KEITH GEREIN,

UCP leader’s prescription for province’s health care is based on a false diagnosis

United Conservative candidates went to “campaign school” over the Family Day weekend to learn the ABCs of running an election race.

Party leader Jason Kenney has been offering Albertans some lessons of his own, on everything from economics and math to education and civics, outlining how he plans to wipe the blackboard clean of nearly everything the NDP has written over the past four years.

Kenney’s policy announcements are just getting started, but the list is already long enough that it’s almost as if a UCP government would try to pretend the Notley government never existed, to turn the clock back to 2015 and start anew.

The problem is that at least some of that slate-cleaning comes across as arbitrary and ill advised, moves designed to please a zealous party base rather than an appeal to good policy.

Kenney’s vow to stop the NDP’s “ideological” review of Alberta’ school curriculum is one such example.

His announcement on Wednesday of the UCP’s plans for Alberta’s $22-billion healthcare system is another.

That news conference was held, not coincidentally, at a seniors residence in the heart of Edmonton-Glenora. It’s the riding represented by provincial Health Minister Sarah Hoffman, who has been a thorn in the UCP’s side with warnings that her rivals plan to cut billions from the health system and fire thousands of nurses.

Kenney has repeatedly denied the claim, and took steps to prove it by signing a “guarantee” that a UCP government would do no worse than freeze health spending. (A freeze really amounts to a small cut, since it fails to cover increased costs for a growing and aging population, or inflation.)

At the same time, the UCP would put Alberta Health Services through a performance review to find efficiencies, and reinvest the savings in the system.

Kenney noted, correctly, that Alberta operates the most expensive health system in Canada but isn’t getting all the outcomes it should.

To prove his point, he quoted numbers from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) showing increased wait times under the NDP for openheart surgeries, hips and knees, emergency-room visits, and a handful of other services, while spending has continued to rise.

Albertans deserve answers as to why the system is so costly and underperforming, Kenney said, citing a need to root out “enormous waste” and a “massive bureaucracy” within AHS.

It’s a captivating bit of rhetoric, playing to a narrative that taxpayers will always get a raw deal from government unless conservatives are in charge. It also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

In this case, Kenney is the one in need of a lesson. A history lesson. The idea that AHS is plagued by an army of needless paper pushers is a dubious argument trotted out for years by the former Wildrose party.

CIHI, the same organization Kenney used to quote wait-time statistics, reports that Alberta’s health system has the lowest administrative costs in the country at 3.3 per cent of overall spending — well below the national rate of 4.5 per cent.

While the Conference Board of Canada reports that the average ratio among public agencies is one manager for every nine workers, the average AHS manager oversees 31 employees.

As such, a review of AHS may find some pockets of inefficiency, but it’s unlikely to produce vast savings.

If Kenney really wants to know why Alberta’s system is so expensive, he need look no further than the old Progressive Conservative party he briefly led.

Over decades in power, swimming in energy revenue, PC governments gave large pay increases to doctors, nurses and other health workers, making them the best paid in Canada.

Those governments spent like crazy building hospitals all over Alberta, kept those facilities open while other provinces were consolidating, and funded one of the most generous drug-coverage programs in the country for seniors.

The NDP has made progress in slowing the costs of physicians, pharmacists and dental care.

The election debate should focus on ideas to shorten wait times and get better outcomes.

Kenney has indicated that yetto-be-released UCP policy will tout more private-care options as one potential solution, which should make for a compelling clash of philosophies.

Now that Kenney has made his spending intentions clearer, the UCP leader is probably best served by putting away the overheated lessons on waste and mismanagement.

No one likes a lecturer who hasn’t done his homework.