Preston Manning has no credibility to chair COVID-19 review
By Lethbridge Herald on February 1, 2023.
Editor:
Danielle Smith has allowed Preston Manning to fleece Albertans, doubly.
Manning is collecting his parliamentary pension, and has been since he left office in 2002. It is based on his salary earned in the last five years – 1997 to 2002.
How is he qualified to chair the panel about COVID-19 measures when he is living on a generous pension, and has this quarter million dollars added on top of that, yet is going to review the COVID-19 measures that caused people to be laid off, lose their homes, lose their vehicles, lose their family businesses?
Even without the quarter million dollars he’s being paid for chairing the panel, he is in luxury and amply able to live day to day! His father Ernest must be turning over in his grave.
At the very least, with his life already being paid by the Canadian taxpayer, Manning should have had the integrity to refuse more pay from the Alberta taxpayer (who therefore are being hit twice).
Without the integrity to decline money that hundreds of thousands of Albertans desperately need to keep food on the table and roof over their heads, Preston Manning has no credibility to chair an inquiry into the measures that drove Albertans into desperate situations.
Refuse the extra money, Mr. Manning. It’ll give you at least a shred of credibility. By taking Smith’s money, you have no credibility.
Geoffrey Capp
Lethbridge
11-10
UCP is turning out to be a swamp. Clean the swamp!
ok Donald.
The former MLAs I got to know when Lougheed’s energy minister Bill Dickie was a brother in-law of one of my uncles, were right. Reformers trying to pretend they are conservatives are the worse enemies the conservatives and the people could have. They don’t create jobs they destroy them. They help the rich steal the peoples wealth , while filling their pockets and their friends, just like we are seeing. While we try to stop them ignorant fellow seniors find it smart to hurl sarcastic comments at us for not being as stupid as them. I think lawyer friends are right we should stop putting up with this stupidity and start hauling them into court, what do you think? It’s no secret that Alberta should have Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in their Heritage Trust Fund like Norway and Alaska do, if Lougheed’s oil and tax structures had been followed after he retired.
Don’t forget this is the same Preston Manning Canadians weren’t dumb enough to elect as prime minister who , along with former Ontario premier Mike Harris travelled Canada promoting an American Style two tiered health care system. A system where my American relatives are forced to pay $800. to $1,000. per month each in order to get any sort of health care service, and as they point out. If an operation costs $300,000. you will likely have to pay $200,000. their private for profit insurance never covers the total amount.
Your comment in itself espouses the usual NDP rhetoric. American style health care. In a lot of U.S. there are no state taxes. Hence you purchase the plan you like as you simply can because your take home is larger. 800.00 to 1000.00 each would be a choice depending on what plan(s) you chose and the coverage. No one is paying for you to stand in line to see a specialist 18-24 months down the road. Also Americans cannot be denied emergency health care, which again in another NDP myth. Even those shooting each other get emergency care.
ok, as you bring up the issue of health care, i strongly suggest it is a people/society concern, and not one to be dismissed as an ndp thing:
“The average annual cost of health insurance in the USA is US$7,739 for an individual and US$22,221 for a family as of 2021″ (if one has an employer that is willing to participate, they may cover as much as 75% of those basic premiums)…but we have some “howevers” to consider. thus, “Deductibles, also known as out-of-pocket fees, are a common feature in American health insurance policies, meaning upfront costs are common even for those who are insured. 83% of covered American workers have a general annual deductible that must be met before services are funded by their health plan and the average size of a deductible is US$1,644 for individuals.” https://www.william-russell.com/blog/health-insurance-usa-cost/
“These fees tend to be higher in smaller firms.” another “however” is that very many jobs do not come with health insurance coverage…and guess what? those jobs without coverage will be the lowest paying. those earning low incomes are more likely to require health interventions…quite a twisted ball of yarn, indeed. there are also so very many incidences, some publicly documented, but most nicely buried, whereby even well insured people have been disqualified from services they thought they had, due to the likes of complicated fine print…so, personal bankruptcies are too often the outcome of serious health issues which the “insurer” has ensured they are not responsible for.
there are compelling reasons why canada introduced public health care – and it came with a now increasingly forgotten need for it, as well as not near enough thanks to, and commemoration for, one of our very greatest people, tommy douglas.
while there are a wide range of factors for the life expectancy numbers that follow, one can be sure that affordable access to health coverage plays a significant role:
The current life expectancy for Canada in 2023 is 82.96 years, a 0.18% increase from 2022.The life expectancy for Canada in 2022 was 82.81 years, a 0.18% increase from 2021.The life expectancy for Canada in 2021 was 82.66 years, a 0.18% increase from 2020.The life expectancy for Canada in 2020 was 82.52 years, a 0.18% increase from 2019.https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/life-expectancy
“Life expectancy at birth in the United States declined nearly a year from 2020 to 2021, according to new provisional data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). That decline – 77.0 to 76.1 years – took U.S. life expectancy at birth to its lowest level since 1996. The 0.9 year drop in life expectancy in 2021, along with a 1.8 year drop in 2020, was the biggest two-year decline in life expectancy since 1921-1923.” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm
Why don’t we let you show us in court what makes you so much smarter than the rest of us, want to try? It doesn’t mater what facts we provide for you guys you ignore them and hurl; stupid comments at us for not being as stupid as you are. Lawyer friends tell us to stop letting you do it and take action, so why don’t we? I have hundreds of American relatives who know a lot more about the American system than you ever will and they say we would be damn fools to want it, why would we? The retired doctors I have been having coffee with for the past 24 years certainly agree.
Here is just one more article for you to google to prove how stupid you are:
” Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies: Study
And you are so ignorant you want to let these phony conservatives , Reformers, ram it down your throat and aren’t smart enough to understand what it will do to you, how stupid are you? Calling us names for not being as stupid as you are certainly helps us prove our point. We know they have no intention of paying for it from Public Funds for long. We haven’t forgotten how the Private For Profit Grace Hospital in Calgary went broke when Ralph Klein tried it. We were told the hospital along with equipment was valued at $80 million and Klein sold it for $100,000. Then spent $8million renovating it for his four friends. I have no proof that this is true but wouldn’t doubt it. He sold our power industry valued at $7 billion for $2 billion we were told and dumped a $260 billion orphan well cleanup mess in our laps, yet to these mindless seniors he was our hero.
.”Private Calgary Clinic Faces Bankruptcy” This fiasco cost taxpayers a huge amount of money. .
great input, fedup. i am still waiting for those that favour rolling in more privatisation to explain how this creates the doctors and spaces and resources that are the cause of backlogs in our system. what private only does is create a level whereby a middleman exists to suck out wealth from our system in the form of profit, and allows those that have money to get serviced ahead of those that do not have the money. it does not create the doctors, spaces and resources that that we are lacking due to systemic and likely purposeful shorting by govts. to boot, much of the emerging private-for-profit healthcare enterprise is propped up by public money.
This, says plenty about Manning’s existing musings on ‘covid’ and the absurdity of him now being paid to chair this review. Unreal.
“Bizarre fictional COVID-19 report, penned by Preston Manning, resurfaces on social media”
http://www.calgary.ctvnews.ca/bizarre-fictional-covid-19-report-penned-by-preston-manning-resurfaces-on-social-media-1.6242991
So while the intelligent Albertans provide facts these idiots think they can dispute them with stupid comments and our lawyer friends state they are asking for trouble. If there was one thing I learned from all my years being involved with lawyers “You don’t hurl sarcastic comments at anyone without being certain you have the hard cold facts to prove you are right. That’s how people end up getting sued.”.
Lawyers in the Edmonton area have been warning us seniors not to go around spreading the Jason Kenney lies or we could find ourselves in a terrible mess. There are so many families who have been hurt by the way these Reformers handled the Covid situation, by ignoring doctors for trying to promote getting vaccinated to save lives you don’t know who might sue you for agreeing with these Reformers, do you?