controversial essay alberta

UCP cabinet minister faces questions about controversial Alberta essay contest

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An Alberta cabinet minister tried to put an end to t he controversy surrounding a province-wide  essay contest last Friday but refused to call for the resignation of two MLAs who handed out third prize to the author of a racist and sexist entry.

UCP cabinet minister faces questions about controversial Alberta essay contest Back to video

Environment and Parks Minister Whitney Issik was the first minister to take questions from reporters since the scandal around the essay, which argued that women are “not exactly” equal to men and should be rewarded for having babies to avoid “cultural suicide,” broke earlier this week.

While the two MLAs responsible for judging the contest — Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville MLA Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk who was later named the associate minister of status of women (and represents parts of rural Strathcona County), and Camrose MLA Jackie Lovely, the parliamentary secretary for the status of women — have both apologized, neither have spoken to reporters.

Caucus officials, the premier’s office and Armstrong-Homeniuk’s press secretary have ignored questions about the situation including how and why the prize was handed out.

At an unrelated press conference Friday, Issik, who was the associate minister of status of women prior to Armstrong-Homeniuk, said she does not hold any of the beliefs that were expressed in the essay. When asked directly if Lovely and Armstong-Homeniuk should resign, Issik said,  “I’m going to say this — the two women, Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk and Jackie Lovely, have both said unequivocally that it was an error and they’ve apologized. And to me, that’s the end of it.”

Issik said she was unaware of the contest’s launch, and referred questions about the process to the office of Speaker Nathan Cooper, saying it was an initiative under the legislative assembly office and the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) Canadian Region.

Both Cooper and the CWP denied having any involvement in the contest earlier this week. Cooper’s office also denied the legislative assembly office was involved.

Contestant doesn’t think MLAs should resign

While the NDP has called for the resignation of Armstrong-Homeniuk and Lovely, Emelia Kazakawich, who submitted an essay to the contest that was not awarded a prize, said Friday that she doesn’t think that would be productive.

“I think that the only way that those things change is with changed behaviour,” she said in an interview with Postmedia Friday.

She said it’s concerning that MLAs would endorse an essay that suggests men and women are not equal when their positions are supposed to be used to advocate for women.

Kazakawich’s entry, which she posted on Twitter, talks about the need for Albertans to come together and see everyone as a person when it comes to things like health care, food and housing. It discusses the need to fund social supports like women’s shelters, hospitals and supervised consumption sites.

“Truly, I think that my essay just is something that sparks some conversations that I think that maybe the current government didn’t want to have,” she said.

Since she posted it, Kazakawich said her essay has been resonating with people online.

“I think that my general message is more to do with (believing) we can have an Alberta where everyone is considered a person and we can have an Alberta where people are taken care of, but we do need to put the money there,” she said.

— with files from Lisa Johnson

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twitter.com/ashleyjoannou

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Prize-winning sexist, racist essay 'should not have been chosen': Alberta associate minister

"Giving women of all ages a voice is something that I will always stand up for. To young women who aspire to one day have a career in politics, please keep using your voice and advocating for your communities"

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Alberta’s UCP government has given a $200 prize to the author of an essay that argues more Albertan women should be encouraged to give birth in order to stave off “cultural suicide.”

Prize-winning sexist, racist essay 'should not have been chosen': Alberta associate minister Back to video

The Her Vision Inspires contest invited women aged 17 to 25 to submit essays in February describing their ideas for the province and what they would do if they were a member of the legislative assembly.

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It awarded third prize to an essay that references a far-right white-nationalist theory that white populations with low birth rates are being replaced by non-white immigrants through mass migration.

“While it is sadly popular nowadays to think that the world would be better off without humans, or that Albertan children are unnecessary as we can import foreigners to replace ourselves, this is a sickly mentality that amounts to a drive for cultural suicide,” reads the essay, attributed only to S. Silver.

Since it was first flagged online by Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood NDP MLA Janis Irwin, the website featuring all three prize-winning essays attracted a torrent of condemnation on social media, and was removed Monday evening .

Silver’s entry argued women are “not exactly” equal to men, and the idea that they should try to break into careers traditionally dominated by men is “misguided” and “harmful.”

“I believe that the best approach would be to reward families for their reproductive service both with financial rewards to offset the financial burden they are taking on and with medals to symbolize their valuable achievement of having 2+ children,” it states.

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The judging panel of unnamed UCP MLAs was set to be led by Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville UCP MLA  Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk, later appointed associate minister of status of women in June.

Armstrong-Homeniuk’s office declined a request for an interview from Postmedia, and refused multiple requests to provide details of who else was involved in judging the contest.

In a statement, Armstrong-Homeniuk said it was intended to reflect a “broad range of opinions” from young Alberta women.

“While the essay in question certainly does not represent the views of all women, myself included, the essay in question should not have been chosen. Giving women of all ages a voice is something that I will always stand up for.”

In a follow-up statement later Tuesday, Armstrong-Homeniuk apologized after she said she heard concerns from her caucus and cabinet colleagues.

“It’s clear that the process failed, and I apologize for my role in that. The selection of this particular essay and awarding it with third prize was a failure on my part as the head of the judging panel,” she stated.

‘Absolutely reprehensible’: Pancholi

Edmonton-Whitemud NDP Opposition MLA Rakhi Pancholi said at a Tuesday news conference the government, and the UCP MLAs involved, owe a proper explanation for what she called the misogynistic, sexist, racist, transphobic and fascist ideas in the essay.

“Why is the judge who chose it now saying they shouldn’t have chosen it?” she asked.

Pancholi compared the language in the essay to the ideologies of fascist governments, including Nazi Germany, which introduced a medal in 1938 for mothers of four or more children in an effort to encourage “racial purity” and increase the population of the Third Reich.

“This is an absolutely reprehensible claim. It is a nod to the racist replacement theory that drives white nationalist hate,” she said.

The contest was originally touted as a partnership between the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians Canadian Region, for which Armstrong-Homeniuk is the local chair.

Alberta legislature Speaker Nathan Cooper’s office said in a statement to Postmedia that neither it nor the legislative assembly office were involved with the selection of winners, and as soon as Cooper learned of the essay he had the website taken down.

“The content is abhorrent and does not reflect the views of the Speaker or the legislative assembly office,” it said, adding the contest was “conceived and administered” by Armstrong-Homeniuk.

Lise Gotell, a women’s and gender studies professor at the University of Alberta, said the essay perpetuates an essentialist, sexist and racist point of view stemming from the long-discredited and outdated concept that a women’s role is to reproduce as a bulwark against immigration.

“The fact that it was chosen says a great deal about the views on appropriate gender roles being advanced by this government,” said Gotell in an interview.

“This essay reads like something that quite frankly could’ve been written in the 19th century.”

At least two UCP leadership candidates strongly condemned the essay Tuesday, with Rebecca Schulz saying in a tweet it was a “disgrace” that it won an award sponsored by the government — a sentiment quickly shared by fellow candidate Rajan Sawhney.

The first-prize winning submission, which received $500 in merchandise from the legislative assembly gift shop, focused on encouraging women to pursue careers in politics, and the second-place entry, which received a $300 voucher, pitched working to increase public engagement and voter turnout.

— With files from The Canadian Press

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Essay awarded by Alberta government says immigration is ‘cultural suicide,’ women unequal to men

This article was published more than 1 year ago. Some information may no longer be current.

The Alberta Legislature building in Edmonton, 2019. CANDACE ELLIOTT/Reuters

Alberta’s legislature awarded a prize to an essay that equated immigration to “cultural suicide” and argued women are “not exactly equal” to men in a contest championed and judged by an MLA who is now the province’s associate minister for the status of women.

The competition, led by the United Conservative Party’s Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk, was open to Alberta women 17 to 25. It encouraged entrants to outline their vision for the province and detail what they would do as members of the provincial legislature. When the contest was announced in February, a news release said Ms. Armstrong-Homeniuk and a panel of female MLAs would serve as judges.

Ms. Armstrong-Homeniuk issued two statements on Tuesday, at first saying only that the essay should not have been chosen, and then a follow-up where she took responsibility for its selection as a winner. Neither explained how that happened or said who else was on the judging panel.

The third-place essay, which focused on women’s ability to give birth, proposed rewarding Albertans for their “reproductive service” with cash and medals for those that have multiple children, echoing a policy from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

“While it is sadly popular nowadays to think that the world would be better off without humans, or that Albertan children are unnecessary as we can import foreigners to replace ourselves, this is a sickly mentality that amounts to a drive for cultural suicide,” the essay said, adding that the “first rule of health” for any population is to reproduce.

The top three entries in the contest, dubbed Her Vision Inspires, were posted to the legislative assembly website. It is unclear when the essays went online; they were taken down Monday evening after MLA Janis Irwin of the opposition New Democratic Party drew attention to the third-place entry.

The essay said “women are not exactly equal to men,” which its author described as a “biological reality” that was under attack. It also argued it is harmful to encourage women to enter traditionally male-dominated careers because it takes away from women’s role in the “preservation of our community, culture, and species.”

The third-place essayist received $200 in merchandise from the legislative gift shop, according to the contest rules. The winning entries were identified by their first initial and last name.

Ms. Armstrong-Homeniuk announced the contest in her capacity as Alberta’s representative to the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians division in Canada. Premier Jason Kenney named the backbench MLA as the associate minister for the status of women in a June cabinet shuffle that filled vacancies created by those who entered the UCP leadership race.

In a statement Tuesday morning, Ms. Armstrong-Homeniuk said the essay did not represent her views and should not have been chosen. Hours later, her office issued a second statement, noting some of her colleagues raised concerns with her about how the essay could win an award.

“I do not support rhetoric that in any way diminishes the importance and contributions of more than half of Alberta’s population,” the revised statement said. “It’s clear that the process failed, and I apologize for my role in that. The selection of this particular essay and awarding it with third prize was a failure on my part as the head of the judging panel.”

No NDP MLAs were involved in judging, according to Rakhi Pancholi, the children’s services critic. The women in the UCP caucus did not respond to The Globe and Mail’s questions about whether they were involved, although three women in caucus running to replace Mr. Kenney commented on the controversy on Twitter.

“It’s a disgrace that an essay saying women are not equal to men won an award sponsored by government,” Rebecca Schulz, one of the UCP leadership hopefuls, wrote. “Women, and their contributions, are equally valuable and amazing whether we are moms or not.”

Ms. Schulz was not involved in the contest or on the judging committee, according to her spokeswoman Nicole Sparrow.

Rajan Sawhney, another leadership challenger, added: “Same goes for the comments about ‘foreigners.’ Alberta is the proud home of people from all over the world – from Ukraine, to the Philippines, and everywhere in between.”

Leela Aheer, who is also vying for the leadership, said the top two essays were “great” but she is unsure how the third “elevates” women.

Mr. Kenney’s office did not respond to questions about the contest and fallout.

The competition was put on by the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The Legislative Assembly Office released a statement on behalf of Nathan Cooper, the Speaker, denouncing the third-place entry. “The content is abhorrent and does not reflect the views of the Speaker or the Legislative Assembly Office,” the statement said, noting the Speaker had the contest page removed immediately after he was informed of the third-place essay’s substance.

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Alberta’s ‘Her vision inspires’ sparks controversy as UCP refuses to name MLAs

By Saif Kaisar

Posted Aug 10, 2022 07:56:16 PM.

Last Updated Aug 11, 2022 10:13:11 AM.

The Alberta government is still refusing to give the names of the other UCP MLAs who were involved in picking the essay that sparked controversy in the province.

Throughout most of Tuesday, Alberta Associate Minister of Status of Women Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk refused to accept responsibility after an essay supporting discriminatory views on gender and race won third place in a government-sponsored contest.

However, later in the afternoon, she said it was clear the process failed and she wants to apologize for her role in it.

“As the Minister for the Status of Women, I want to emphasize that I do not support rhetoric that in any way diminishes the importance and contributions of more than half of Alberta’s population. It’s clear that the process failed, and I apologize for my role in that,” Armstrong-Homeniuk said.

“The selection of this particular essay and awarding it with third prize was a failure on my part as the head of the judging panel. Alberta’s government values the contributions of women and newcomers, and we will continue working towards removing barriers to equality so that all Albertans can enjoy opportunities and success in our province.”

RELATED STORY: Alberta essay contest winner slammed for discriminatory gender, race views

Lori Williams, associate professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University, says the minister needs to step down and the UCP should name the other judges.

“If you really want the government to distance itself from these views, it’s not enough for the minister to simply say a mistake was made, responsibility has to be taken, and the principle of ministerial responsibility says they ought to resign,” Williams said.

With the impact the essay has had in the province, “This, I think, has distorted the image or the brand of Alberta,” Williams said.

“It’s particularly problematic for the [UCP] and for the United Conservative government in Alberta because there is such a gap between this kind of language, this kind of perspective, and where most Albertans are sitting.”

In total, there are 13 female UCP MLA members, and four responded to a request for comment.

Rebecca Schulz, Leela Aheer, Angela Pitt, and Michaela Frey are the only four who responded, saying they were not involved with judging this essay contest.

In a statement prepared by Aheer’s campaign manager Sarah Biggs, she said, “Leela would have never supported anything remotely close to this essay that is filled with misogyny, racism, and homophobia.”

“The MLAs who were supposed to pick the winners should be asked if they have read the third essay before awarding it the 3rd place.”

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Woman whose essay wasn’t chosen in Alberta contest wants better apology from judges

By The Canadian Press

Posted August 12, 2022 3:08 pm.

Last Updated August 12, 2022 3:19 pm.

A woman who submitted an essay to an Alberta government contest says two judges should not resign over the racist and sexist entry that won third place, but deliver better apologies and change their behaviour.

Emelia Kazakawich, who is 23, says it was concerning to see an essay that said women and men aren’t equal winning a prize.

She says she would like the United Conservative government to respond to her essay, which was not chosen.

• Alberta ‘Her vision inspires’ judge steps forward, NDP calls for resignations amid controversy
• Alberta’s ‘Her vision inspires’ sparks controversy as UCP refuses to name MLAs
• Alberta essay contest winner slammed for discriminatory gender, race views

Kazakawich posted her essay – which touches on the opioid crisis, health care and quality of life – to Twitter on Thursday.

if that's accurate then I am one of two losers, and this was my entry. https://t.co/3dGTCvbT3s pic.twitter.com/KrTgBuM7eU — emelia earhart (she/they) (@barfelope) August 11, 2022

The third-place essay received backlash this week for urging women to forgo careers and focus on baby-making so the province doesn’t have to bring in more foreigners.

Judges of the contest, UCP MLAs Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk and Jackie Lovely, have been asked to resign by the Alberta NDP.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 12, 2022

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Extended: UCP minister unhappy with questions about essay contest

Whitney Issik had a tense exchange with reporters Friday as they asked for more information about a controversial essay the government awarded

UCP cabinet minister faces questions about controversial Alberta essay contest

An Alberta cabinet minister tried to put an end to the controversy surrounding a province-wide essay contest Friday but refused to call for the resignation of two MLAs who handed out third prize to the author of a racist and sexist entry. Read More

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Kenney condemns controversial essay but links firestorm to slow news week

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Alberta Premier Jason Kenney condemned a controversial prize-winning essay that's been criticized for being sexist and racist during his provincewide radio call-in program, but also appeared to downplay the controversy it generated.

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Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 12/08/2022 (599 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney condemned a controversial prize-winning essay that’s been criticized for being sexist and racist during his provincewide radio call-in program, but also appeared to downplay the controversy it generated.

The topic was the first that host Wayne Nelson raised during Saturday’s show on CHQR and CHED, and Kenney responded there was “clearly a breakdown” in how the judges assessed the essays, adding they “screwed up.”

Nelson had noted in the opening of the program that while summer is often slow for news, the past few weeks bucked that trend.

Kenney, when talking about the essay controversy moments later, said the fuss could be proof that “it wasn’t a big news week.”

The essay urged women to forgo careers and focus on having children so the province doesn’t have to bring in more foreigners, and it took third place in a government contest.

It was later pulled, along with the other two winners, from the government’s website after criticism emerged on social media Monday.

“Clearly the essay was offensive, but maybe that is proof that it wasn’t a big news week, Wayne, that in Alberta politics driven by Twitter, we’ve been talking about the third place (in) an essay contest no one’s ever heard of,” Kenney said when Nelson referred to the controversy as a “firestorm.”

Kenney said he’s waiting to hear a report on how the essays were assessed.

The contest was run through the legislative assembly office, which is headed by Speaker Nathan Cooper.

The judges of the contest, Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk, the United Conservative Party’s associate minister for the Status of Women, and Jackie Lovely, the department’s parliamentary secretary, have issued statements. Armstrong-Homeniuk said the essay never should have been chosen. Lovely apologized for her role in the contest.

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Cooper’s office, in a statement Tuesday, said the contest was conceived and administered by Armstrong-Homeniuk in her role as regional chair of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians group. It added that neither the Speaker’s nor the legislative assembly office were involved in picking the essays “in any capacity.”

There have been calls for Armstrong-Homeniuk and Lovely to resign, and Nelson asked Kenney if they should step down.

“Apparently there’s a group called the Commonwealth Women’s Parliamentary Association. The first time I heard of it was last week,” Kenney responded.

“This is not the government. People in the Legislature have different associations and they do different projects. This is one they screwed up. They’ve admitted that, they’ve apologized and committed to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” Kenney said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 13, 2022.

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Mass Tech Layoffs? Just Another Day in the Corporate Blender.

By Ashley Goodall

Mr. Goodall, who previously worked as an executive at Deloitte and at Cisco Systems, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Problem With Change.”

Silicon Valley, home of so many technological and workplace innovations, is rolling out another one: the unnecessary layoff.

After shedding over 260,000 jobs last year, the greatest carnage since the dot-com meltdown more than two decades ago, the major tech companies show little sign of letting up in 2024 despite being mostly profitable, in some cases handsomely so. In their words, the tech companies are letting people go to further the continuing process of aligning their structure to their key priorities , or “transformation” or becoming “ future ready .” Behind these generalities, however, some tech companies are using what has hitherto been an extreme measure in order to engineer a short-term bump in market sentiment.

Investors are indeed thrilled . Meta’s shares are up over 170 percent amid its downsizing talk. And where stock prices go, chief executives will generally follow, which means it is not likely to be long before the unnecessary layoff makes its appearance at another publicly traded company near you.

These layoffs are part of a tide of disruption that is continually churning the work days in corporations everywhere. If you’ve spent any amount of time working at a company of pretty much any size, you’ll be familiar with what I call the resulting “life in the blender”: the unrelenting uncertainty and the upheaval that have become constant features of business life today. A new leader comes in, promptly begins a reorganization and upends the reporting relationships you’re familiar with. Or a consultant suggests a new strategy, which takes up everyone’s time and attention for months until it’s back to business as usual, only with a new mission statement and slideware. Or, everyone’s favorite: A merger is announced and leads to all of these and more.

Now, no business prospers by standing still, and there is no improvement without change. Course corrections, re-orgs and strategic pivots are all necessary from time to time. Technological changes continue to demand the restructuring of major industries. But over the last quarter-century or so, the idea of disruption has also metastasized into a sort of cult, the credo of which holds that everything is to be disrupted, all the time, and that if you’re not changing everything, you’re losing.

You can take courses in disruption at the business schools of Stanford, Cornell, Columbia and Harvard. You can read, on the cover of a leading business magazine, about how to “Build a Leadership Team for Transformation: Your Organization’s Future Depends on It.” And if it is the catechism of chaos you’re after, you can buy the inspirational posters and chant the slogans: Fail fast; disrupt or be disrupted; move fast and break things. Part of this, of course, is a product of the hubris of the Silicon Valley technologists. But part, too, is the belief that the fundamental task of a leader is to instigate change. It is hard to remember a time when there was any other idea about how to manage a company.

Moreover, because a majority of corporate executives — together with the consultants and bankers who advise them, the activist investors who spur them on and the financial analysts who evaluate their efforts — have been raised according to this change credo, the constant churn becomes a sort of flywheel. A leader instigates some change, because that’s what a leader does. The advisers and investors and analysts respond positively, because they’ve been taught that change is always good. There’s a quick uptick in reputation or stock price or both, the executives — paid, remember, mostly in stock — feel they have been appropriately rewarded for maximizing shareholder value, and then everyone moves on to the next change.

But it’s hardly clear that this is having the desired result. Studies of merger and acquisition activity have pegged the rate at which they destroy — rather than increase — shareholder value at something between 60 and 90 percent; a Stanford business school professor, Jeffrey Pfeffer, has argued that layoffs seldom result in lower costs, increased productivity or a remedy for the underlying problems in a business; and few of us who have lived through re-orgs remember them as the occasion for a sudden blossoming of productivity and creativity.

Seen through the eyes of the people on the front lines, the reason for this gap between intent and outcome comes into tighter focus. After all, when the people around you are being “transitioned out,” or when you find yourself suddenly working for a new boss who has yet to be convinced of your competence, it’s a stretch to persuade yourself that all this change and disruption is leading to much improvement at all.

“It’s exhausting,” one person I spoke to about change at work told me. “It’s soul-sucking,” said another. One person told me that after the combination of two departments, his people were like deer in the headlights, unsure of what they should be working on. Another had 19 managers in 10 years. Another told me that perpetual change drained the energy from work: “You say the right things in the meetings, but you don’t necessarily do what needs to be done to make it happen.” Another learned to watch the managers and be alert when they stopped dropping by or communicating: “It is like before a tsunami, when the water goes. You don’t see the water, and then the tsunami comes — all of a sudden, it comes, hard. When everything is calm, I worry.”

Of the dozens of people I spoke to, every single one had some sort of change-gone-bad story to share. And these sorts of reactions are about more than simple frustration or discontent. They are rooted in the psychological response we humans experience when our sense of stability is shattered and our future feels uncertain, and indeed the scientific literature has much light to shed on exactly why life in the blender is so hard on us. Experimenters have found, for example, that our stress is greatest when uncertainty , not discomfort, is at its peak — and uncertainty is the calling card of change at work. Then there is the question of agency: a well-known series of experiments conducted by Steven Maier and Martin Seligman in the 1960s discovered that when we sense we are not in control of a situation we give up trying to make things better — this is “learned helplessness” setting in.

Other researchers have described our fundamental need, as a species, for belonging , and the importance of our social groupings — which helps to explain why we don’t like it when our teams are disassembled, reshuffled and reassembled. And others still have shown that we have — perhaps unsurprisingly! — a deep-seated need for things to make sense in our environment, a need that is so often thwarted by the generic C.E.O. statements and exaggerated cheer-speak with which most change initiatives are communicated.

But while the essential response of the human animal to uncertainty and disruption is hard-wired, the degree of change we introduce into our workplaces isn’t. It’s often a choice. We’ve reached this point because the business world seems to have decided that change is an unalloyed good, and so there is no amount of it that is too much, and no cost of it that is too great.

Were more leaders to be guided by the science of change, or by the stories that people on the front lines share, they would quickly discover that it is stability that is the foundation of improvement. Only once we begin to honor people’s psychological needs at work, by thinking twice before launching into the next shiny change initiative and by paying more heed to the rituals and relationships that allow all of us to point our efforts in a useful direction, can we begin to do justice to the idea that a company must be, first, a platform for human contribution if it is to be anything else at all.

Ashley Goodall, who previously worked as an executive at Deloitte and at Cisco Systems, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Problem With Change.”

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Health workforce planning should be priority with system in flux, say Alberta doctors, nurses

Province says it's committed to staff planning as overhaul proceeds.

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The Alberta Medical Association president says it's unclear how much health-care workforce planning is underway as the provincial government pushes ahead with its sweeping restructuring plan, so he's calling for urgent action.

The provincial government announced last year its intention to overhaul health-care provision and create four new organizations: acute care, primary care, continuing care, and mental health and addictions.

The controversial changes come at a time when staffing shortages are plaguing many corners of Alberta's health system, from operating rooms to family doctors' offices.

"With this restructuring, reorganizing, it's absolutely not clear who's leading the big provincial workforce planning," said Dr. Paul Parks, president of the Alberta Medical Association.

The provincial government said it is committed to this work.

But, according to Parks, Alberta Health Services (AHS) used to take on this role. And while he has asked at high level meetings who is now responsible and what is being done, he hasn't received what he considers an adequate answer.

"It's very fragmented and not very well co-ordinated."

<a href="https://t.co/3vLaQPDYyu">https://t.co/3vLaQPDYyu</a><br><br>an old workforce plan, before "restructuring" and effects of COVID pandemic... things are much worse than this... and AHS no longer leading this kind of work for entire HC system<br><br>what's the plan now? who at AH is doing it? &mdash; @PfParks

Ideally, he said, groups including the AMA, post-secondary institutions and other organizations such as nursing associations should be involved.

"Part of workforce planning is knowing what you have now, knowing what your needs are for the coming years and actually finding what the universities and the places that are training and recruiting for the future are doing," said Parks.

"This co-ordinated, provincial-wide workforce planning has definitely been falling off, or not happening at all."

• AHS staff face job terminations and transfer offers in midst of health-care overhaul
• Nurses, doctors call on Alberta government to back down from health-care restructuring

Jennifer Jackson said she's also concerned about a lack of "concrete plans" from the provincial government for its health system overhaul.

"Without more staff, restructuring won't work," said Jackson, an RN and assistant professor in the faculty of nursing at the University of Calgary.

"We're putting the cart before the horse.… We need to use our workforce planning and our efforts there to inform system restructuring. We can't do it the other way around because we'll have great ideas and shiny new buildings but nobody to staff them."

She argues health-care unions should also be at the table.

Staffing woes continue

According to Parks, staffing shortages continue to impact a number of key areas of the health system.

For example, he said, patients can wait for days in Calgary and Edmonton emergency rooms when they need surgery.

"[Patients with] fractured ankles that need to be operated on can sit in hospitals for days because of OR capacity issues, workforce issues, access to anesthetists.… And that adds to the ER overcrowding," he said, noting this is just one example of the workforce troubles.

"All of these pieces impact each other, and if we're not addressing this in a co-ordinated manner, it's really just going to keep getting worse."

• Shortage of anesthesiologists leads to operating room closures in Alberta, doctors say
• An anesthesiologist shortage is delaying surgeries across Canada, physicians say

The province recently announced plans to improve surgical access . But, Parks said, this will only succeed with comprehensive workforce planning.

"If you don't have the workforce and the skilled people to man those spaces and buildings and ORs, it's not going to be helpful at all."

During a news conference last Tuesday, an AHS spokesperson said the health authority is focused on addressing staffing shortages.

"Workforce is always something that we're concerned about, and we continue to work hard at recruitment and retention.… A major focus of ours is on Canadian and international recruitment," said Sean Chilton, interim vice-president and chief operating officer, clinical operations, with AHS.

"We're starting to see some gains, but there's still some work to be done."

Previous plans

A 2023 Alberta government workforce strategy — written under former health minister Jason Copping and before the government announced its restructuring plans — included a number of key long-term commitments.

"Workforce forecasting and reporting will be a core ongoing component of future workforce planning approaches and will be integrated into the overall provincial workforce planning model and structures," the report said, noting this would be done collaboratively between Alberta Health Services and Alberta Health.

The document also committed to the development of a three- to five-year workforce plan. And it outlined plans for a provincial workforce planning committee, including AHS, Covenant Health, unions and post-secondary institutions.

• Makeshift dividers, hallway medicine are signs of a system in crisis, say Alberta front-line staff
• Primary care in 'critical condition,' Alberta doctors group head says, citing survey

Parks wants to know what has been done since. 

And he worries any progress that had been made has been paralyzed by the restructuring.

In response to questions from CBC News, the provincial government said it is committed to health workforce planning and is working to update the 2023 health workforce strategy to ensure it aligns with changes, including the system overhaul.

"We continue to work with health system stakeholders to identify strategies to attract and retain health-care workers in Alberta," Andrea Smith, press secretary to Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, said in an email.

"This work will continue throughout the refocusing initiative and beyond. Our ministry is working to establish a health workforce oversight committee, which will enable co-ordinated workforce consultation across initiatives."

Smith said health-care workers, employers, post-secondary institutions and regulated colleges are considered "key partners" in this process.

"Alberta has the best front-line health-care workers in the world, and our government is committed to ensuring Albertans get the care they need when and where they need it."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Lee is a CBC News reporter based in Calgary. She worked at CBC Toronto, Saskatoon and Regina before landing in Calgary in 2002. If you have a health or human interest story to share, let her know. [email protected]

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