrophe. Anger wrecks everything. Give me dull old apathy with a 39% voter turn-out any day of the week over decisions made by the angry.

[martin14]

Thanos Thanos:

llama66 llama66:

There was a time when this shit wouldn't have been tolerated. But now, in the time of apathy, this is the government we deserve.

The problem is that right now in Alberta it's a time of unreasoning anger, not one of apathy. And nothing good ever comes out of making a decision while angry. Look at the US with what the angry people have done to their own country in the last two years. Or what's happening in the UK with the Brexit catastrophe. Anger wrecks everything. Give me dull old apathy with a 39% voter turn-out any day of the week over decisions made by the angry.

Weren't you pretty angry when you voted Dipper last time ?

[Thanos]

Aren't you perpetually angry yourself when you support an ideology that wants to bring back death camps and kicking the people you hate to death in the street?

[martin14]

Thanos Thanos:

Aren't you perpetually angry yourself when you support an ideology that wants to bring back death camps and kicking the people you hate to death in the street?

Sorry sunshine, I am way too busy smiling these days to be angry at much.

Too bad some days, I know the first volunteer I would want for Camp 1.

[Thanos]

The thoughts of a Dutch thug on a provincial election in Canada are less important than almost everything else in this world.

[martin14]

Thanos Thanos:

The thoughts of a Dutch thug on a provincial election in Canada are less important than almost everything else in this world.

Except the thoughts of a basement dwelling perpetually snowflaked TDS Dipper lover.

Because there aren't any thoughts, just vile hatred of everything.


Go ahead, vote Dipper. Again. Obviously you need more of it.

More left, more hate.

[Thanos]

The block function here works awesome. Can avoid the sewage quite easily, pay attention a couple of times for laffs, and then go back to total tard-ignoring mode in an instant. No need at all to give more time than you want to for those whose thoughts & beliefs grow at the bottom of the same wretched piles of scat as saltpeter.

[martin14]

[Thanos]

So fucking blocked.