The News Rundown
- Albertans were greeted with an update this week on the province’s rail master plan. That plan sets a 30 year timeline to build high speed rail between Edmonton and Calgary with some short term milestones.
- First will be train connections between downtown and the airports of both Edmonton and Calgary.
- Before construction begins a 3-year $15m planning project will begin.
- The full train agenda will cost about $60b in today’s money. That will include the infrastructure, land, maintenance and storage facilities, and governance costs.
- A new provincial Crown corporation would be created to oversee the operations.
- There are no routes as of yet but the province wants high speed between Edmonton and Calgary and between Calgary and Banff.
- It is not expected for the rail alignments to run along existing highways such as the QE 2 since that would require overpasses and bridges
- Premier Smith wants to rail plan to continue beyond her time in office. She said, “we heard many perspectives, but one thing was abundantly clear: a feasible passenger rail network is no longer just a vision for Alberta, it’s a goal.”
- She also admits that getting the project across the finish line and ensuring it does not get cancelled relies on the project seeing significant work done in the next few years.
- Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack said, “While the city’s current priority is our immediate infrastructure needs, I look forward to discussing this further with provincial leaders, regional partners, and YEG to develop these services and enhance the lives of people in Edmonton, the region, and Alberta.”
- The Waterous family initially submitted a proposal 5 years ago for a Calgary to Banff train service. Their plan has financial backing of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and a private investment firm named Liricon Capital.
- The Waterous plan initially had hoped their train service would run adjacent to the freight lines but the government says if they build it that way it would actually add costs and time to the development process.
- Train lines built alongside freight routes in Canada inherently limit passenger speed and frequency. There’s also the question of right of way and any inherent limit on freight capacity, that is why this proposal will use its own lines.
- Using the freight corridors would also require the involvement of the federal government since freight corridors are regulated by the federal government.
- Adam Waterous whose family holds a multi decade lease on the Banff train station and says that their family and Liricon capital are willing to build the Calgary Banff segment on their own if the province connects it to downtown Calgary and the airport.
- The Calgary Airport to Banff Rail project that the Waterous’ and Liricon are behind was submitted to the federal major projects office last December. In addition to the funding partners it is backed by the Canada Building Trades Union and the Building Trades of Alberta.
- The Waterous’ call their projects shovel ready. The province is beginning to study before building. The question remains is: who will get this project across the finish line?
- Projects that take decades to plan and further decades to build are prime to be shut down. With that we need to ask province wide and in Canada how building anything, rail included, can be made simpler.
- Supplementals:
- Kerry-Lynne Findlay, is the new leader of the B.C. Conservatives after winning the leadership vote on Saturday night, shortly after we recorded last week's Western Context. She ended up winning on the 4th ballot, after leading the whole way above the other candidates.
- Findlay cast herself as the one, true blue Conservative in the campaign for the B.C. party leadership that culminated Saturday evening with her narrow, fourth ballot victory.
- R1: Findlay 30.5% | Elliott 25.8% | Black 20.3% | Fulmer 13% | Milobar 10.5%
- R2: Findlay 32.2% | Elliott 28.6% | Black 25.3% | Fulmer 13.9%
- R3: Findlay 38.6% | Elliott 31.3% | Black 30%
- R4: Findlay 51% | Elliott 49%
- Findlay triumphed in early counts over former B.C. Liberal MLA Peter Milobar and former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister Iain Black. On the final ballot, she defeated the last remaining challenger, Caroline Elliott, whose political roots were in the B.C. Liberal and B.C. United parties.
- Findlay, who served as MP for the Delta-Richmond and South Surrey-White Rock ridings, and was minister of revenue in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet, remains relatively unknown to most British Columbians.
- Findlay was asked if she plans to get herself a seat in the legislature. “My plan is to run as soon as possible.I love the debate. I want to be in the arena.”
- She did not rule out asking her husband, Surrey South MLA Brent Chapman, to create the vacancy by resigning his seat.
- “That’s a discussion for him and me to have — a family discussion,” she replied. “Brent is a cancer survivor through this past year. He’s been through a lot, and it would be a lot for me to ask him to do that. But we will have those discussions.”
- She also said she would be making an effort to lure back at least some of the six MLAs who’ve resigned or been ousted from the Conservative caucus.
- In the closing passage of her victory speech, Findlay indicated that she’s more deeply affiliated with social conservatism than any right-of-centre leader since Bill Vander Zalm.
- This was evident in her victory speech, where she said “In our national anthem, we cry out to God to make our land glorious and free. Faith, family and freedom. That’s what it’s all about. God bless British Columbia and God bless all of you.”
- The New Democrats lost no time branding Findlay as an extremist, a Donald Trumpist, and worse. Eby says Kerry-Lynne Findlay was applying to be ‘MAGA regional manager,’ not premier.
- They mounted a similar line of attack on the John Rustad-led Conservatives in 2024. Yet the NDP was reduced to a one-seat majority, secured by a mere 22 votes, against an Opposition that was singularly unprepared to govern.
- Today’s Conservatives are better funded, better organized and more experienced, while New Democrats are more damaged than they were in 2024.
- And whatever one thinks of Findlay, it would be a mistake to underestimate her. Just ask the four candidates she defeated on the weekend.
- According to a new Leger poll, and buoyed by new leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay, the Conservatives now sit at 45 per cent support compared with 41 per cent for the NDP — the first time a Leger poll has shown the Opposition party ahead of the governing NDP since the 2024 election.
- While it remains to be seen whether she can unite her party and carry the Tories to victory, Findlay seems to be off to a promising start. The survey found early signs Findlay may be appealing to voters outside the Conservative base. While those figures may seem modest, elections in BC have been very recently decided by margins of just a few percentage points.
- With Findlay now as leader, it's clear that BC will have two choices in the next election. Either continue with Eby, who has thrust reconciliation into doubt across the whole country and spent the province into crippling debt, or Findlay, who knows the value of balanced budgets under Harper, and is clear on taking the Conservatives in a different direction entirely.
- Supplementals:
- Starting soon at 12 hospitals across the province, patient focused funding will be rolled out. The hospitals will see their funding tied to the number and type of procedures performed rather than a set blanket budget.
- The government has set a price for each type of surgery with the prices being set slightly below market value with the goal of making hospitals more accountable and fostering competition amongst private and public surgical providers
- The program will start in government hospitals and later expand to private facilities.
- The government says that over the next year adjustments will be made based on observed efficiencies and the pricing.
- Initially the model is limited to knee, hip, cataract, and arthroscopic rotator cuff repairs.
- The price book released says that a knee replacement day surgery is valued at $8,530 but hospitals have the ability to receive more funding if a patient has a pre-existing condition that makes the procedure more resource expensive.
- For this specific surgery this is a 2% funding increase compared to historical average while those with more complex conditions see 2% less funding.
- A hip replacement in day surgery costs $8,900 going all the way up to $33,440 for those in the high co-morbidity group.
- Opposition NDP hospitals critic Sarah Hoffman says that this funding model isn’t a solution for the backlogs and that this model leads hospitals towards quicker, less complex procedures, at the cost of comprehensive care and proper followups.
- Hoffman also said the announcement was a move to further “American-style privatization.”
- The Friends of Medicare sees the plan as benefiting surgical centres and they feel the issue is the workforce, specifically that there are not enough doctors.
- The Friends of Medicare likened it to a “voucher model” which is again misrepresenting what this is and stoking fear for the sake of a political reason.
- In general the reaction in Alberta is to recoil at the idea of some level of private healthcare, but the reality is that this model is used extensively in Europe.
- Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway all use variants of this activity based funding model.
- Most of these countries introduced their activity based funding models in the early 2000s so we have generally a good idea of how they affected outcomes.
- The general result is that the models will increase surgical volumes, reduce lengths of stay, and improve efficiencies. The results depend on safeguards for quality, complexity adjustments (so that providers don’t cherry pick cases), and budget controls.
- Alberta’s approach of starting with the public hospitals and setting prices slightly below average mirrors how France and Germany started their activity based funding models.
- Based on the parallels between Alberta and many European countries, the idea that this is American style privatization needs a second thought.
- The media runs with this line without fact checking the opposition. Albertans will start to associate any privatization with the United States.
- The reality though is that while some see good outcomes in the US, the model for good healthcare is often Europe. Europe uses a combination of private and public delivery.
- Alberta dipping toes into activity based funding based on how Europe does it, is not American style privatization - it’s attempting to innovate to solve a decades long problem.
- Generally when people think healthcare privatization they think of the US. The correct thing to think of instead is Europe.
- If the media gave this story proper coverage that’s the conversation we would instead be having this week.
- Supplementals:
Firing Line
- University of Toronto law professor Peter Biro has resigned his fellowship from Massey College after he says the institution wanted an “advisory committee” to vet an antisemitism conference he was organizing.
- Biro wrote in his resignation letter dated May 31: “A good portion of Canadian society is utterly oblivious to the fact that our current age represents the next great transmutation of jew-hatred in human history. That only underscores the critical importance of this conference.”
- The one-day conference titled Antisemitism in Our ‘Free and Democratic Society’: A Canary’s Song was scheduled for Sept. 15 at Massey, a college affiliated with — but independent of — the University of Toronto. The event, according to Biro’s resignation letter, was set to feature Canada’s former special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism Deborah Lyons, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights founder Irwin Cotler, as well as American Holocaust historian and diplomat Deborah Lipstadt.
- Massey College Principal James Orbinski said in a written statement said: “Massey College accepts with regret the resignation of Mr. Biro. Massey College condemns antisemitism in any form and is committed to playing its role in addressing it.”
- News of Biro’s resignation, and the uncertainty it cast over the future of the conference, provoked strong reactions from other professors. Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor, called the incident “an important story of what appears to be an attempt by leadership at Massey College to censor a major conference on antisemitism.”
- Geist wrote in an X post on Wednesday, referring to the prime minister’s recent visit to a Toronto synagogue to address antisemitism in Canada earlier this week. “Massey College, much like Mark Carney, had a chance to lead, but both failed to meet the moment. The stain on Massey College will not come off as easily.”
- University of Toronto chemistry professor Dvira Segal commented on Geist’s post, saying, “Our academic institutions and government are willing to address antisemitism only insofar as the discussion sanitizes the connection between Judaism and the land of Israel.”
- “That clearly is the oversight they wanted, that the conference not touch the historical, cultural, and religious connections of Jews to the land of Israel, nor the extent to which the denial and politicized erasure of those ties has become a modern form of antisemitism,” Segal wrote.
- Carney's visit to Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple on Monday afternoon hit the right notes, but seemed empty in action. He admitted that Canada’s “civic compact is failing Jewish-Canadians,” and that the government has “a special responsibility to ensure that no culture, faith, race, gender or identity is threatened or suppressed.”
- He acknowledged that Canada’s very “nature is being tested, as one of our communities is being particularly and brutally targeted,” noting that, “Antisemites in Canada have fired bullets at Jewish schools. They have thrown firebombs at synagogues and attacked community centres. They have targeted Jewish-owned businesses. Harassed Jewish patients at hospitals. Drove Jewish students from the common spaces on our university campuses. And desecrated our Holocaust memorials.”
- The prime minister told a story about attending the opening of a Jewish centre at the University of Ottawa, saying that the “otherwise joyous event occurred under heavy police presence and was interrupted by angry shouts of some passers-by.”
- That heavy police presence could also be seen surrounding Holy Blossom Temple on Monday, with an army of police officers setting up camp in the parking lot and blocking traffic on the surrounding streets during rush hour. Likely the only reason the event wasn’t marred by the same antisemites Carney spoke of was because the Prime Minister’s Office kept the location a closely guarded secret.
- Carney’s big announcement at the event was the launch of a new Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion, which will be chaired by Culture Minister Marc Miller. Only the advisory council had already been announced back in February. The only thing new we learned is who will be sitting on it, and that its “first responsibility” will be to “address antisemitism.”
- The makeup of the new advisory council includes some questionable choices. Miller, for example, served as immigration minister from July 2023 to March 2025. Given that Canada has welcomed unprecedented numbers of newcomers over the past decade, many from countries with high rates of antisemitism, it seems unlikely that he will be willing to admit that some of his own policies may have contributed to the problem.
- It also includes Avnish Nanda, the lawyer who represented the anti-Israel students who launched a Charter challenge against the University of Alberta after they were evicted from their illegal encampment, and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra.
- Alghabra, in particular, has faced considerable scrutiny for his views on Israel and questions over his support for Islamism. He’s the former president of the Canadian Arab Federation, a group that, after this tenure, lost federal funding for its apparent support of Hamas and Hezbollah. In 2022, he defended his attendance at a Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group reception attended by Nazih Khatatba, the editor of an Arabic-language newspaper accused of spreading antisemitism.
- This is not to say that either Nanda or Alghabra are antisemites, but given their history, they are certainly odd choices to lead a council tasked with, as Carney put it, “preventing radicalization and addressing institutional biases.”
- Carney should be commended for calling out the “crisis of antisemitism” as something that is “specific, severe and demands a targeted response.” This is the kind of language that he and his predecessor shied away from for far too long. He is also right that the “deeper work” of addressing antisemitism “falls to each of us”; that we must speak out against hate when we see it and not allow it to metastasize.
- But merely setting the tone and calling on Canadians to be better people is not enough. It is not going to change the minds of those who think it’s acceptable to shoot at Jewish schools. It’s not going to overcome the indoctrination and radicalization that’s taking place on social media and in our school system.
- Talk is cheap, and although Mark Carney knows how to work a crowd and say exactly what people want to hear, his time in office has shown that all the talk in the world won’t build infrastructure, improve the economy or curb the lawlessness in our streets.
- Supplementals:
Quote of the Week
“In our national anthem, we cry out to God to make our land glorious and free. Faith, family and freedom. That’s what it’s all about. God bless British Columbia and God bless all of you.” - new BC Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay after winning leadership.
Word of the Week
Social Conservatism - a variety of conservatism that places emphasis on conserving the traditional moral values of society
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Show Data
- Episode Title: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
- Teaser: Alberta looks at airport to downtown train corridors, the BC Conservatives elect Kerry-Lynne Findlay as their new leader, and Alberta rolls out a new surgery funding model for hospitals. Also, Carney addresses antisemitism with a new advisory council.
- Production Code: WC-471-2026-06-06
- Recorded Date: June 6, 2026
- Release Date: June 7, 2026
- Duration: 1:02:25
- Edit Notes: None
Podcast Summary Notes
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