History repeated in merger of PC and Wildrose parties

Ever since Alberta became a province in 1905, every time a sitting government lost an election, its party ceased to exist as a political force. Banished into the dustbin of history.

In a roundabout way, we're about to see that happen again this year.

Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean, who spent most of last year openly mocking the possibility of a merger between his party and the defeated Progressive Conservatives, declared last week he will do just that: lead a merged PC and Wildrose movement.

What that new movement would call itself is an interesting question. It can't become Progressive Conservative, because that would be too humiliating for a Wildrose Party with more sitting MLAs, more paid members and more money. It can't be Wildrose because, well, it can't. And the Alberta Reform name is already taken. So is the Alberta Party name, if I recall rightly.

Whatever name on this next rose, by this fall, if either PC leadership front runner Jason Kenney or Wildrose leader Brian Jean has his way, the PC brand in Alberta will cease to exist. History will be repeated.

Jean didn't call a news conference about this, so he didn't have to field questions about his change of mind regarding any formal merger of the right. He made the call on a seven-minute video posted on the Wildrose web site.

From last spring and summer until this winter, Jean must have been hearing from his own membership who convinced him Wildrose could not win an election on its own, nor could a renewed PC party win without the rural support of the Wildrose rank and file.

Both sides have a lot to give up in the process. The Progressive Conservative old guard that ruled Alberta for so long has the most to lose. Their long dynasty was marked by a centre-right brand of Toryism, that for all its mockery of liberalism, contained a lot of its pragmatic culture.

Alberta's teachers, doctors and civil servants became the highest-paid of their kind in the land. This from a party that preached careful financial stewardship from the right side of its mouth.

Alberta's energy bounty was spent with an energy that would make a socialist blush. Scarcely anything of the hundreds of billions in energy royalties Alberta collected were saved for a rainy day — through many repeats of the cycle of oil price booms and busts.

But the voices of a more gentle centre-right will be lost in a merger. Little matter, that. Any centrist of influence on party policy was buried when Sandra Jensen and Donna Kennedy-Glans were viciously hounded out of the leadership race in a meeting in Red Deer last November.

A month previous, in another meeting in Red Deer, Jean disparaged the PC party as being “confused about its values, its principles and what it stands for.” He added that the party “is rife with uncertainty.”

Well, no more.

With the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. and the prospect of a federal Conservative leader in Kevin O'Leary, or Kellie Leitch, any uncertainty is over. The right has become quite certain about its principles and values.

Brian Jean, being as ambitious as any other politician out there, wants to lead what emerges from this sort of marriage of the hard right.

He's welcome to it.

What, then, will become of the more centrist thinkers in Alberta who believe in a free enterprise, egalitarian and compassionate government, but who are by no means ready to hold their noses and join the NDP?

They, my friends, have been swept into history.

Saskatchewan selling health care as a status symbol

Perhaps they learned from Alberta's foray into allowing more private investment in for-profit health care (hint: it hasn't worked very well). But when Saskatchewan signed its own deal with the feds last week on health-care funding, they also won a year's grace to test a middle-ground test on for-profit MRI clinics.

Not long ago, Canada's 13 provincial premiers and territorial leaders trashed a federal offer on a pan-Canadian funding formula which they said was just too lean. Since then, seven of the 13 leaders have hammered out their own side deals for health-care funding.

Thus Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, plus Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut have all completed agreements outside the pan-Canadian offer the feds withdrew when it was rejected the first time. Together, they represent about 10 per cent of Canada's population.

Whether that constitutes a significant breach in provincial ranks is a question for another day. As well let's set aside for now, the question of whether making side deals on funding will result in some provinces getting more money than others for our supposedly national health care program.

What Saskatchewan has achieved could well change how Canadians think about our “free” health care system, while making queue-jumping a new status symbol for the well-to-do.

Saskatchewan's deal comes with three riders: $190 million over 10 years specifically earmarked for home-care services; $158.8 million over 10 years for mental health care; and a one-year licence to allow private MRI scanning services outside the national health care plan.

In Alberta, you can book an MRI at a private clinic, not having to wait in line for services within the public system. Since adopting that model, private investors have made Alberta second from the top in the country for the number of MRI machines per capita (according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information).

That may be good for investors, but Albertans still wait anywhere from 87 days (mid-range for the country) to 247 days (the 98^th percentile) to access a scan.

Saskatchewan's wait times range between 28 and 88 days, yet all the talk is about people from Saskatchewan having to come to Alberta and pay for an MRI that their doctors say they need.

Bottom line: Alberta's abundance of MRI machines has done nothing to shorten wait times in the public system.

A Globe and Mail inquiry in 2015 found that publicly-funded MRIs in Alberta can cost between $550 to $1,000 — and you'll wait weeks or even months to get it. You can get one privately much more quickly for anywhere between $750 and $2,450.

Brad Wall's deal will allow private MRIs — with a catch. Sure, if you're rich you can get a private MRI within days, but the clinic will also be required to give one free MRI to someone on the public waiting list.

That makes the wealthy private patient into someone's benefactor.

Think a bout it: a wealthy person can boast at cocktail parties about getting that knee replacement fast, thanks to having quick access to an MRI. While also allowing some poor slob the same advantage, without that person developing an addiction to opiates for pain, while languishing on the public wait list.

If that's not selling health care as a status symbol, I invite you invent a better one.

Send your suggestions to Brad Wall. He's open to great ideas like that.

Small contributions to a big celebration

Fifty years ago, I was in what today is called middle school. That year was overtaken by class projects around Canada's Centennial.

We sang Ca-Na-Da endlessly, though in our small town, the kids never got to actually follow Bobby Gimby and his jewelled trumpet through the streets. Geometry lessons revolved around precisely drawing the interlocked triangles that made up the Expo 67 logo. We all knew where Expo 67 was. It was on TV.

Every village, town and city had a Centennial project. Lord knows how many Centennial Parks, Centennial Centres or Centennial Libraries still survive, but if your town didn't have one in 1967, people might wonder about your patriotism.

The beginning of a new year is always filled with desires for a fresh, better start. This year is Canada's 150^th anniversary, but for some reason, we're not competing to see who has the greatest or most interesting personal or municipal project going to mark the event.

So far, only the federal government seems to be interested in celebrating that Canada has been a nation for 150 years. No, that's not entirely true; there are others with their eye on the calendar, and I'll get to that in a moment.

For Red Deer, I think our best efforts should go toward becoming great hosts for the Canada Winter Games. Not exactly on the 150^th birthday of Canada, is it? But 2019 is close enough, and we have a whole lot of work to do, that will leave a lasting legacy for this city.

To find celebration projects in Alberta, I went to the official web site Canada150years.com. There's a tab labelled Events, and a filter for locations. I typed in “Alberta,” searched and got . . . no events.

I know there must be some special events planned here, but somehow they're not listed.

So I'll add one for all of us. The people who brought us the TransCanada Trail have been working very hard for a long time to complete the 21,452 km of official trail connecting all 13 of Canada's provinces and territories from sea to sea to sea, in time for the nation's 150^th birthday.

The entire trail is mapped, with 90 per cent of it connected so far. There are gaps — most notably in Alberta — but in theory, you can get on your bike on any of Red Deer's city trails, and wind up in Vancouver, or St. John's, or Inuvik — all along the Great Trail.

So my family's resolution for the New Year, for our 150^th Anniversary of Confederation — and for our general health — we plan to discover how much of that 21,452 km we can cover in 2017.

No, we won't be riding to Inuvik. (There's also an alternate canoe route to get there on the Trail map, for the adventurous.) But we will be visiting all the local attractions possible in our area, without having to get there by car.

Markerville is a lovely destination, and Stephenson House is nearby. The regional trail (part of the official TransCanada) to Lacombe is very attractive, and there are nice stops in Blackfalds and Lacombe for rest and refreshment along the way. This isn't a race.

But it could be a beer run. Red Deer has two craft breweries to visit, and then there's one in Lacombe. Now there's a nice day-long group ride for a warm summer day. Who's up for that?

Sylvan Lake and Spruce View are also reachable by bike, and you can find less-heavily-trafficked routes to get there. We've been visiting Delburne every year since 2009 on a charity ride, and have passed by the ice cream shop every time. This year might be a good time to stop there.

If lunch is what you seek, the Ellis Bluebird Farm is as good a stop and rest area as you can find in all of Canada. There is virtue in pie and ice cream, if you ride through the river valley to get it.

Hwy 11 from Saskatchewan River Crossing heading east is one of the great bike rides in all of Canada. A reasonably fit cyclist on a good day (with steady wind out of the west channelled down the North Saskatchewan River Valley) can leave after an early breakfast and get to Nordegg for an extra-large burger and fries for a late lunch — and feel like a pro rider.

But on the whole, our voyage will be more virtual than actual trekking the Great Trail. With the help of tracking technology, all our walking, skiing, cycling and paddling — all our fitness activity — can be recorded and the distances plotted against the Trail map.

On my trek, even the walk downtown for groceries or to the library counts.

It's a trip you can take, too. For enjoyment, fitness and discovery. And as a stay-cation with a story you can share 50 years later.

The people who created and supported the TransCanada Trail have given us a great gift. Let's make the most of it in its inaugural year, 2017.