Alberta Minute: Union Fights, Blood Donation, and Loyalty To Canada

Alberta Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Alberta politics.

This Week In Alberta:

• The Legislature is sitting again this week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons and evenings, and on Thursday afternoon. There are also Committee Meetings scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings.
  
  
• Potential highlights include two motions (one by NDP MLA Rod Loyola, and one by Premier Kenney), asking MLAs to vote to confirm their "loyalty to a united Canada". Premier Kenney's motion seems to be designed to allow the government to vote against the NDP motion, while still supporting Kenney's federalist position.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Bills 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, and 40 are all at or have passed Second Reading, while Bill 41 has passed First Reading.

Last Week In Alberta:

• Alberta Union of Provincial Employees members, including support service workers in Alberta's healthcare sector, walked off the job only to be almost immediately ordered back to work by the Alberta Labour Relations Board, which found the strike illegal. Maybe now would be a great time to bring in voluntary unionism and let individual health workers decide whether or not to join and financially support their union.
  
  
• Speaking of the AUPE, construction on their new $49 million, 120,000 square-foot headquarters in Edmonton is proceeding well, with the building now structurally complete. At the Alberta Institute, we don't have (and don't want!) a special law that lets us force Albertans to give us a share of their wages. If you'd like to make a donation though, we promise to spend it on research, not waste it on lavish offices!
  
  
• Bill 204 (the Voluntary Blood Donations Repeal Act), which would repeal the NDP's ban on paying donors for their plasma, was debated again in the legislature and is now close to becoming law. It's important to remember that the current ban doesn't stop paid plasma from being used in Alberta, it's simply a ban on paying Albertans for their plasma. In fact, Alberta pays to import most of its plasma from the US where donors are paid. Why should the Alberta government pay Americans for their plasma when we could give that money to Alberta donors instead?

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