Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan issued the following statement in response to revelations about Danielle Smith’s blueprint for privatizing health care:

EDMONTON – “Danielle Smith says she wants to farm out the operation of whole hospitals to for-profit corporations. This isn’t tinkering around the edges. It’s taking a sledgehammer to our whole health care system. She wants to displace the public and put corporations in charge. Make no mistake, this is an all-out assault on public health care. By putting the profit motive at the centre of things, instead of the care of Albertans, Smith is putting the health and well-being of all Albertans at risk.”

“Despite Smith’s phony public health care pledge, this has been her not-so-secret agenda all along. She wants to take a system that is already struggling due to chronic underfunding and staff shortages and turn it into a huge laboratory for ideological experiments. This approach didn’t work when Margaret Thatcher did it in Britain, and it would have the same disastrous consequences if it’s tried here.”

“Our health care system is too important to hand over to a politician who is proving every day to be erratic, untrustworthy, and dangerously ideological. Before today, there were already many reasons why Albertans shouldn’t trust Danielle Smith with their health care system. For example, many people have been asking how they can put their health and the health of their loved ones in the hands of someone who peddled quack cures during the pandemic and who called people who got vaccinated ‘Nazis.’”

“Today’s revelation is just the latest example of why Smith is unfit to oversee our health care system and unfit to lead our province. For the sake of our health and the health of our fellow citizens and all those we love, Danielle Smith must be defeated on May 29th.”

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MEDIA CONTACT:
John Ashton
Director of Communications, AFL
E-mail: jashton@afl.org