On November 19, Alberta premier Danielle Smith announced plans to allow doctors to work in both the public and private sector. Smith says this change would “empower” doctors with the “flexibility to perform more surgeries,” as well as increase the number of surgeries performed, and decrease wait times.
Smith’s announcement video points to the ugly truth of Canada’s healthcare. Hospitals are falling apart. Nobody can see a doctor anymore. People are waiting for years in pain. The only thing still “universal”, is our suffering.
This is because healthcare has been attacked and underfunded for decades. Smith is the benefactor of a privatization push that began long before her. Despite her election promise to fix healthcare in 90 days, the situation has rapidly declined under her tenure. And now, as public support for the healthcare system plummets, she is using this situation to carve it up for private profit.
To fix the problems she helped create, Smith proposes to do more of what has already failed.
Curing a disease of their own doing
Alberta’s existing private surgeries have been shown to cost more, and made wait times worse. There was also the failed privatization of Alberta’s medical laboratory services that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars. Then, the government’s restructuring of Alberta Health Services provoked chaos in healthcare. None of this has been for the benefit of patients.
Smith’s new “plan” will mean private clinics poaching doctors and nurses from the public system, tilting healthcare resources towards those who can pay for private services and undermining the public system. This is a conscious plan to make healthcare worse, and more expensive. Smith is infesting healthcare with parasites that suck the life from its host.
But, it goes deeper than just making healthcare worse. This is obviously a scheme to enrich a gang of healthcare parasites. The scandal that rocked the UCP and Alberta Health in 2025 around “Turkish Tylenol”, private surgical facilities, and opulent Oilers tickets show us behind the curtain.
Vultures circling
A recent Globe investigation into MHCare, the medical supply company at the heart of the scandal shows exactly what the bosses are after. Smith had been rubbing shoulders with Sam Mraiche, owner of MHCare, since before her election. A case of, “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”. Only, this backscratching was for contracts with Alberta Health worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
During the COVID pandemic, Mraiche’s connections netted him several sweetheart deals for masks and tests. In exchange, Mraiche rented out a $1.6 million mansion to Smith’s chief of staff for just $1900 a month! Later, Mraiche pulled on his strings in the UCP to get the CEO of AHS fired for investigating his proposed private surgical facilities in Red Deer and Lethbridge.
When Smith was asked about these connections, she said the quiet part out loud: “It’s the same thing that I have with many, many people who seek to have a relationship with our government.” It’s obvious to her then, that the bosses and politicians work together to enrich themselves through backroom deals and crony corruption. Now, Smith is going for the throat of public healthcare in service of these “relationships”.
All of this serves to facilitate Smith’s end goal—full privatization. There are no profitable avenues for investment left in Alberta’s industry. To the oil barons and bosses, healthcare is simply an untapped resource, waiting to be exploited. So, by any means necessary, they will sink their teeth into any possible source of profit. Even matters of life and death.
