Danielle Smith’s $30-Million AHS Firing Spree | The Tyee (thetyee.ca)

submitted 14 hours ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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The campaign by Alberta’s United Conservative Party to remake the province’s health-care system has created chaos with patients dying in overcrowded hospital emergency rooms.

But there has also been a steep financial cost to the overhaul. A Tyee analysis of Alberta Health financial data found at least $30 million has been paid out in severance between 2019 and June 2025.

The data shows the government paid out about $29.45 million between 2019 and June 2025 to 150 former employees. But that figure doesn’t account for payouts made in the second half of 2025, nor does it capture the payouts for executives and others who opted out of the public reporting of their severance.

A third of that amount — nearly $10 million — was paid out in 2023 to 33 people as Smith made good on an election campaign promise to eliminate what she characterized as a bloated bureaucracy and ineffective executive managers.

Smith had made no secret of her animus toward officials at Alberta Health Services, or AHS, whom she accused of underperforming and of mismanaging the COVID pandemic by too stringently applying mandates.

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[-] piskertariot@lemmy.world -3 points 9 hours ago

2019 - 2025 is 7 years

150 people

30m/7/150=$28,000 each

Literal nothing burger if you can MATH.

[-] GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca 3 points 7 hours ago

Word problems can be tricky, but that reads as 150 people who were terminated over the span of 7 years. So that's $200k per person.

Remember, word problems involve comprehension and math.

[-] piskertariot@lemmy.world -2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

If you work a minumum wage ($15/hr) job for 7 years and put in 40/hrs/week, you'd make $210,000.

Time scales make numbers seem bigger than they are. Go after Danielle Smith for something realstic. This is just shitty outrage journalism.

[-] GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

If you ignore the cost of living, sure. One simple trick to make a million dollars - work 34 years full time at $15/hour without spending any of it. Fact of the matter is, she already spent $30 million on employment payouts as part of dismantling AHS, with more coming, as well as increased costs and wait times outsourcing diagnostics to Dynalife. And don't worry, if they reach their goal, you'll see overall medical profits, or rather costs, to rival Americans. But keep on sucking up to her.

Your critical thinking skills seem to be on par with your reading comprehension skills.

[-] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago

Doubling down isn't helping you at all.

[-] how_we_burned@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 hours ago

Even 200k is in the corporate space fairly beign.

One company I worked was paying out that sort of money for basic worker bees who had hit the 80 week max redundancy pay out point (20 years tenure).

Every restructure meeting was the strangest thing I've ever been to where people were just so depressed and upset at not being made redundant.

So yeah $200k wasn't unusual (when all your other benefits were paid out, including sick leave that fricken accrued in perpetuity)

I imagine these health care workers and managers had a good union.

[-] Murdoc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 hours ago

That only works if it was 150 people per year for each of those 7 years. I read it as 150 people total, making the time irrelevant. Unless you are talking about how much was paid out of a budget each year. Was your "each" per person or per year?