Government news release fails to mention the omission actually breaks the law, but there’s no penalty, so why worry? 

Happy Canada Day!

The summer solstice has already come and gone. So has the deadline for Alberta’s fiscal-year-end update!

The next summer solstice won’t be back till June 21, 2027, of course, but we can be reasonably certain it will appear on schedule. 

Alberta’s fiscal year-end update is absent without leave, and we can’t be sure when it will show up. It’ll be a surprise, the United Conservative Government’s new finance minister, Jason Nixon, said in a news release Monday. Hey, maybe some time in the fall! 

Mr. Nixon’s statement included two dumb excuses and one big fib.

Excuse No. 1, which actually was placed second in the news release but was supposed to be the substantial one that would persuade us all that a later report is OK, reads as follows: “Through the 2025-26 fiscal year, Alberta’s government undertook significant, necessary restructuring of the health care system to improve quality of care for Albertans. As a result of the associated complexities, more time is needed for the health entities to finalize their numbers before the 2025-26 Annual Report can be released.”

It is certainly true that that the UCP has undertaken a significant reorganization of the health care system. Indeed, it’s so significant that we don’t really have a health care system any more in Alberta. 

“There is NO system left. All broken and disintegrated with many many fragmented ‘leads,’” former Alberta Medical Association president Dr. Paul Parks said bitterly on social media on Monday. “But there is NO ONE coordinating or leading the ‘system’… can’t call it a system if they can’t show you the organizational operational control structure (Hint: there isn’t 1).” 

But was the massive and expensive demolition of the health care system necessary? Obviously not. So that’s the big fib.

The restructuring of health care, as Mr. Nixon called it – “refocusing” was the original talking point; “dismantling” would be more accurate – is the opposite of necessary, notwithstanding the imperfections of Alberta Health Services. Still, the lack of meaningful figures about the restructuring strongly suggests the reorganization is in a state of utter chaos.

Even so, using this year-long act of institutional vandalism – prompted largely to placate the UCP’s MAGA base and the premier’s anti-vaxx sentiments because AHS was the agency responsible for public health measures during the pandemic – as an excuse is just lame.

Public corporations don’t get to put off their annual reports at the end of their fiscal year because they’re in the middle of a reorganization, and governments don’t either – except when they do, in Alberta. 

Remember, as researcher Tony Clark explained on social media yesterday, the UCP is straight up breaking the law by not publishing the province’s fiscal year-end report. Section 8.(1) of the Sustainable Fiscal Planning and Reporting Act states: “The responsible Minister must prepare and make public on or before June 30 of each year an annual report for the fiscal year ending on March 31.”

As Mr. Clark observed, accurately it would seem, when it comes to the enforcement of Alberta laws that are inconvenient to the UCP, “There are no penalties, so … shrug.”

Which brings us to Excuse No. 2: “With the earliest timeline in the country, Alberta releases its annual reports in early summer, while most other provinces release results in the fall.”

So what? Didn’t Mr. Nixon’s mama tell him that what all the other kids are doing is no excuse for him to do the same thing? If the previously noted excuse is lame, this one is pathetic! And you’ll note that, whether they report in the fall or not, Mr. Nixon doesn’t pretend that all the other finance ministers miss their deadlines. They just have different ones. 

“We will publish a complete, quality annual report as soon as possible,” Mr. Nixon said in his new release’s canned quote. If I may be so bold, I would point out to him that the only kind of quality he needs to worry about is that the work is done according to generally accepted accounting principles. It doesn’t have to be printed on shiny paper or accompanied by pretty photographs to meet the standard. 

We can speculate about the real reasons for this delay. Perhaps the government doesn’t want us to know about what kind of fiscal shape the province is in until after our sovereign lady the preem’s precious separation referendum on Oct. 19. Or maybe when Nate Horner quit or was fired as finance minister in late May he didn’t bother to remind Mr. Nixon about the looming deadline. Who can know?

Anyway, waiting till almost the last minute to make the announcement, right on the eve of Canada Day when even Alberta separatists take the day off, means the premier will be able to distract from her finance minister’s law-breaking when we all start paying attention again tomorrow.

After all, that’s when she makes her big announcement about Alberta’s submission to the federal government’s Major Projects Office “for a new one-million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline to Canada’s West Coast.”

Since the pipeline is thought to still lack a private-sector proponent, presumably we’re learn tomorrow that we Alberta taxpayers will have the honour of financing this project all on our own. 

And since the northern route to Prince Rupert is the one least likely to be received well by anyone west of the Rocky Mountains, what do you want to bet that’s the one Ms. Smith continues to push, all the better to keep her chief of staff’s Free Alberta Strategy on life support, along with her approval by the UCP’s separatist base?

Proposed class action filed in purloined List of Electors case

An Alberta law firm has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit with the Alberta Court of King’s Bench, “arising from the alleged unauthorized access, disclosure and use of personal information contained in Alberta’s List of Electors,” Cooper Regel LLP said in a news release yesterday. 

Since the names and personal information of 2.9 million Albertans are thought to be on the purloined list, this may generate a considerable amount of interest. If nothing else, it keeps an issue that the Smith Government would really prefer we forgot about bubbling on the front burner. 

The firm’s statement of claim names as defendants the Government of Alberta, the chief electoral officer, Centurion Project Ltd., Centurion’s David Parker,  the Republican Party of Alberta, as well as parties in illegal possession of the list, identified as John Doe. The statement of claim, if accepted by the court, would seek “general, aggregate, and punitive damages” from the defendants.