As Premier, Todd Loewen Will Strip Down And Shakeup Bloated AHS Bureaucracy

Todd Loewen, the MLA for Central Peace-Notely and is one of the top four candidates vying for the leadership of the United Conservative Party of Alberta (UCP) to replace Premier Jason Kenney.

So far the leadership race has mostly circled around issues of Alberta sovereignty, the personal autonomy of Albertans, and getting the economy back on track, but nobody has yet to talk about a clear plan to actually cut the out-of-control spending by the Alberta government, nobody except for Todd Loewen. 

Although Loewen is one of the strongest proponents of increasing provincial autonomy for Alberta and was the first person, out of all the candidates, against public health restrictions and mandates, arguably Leowen’s fiscal policy is what is differentiating him the most. 

Loewen has been upfront about his intentions of getting rid of waste inside of provincial government, rather than ignoring the problems and hoping he can grow the economy to make the waste feel lighter, which is what the other candidates are currently doing. 

Frankly, if the other candidates were truly strong fiscal conservatives they wouldn’t be trying to hide from making cuts in fear that the media or NDP-controlled public sector unions will attack them. 

When asked by The National Telegraph about his opinion on cutting management bloat, Loewen used the Alberta healthcare system as an example of an area of government where a refusal to make cuts is untenable.

Loewen stated:

In healthcare, we need to reduce that middle management and even some upper management, and any savings we have from that can be put towards frontline staff because we do not have enough frontline staff.

We see rural Alberta lots of hospitals are being shut down, and emergency rooms are being shut down, because of a lack of staff. That needs to change and the problem is we see a lot of our frontline staff being burdened by that middle-level bureaucracy passing paperwork onto them. We need to have more efficiency in the system and that means we need less management getting in the way of service.

On the more general topic of government spending, Loewen added that:

When we look at the spending that we have in our government right now, we complained about the NDP and since the NDP left office, we have increased spending by over 10 percent. 

The National Telegraph also wanted to get Todd Loewen’s opinion on public sector executive pay and benefits which sharply increased under the NDP but continued to trend upwards after the UCP government took over in 2019.

Loewen said when asked specifically about the absurd pay that incompetent executives like former AHS CEO Dr. Verna Yiu were being paid that:

We have seen these bonuses coming out that are just outrageous and that needs to stop. We need to look at the whole healthcare system, and in particular AHS, it needs a severe overhaul. If it was a renovation I’d say we need to gut it…

We are spending near the top [of the provinces] when it comes to healthcare in Alberta and the results are right near the bottom, and it is not because of the frontline staff, they are very good. Almost nobody I’ve talked to across Alberta complains about the frontline staff, all the complaints are about the bureaucracy and the mismanagement of the system. 

Although other candidates have complained about bloated management in various areas of the public sector, and especially the AHS, nobody except for Todd Loewen has had the courage to take the logical next step and target the public sector management class for spending cuts.

People need to remember that much of the management of AHS did not just represent redundant spending, but often a hostile force when it came to the delivery of healthcare. In 2020 and 2021 AHS management, led by Dr. Verna Yiu, mismanaged ICU beds and cut staff due to public health mandates while in a staffing shortage.

Some candidates are asking to slow the increases in spending, but just limiting future spending increases only goes to ignoring the scale of the issue and hoping it goes away as the economy grows over the next decade or two. 

Loewen understands that Alberta taxpayers should not have to pay for massive executive salaries and bonuses if they are not only receiving no benefit from it, but it is actually slowing down public service delivery.