(Edmonton) Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is seeking legal advice on whether she can pardon those fined for non-criminal violations related to health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Posted at 10:40 p.m.
At the annual general meeting of the United Conservative Party on Saturday, Mr.me Smith told reporters that among other things she was thinking of people who received fines for not wearing a mask. “These are not normal things for which you can be fined and prosecuted. I will review the range of outstanding fines and obtain a legal opinion on which ones we can waive and amnesty,” she said.
Mme Smith also spoke out on her promise to introduce minor changes to the Human Rights Act this fall, to outlaw discrimination based on COVID-19 vaccination status.
She said the law will not focus on all vaccines, just the one for COVID-19, as this is a political issue, not a medical one.
“Since this was a very specific reaction to a very specific vaccination, we are going to be very specific when we write the legislation,” she mentioned.
“We have to go back to the attitude that you have to get vaccinated to protect yourself. (But) we need to get away from this attitude of demonizing those who make a different choice,” argued Ms.me Smith.
She was quick to criticize vaccine passports as well as employees, including those in Alberta Health Services, who weren’t allowed to work without a COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic.
On her first day as prime minister earlier this month, she said the COVID-19 unvaccinated were the most discriminated group she had seen in her life.
During her speech Saturday at her party’s annual general meeting, held at the River Cree Resort and Casino in the western suburbs of Edmonton, she reiterated her strong criticism of Alberta Health Services ( AHS), the independent government agency responsible for administering and delivering primary care under the policy guidance of the Department of Health.
She blames him for letting Albertans down during the pandemic by not creating enough beds for the influx of patients and forcing health care workers to get a COVID-19 shot to come to work.
She blames AHS for long wait times for care and for dispatching ambulances. She promised to revamp the entire AHS governance system and dismiss the AHS board of directors by mid-January.
“The system, my friends, is broken,” said Mr.me Smith to the 1,800 delegates present in the room.
“Most of those running AHS today are survivors of the New Democrat years. They had their chance to fix this overloaded system and they largely failed on almost every account. Failure is no longer an option,” she said to cheers.
Addressing reporters, Mr.me Smith also declined to elaborate on comments she made on the Western Standard platform during a live interview on Friday.
In this interview, Mr.me Smith has pledged to end an AHS information-sharing agreement with other health care providers such as the Mayo Clinic and Harvard University under a program administered by the World Economic Forum.
“We have to solve this problem,” she said on Friday.
“Why do we have anything to do with the World Economic Forum? This must stop. »
Asked about these comments, Ms.me Smith declined to expand on the subject on Saturday, saying she was focused on improving the health care system.
When asked why she brought up the issue on the Western Standard livestream site and not at the press conference, she replied, “As you know, some forums are entertainment forums. I have been on an entertainment forum for a long time (as a radio host)”.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an annual high-level conference of political and business leaders from around the world that in mid-2020 proposed a “great reset,” joint action after the COVID-19 in order to reorganize society, from education to social contracts to working conditions.
Since then, an online conspiracy has grown accusing the WEF of being some sort of covert coalition of world leaders bent on exploiting the pandemic as an opportunity to introduce sweeping social change to dismantle capitalism.