By Medicine Hat News Opinion on February 8, 2020.

The reviews are in, and they say exactly what we thought they’d say.

The UCP unveiled its most recent “independent” report this week – a review of Alberta Health Services by accountants from Ernst & Young – and as you can guess, there are plenty of cost-saving suggestions.

The good news, should you be looking, is the province says it won’t shoot for the full $1.9 billion available through a series of 57 recommendations. Even Health Minister Tyler Shandro balked at the idea of rural hospital closures and has at least attempted to play down the notion of dropping coverage for a list of surgeries and procedures.

As he stated in a Twitter thread, “It’s not about *removing* coverage, it’s about *improving* quality by avoiding inappropriate procedures.” Just because that clearly implies AHS is performing unnecessary surgeries, and just because some might be on a list that includes breast reduction and tubal ligation, doesn’t mean we should be getting overly worked up here.

I’m sure all the really important breast reductions will be covered, and I’m pretty sure a group of very knowledgeable men will be available to tell women which is which. So, you know, everything is probably fine.

Besides, it’s hard to truly speculate which recommendations will be implemented at this stage, though if you’re playing Healthcare Bingo at home you can assume anything privatization is a free space. But now that we’ve officially reached “accounting firm makes surgical suggestions” status, we should try to remember how we got here.

Premier Jason Kenney hasn’t exactly been coy about intentions to cut spending, or eliminate public-sector jobs, or privatize health procedures, all of which he spoke of to at least some degree before the 2019 election. If you asked him, he was very much chosen to do just that.

But he’s also not stupid, and he knows that even those 1-million-plus Albertans who fired the NDP for their so-called socialist spending ways would not be easy to convince of such austerity measures once they’re put into practice. He also knew full well that the biggest provincial expenditures – education and health care – could not possibly avoid the chopping block.

And it’s one thing to take the word of a lifetime politician who always seems to be away on a trip whenever the real controversial stuff is announced, but folks are lot more likely to buy the tough policies you’re selling if you have the “experts” suggesting there is no other way.

Enter the MacKinnon Report – the mother of all reports that follow.

Janice MacKinnon, a former Saskatchewan NDP finance minister with a history of austerity budgets, was chosen to lead a group tasked with paving the way to balance. There is nothing inherently wrong with securing the recommendations of those who have written budgets in the past, and I have no intention of staking claims to MacKinnon’s credibility one way or the other. Had the panel been asked to look at any and all methods for achieving balance, I might even be here touting its existence.

But that’s not what happened. Instead of providing the panel with the autonomy necessary to suggest options like leaving corporate taxation alone, or adding a percentage point or two for top-end earners, or even – dare I say – recommending the dreaded sales tax, Kenney’s government gifted away billions in much needed revenue to corporate shareholders and told the MacKinnon panel that tax hikes of any kind were off the table.

While I understand that Albertans are nothing if not united in disdain for taxation, if the only goal is to balance a budget, throwing a bunch of money in a bush and then refusing to find more can only lead to one thing. Of course the UCP is cutting services – they’ve purposefully given themselves no other option.

So when a months-later health report arrives with suggestions that even the UCP hesitates to support, it’s important to note that Ernst & Young was only taking the baton from the MacKinnon Report, which meant finding efficiencies with a deliberately emptied wallet.

What did you expect the AHS review to say, if not exactly what it said?

Half a century of sugar-daddy oil revenues are all but gone. We literally gifted billions to “job creators” with nothing in return. And the government utterly refuses new lines of revenue in the lowest taxed jurisdiction in Canada.

Is anyone left that still thinks we can balance this budget by using less laundry detergent in a hospital, or buying fewer books for a school, or cutting an administrator’s salary, or pitting RNs and LPNs against each other, or forcing unions to choose between less money and no job?

Services are going to suffer, and it’s only going to get worse. All that has happened so far has occurred with a UCP budget that increased the deficit by $2 billion – what do you think is coming when they actually start tackling this “crippling” debt load that they never cease to cite?

The government has convinced Albertans that the debt load is the worst thing in their life and they’ve used the illusion of consultation to choose essential services as the places to pay it back. Hits to the most vulnerable came first and the deficit only got worse.

We’re already in “math whiz knows hernia surgery” territory… How long until this game affects a service that matters to you?

Scott Schmidt is the layout editor at the Medicine Hat News. Contact him at sschmidt@medicinehatnews.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at @shmitzysays. All opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the News’ editorial board.