After nearly three years of consultation into the province’s K-12 curriculum overhaul, stakeholders fear the United Conservative Party’s proposal to backpedal the process will sidetrack critical thinking and progressive ideologies in students.

Chris Champion, a history magazine editor and former federal staffer to now-premier Jason Kenney, was paid $15,400 for 38.5 days of work, according to Education Minister Adriana LaGrange's office.

Champion has authored and published articles critics say minimized the impact of residential schools on Indigenous people and ridiculed First Nations cultural activities.

Alberta Teachers' Association president Jason Schilling is one of several people with concerns about Champion's influence on curriculum.

"To see how many days he's been involved in the process was quite alarming," Schilling said on Monday.

Alberta doctors reject tentative agreement following year-long dispute with UCP government

Alberta doctors have voted against a tentative agreement with the provincial government.

The Alberta Medical Association said 59 per cent of its 11,000 members turned out for the vote, and 53 per cent voted against the agreement.

A simple majority was required for it to pass. The AMA had tentatively approved the deal, subject to the member vote that wrapped on Tuesday.

The lack of resolution follows a year of bad blood between the province's physicians and the United Conservative government, a fight that began in February 2020 when Health Minister Tyler Shandro unilaterally ended the AMA's master agreement and imposed a new physician compensation framework.

The move sparked public outcry, a lawsuit, accusations on both sides of bad-faith bargaining, and doctors withdrawing services in protest.

Shandro confirmed the vote was unsuccessful in a statement late Tuesday evening.

"While this result is disappointing, it does not erase the meaningful collaboration and mutual understanding that was gained throughout this process," the health minister wrote, thanking AMA's president and board for their efforts.

"The momentum gained over the past few months will not be lost. Our government will seek to further renew our relationship with the AMA in the weeks and months to come as we work together to ensure Albertans continue to benefit from quality health care."

Contrary to the prevailing winds of total disaster that have blown through the Calgary area for over six years now, some majorly good news occurs for a change. Huge new HBO series based on The Last Of Us video game to be shot in Calgary and the surrounding area. Lots of celeb sitings to occur for happy locals!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.5957833

Some background too; the Alberta NDP commissioned a group to review and modernize the education curriculum, and after 3 years of study, the UCP threw it all out when the were elected.




https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-ne ... akeholders



https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton ... -1.5908177

Nope, not today either.

Health Minister Tyler Shandro must step down after doctors reject agreement, Opposition says

Compensation agreement rejected by Alberta doctors was flawed

Tensions between Health Minister Tyler Shandro and physicians began in the fall of 2019 when, amidst compensation negotiations with the AMA, the government passed legislation providing for the unilateral termination of physician compensation agreements.

The legislation also empowered the government to limit where new physicians can practise or what specialty they can pursue, a policy that has been rejected as ineffective by several other provinces.

Then, as negotiations continued, the government introduced 11 changes to the fees that physicians can bill for providing health services.

For example, the government proposed changing the amount of time physicians had to spend with complex patients before they could bill a higher fee, which would disproportionately affect those caring for patients with complex medical needs and could incentivize some physicians to limit each appointment to one medical issue.

Despite the impact of these fee changes on patients and physicians, particularly those with family and rural practices, the government did not allow sufficient time for consultation with the AMA and its members.

These contentious negotiations continued into 2020. Following a failed attempt at mediation and the government's refusal to participate in binding arbitration, the AMA filed a legal claim alleging that the refusal to arbitrate contravened the right to freedom of assembly guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In February 2020, the government took the unprecedented step of terminating the existing agreement with physicians prior to its expiry and imposing the 11 proposed fee changes. Due to significant pushback, Minister Shandro later backpedalled on some of the fee changes.

To garner public support for its aggressive efforts to contain health-system costs and heavy-handed negotiating approach, the government publicly announced that Alberta physicians were paid significantly more than their peers in other provinces, relying on data the AMA labelled as "flawed" and "misleading." In what appeared to be a punitive policy move intended to inflame public sentiment about physician pay, the minister passed legislation to create a sunshine list for physicians, making public their compensation.

Following the government's termination of the compensation agreement, its relationship with physicians further deteriorated due to incidents such as the minister of health berating a physician on his driveway and blocking dozens of physicians on Twitter (thereby impeding their access to official policy announcements).

Reports of physicians leaving the province due, in part, to their treatment by the government were denied by the minister, even as he issued a directive to the College of Physicians and Surgeons to make it more onerous for physicians to leave. In a July 2020 poll, 98 per cent of physicians who responded said that they had lost confidence in the minister.

Despite the toxic relationship between physicians and the health minister, the AMA and the government returned to the bargaining table and, on Feb. 26, reached a tentative agreement that the AMA took to its members for a ratification vote.

. . .

Without an agreement in place, the minister still retains control over the physician services budget (PSB). However, the lack of an agreement may allow room to criticize and push back on budgetary and policy decisions unilaterally imposed by the minister.

On the other hand, had physicians ratified the agreement, the minister could have suppressed criticism by pointing out that physicians had agreed to those terms and he was merely acting within the agreement.

Of particular concern was the agreement's relatively hard cap on the PSB, with only limited ability to increase the budget to account for contingencies. The minister also retained some discretion to reduce the budget.

There was also a concern that physicians who bill the government for each service they provide to patients, such as family doctors, draw from the same finite pot of money as those working for corporate-run, virtual platforms, which engage in behaviour such as advertising that may drive up unnecessary utilization and thus unnecessary costs.

The agreement contemplated the government taking steps to manage budgetary overages including, most controversially, withholding amounts from physician payments. These withholdings could apply to a particular geographic area, category of physician, or type of service.

Academic finds segments of Alberta draft curriculum lifted without credit

A plagiarism expert says the Alberta government should review its entire draft elementary school curriculum after finding multiple instances of information cribbed without credit.

After receiving more than 100 messages citing samples of suspected plagiarism in the newly released curriculum documents, University of Calgary education professor Sarah Elaine Eaton said she felt compelled to look more closely at the material.

She analyzed three segments of the curriculum and found the wording closely resembled writing from other sources.

"I don't think this can be ignored because the curriculum as it stands lacks credibility in a variety of fronts," Eaton said. "Plagiarism is just one of them."

She said her findings are likely the tip of the iceberg of information included without citation.

In the legislature on Tuesday, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said Alberta's curriculum documents don't cite their sources, and that she was "surprised" by the allegations of plagiarism.

"Hundreds of people have had a hand in drafting the new K-6 curriculum through a very transparent review process," LaGrange said. "This includes subject-matter experts, teachers and my department staff that have worked directly on the curriculum.

"I'm sure the member opposite does not want to accuse any of those people with plagiarism," LaGrange said of NDP education critic Sarah Hoffman.

The UCP government's proposed curriculum has also come under fire for including content in the younger grades that experts say is age-inappropriate and fixated on memorization rather than understanding.

So, not only do they decide to waste the money already spent on reviewing the school curriculum, but they hire 'experts' who rip off other people's work?

Remember about a million years ago when the mouthy lady "doctor" from New Zealand who was helping Ralph Klein privatize the health care system got outed and revealed not to be any kind of recognized doctor at all but some kind of stealth agent from an insurance company? Looks like Kenney learned nothing at all from that massively embarrassing episode.

Doesn't matter. Kenney has enough little orcs surrounding him, Alberta versions of the likes of Stephen Miller or Jacob Wohl, who would remember it. And know how to spin it as some kind of a win, even though Klein backed down and tucked his tail between his legs each and every time the feds threatened to nail him if he fucked with health care.

Know what scares the hell out of me, living here now? It's when COVID is over and mostly controlled, and things return to "normal". That's when the UCP is going to cut loose with a full-blown MAGA-grade agenda. These are the fucks that picked a fight with doctors during an epidemic, after all. What they have in store for when the worst of the crisis is over should have the hair standing up on the back of the neck for anyone in this province who isn't some sort of ideological addict or party drone.

The worst is yet to come. And this isn't just my usual negativity either. The writing is on each and every single one of the goddamn walls for those who still have the eyes to see it.