What the Deteriorating Conditions in Alberta Reveal
- Kevan Hunter -
 
The Kenney government has finally emerged from hiding to bring in a
number of measures just as our health care workers, hospitals and ICUs are
at the breaking point. Our schools, on the other hand, have largely
been left to fend for themselves.
Alberta right now has the highest rates of COVID-19 in all of North
America. At this moment, a person is required to isolate if they
are sick or have a positive test, that's it. But one can't get a
COVID-19 test unless symptoms are considered serious, or are linked to
an outbreak, which is not the same as having been in close contact with
a person who has tested positive. All this, while only 61 per cent of
the 72 per cent of the population aged 12 years and older are fully
vaccinated.
We now know that fully vaccinated people can still spread COVID-19
but are frequently asymptomatic, and this is the same for kids. This
means that testing of people who are asymptomatic has never been more
important. Instead of acting on this, the government has reduced
testing to only those with serious symptoms. The hotels where
people could isolate if needed to
keep their families safe have been closed. Employers are not obliged to
pay sick time. The government lurches from offering $100 to people to
get vaccinated (a total failure), to vaccine passports, while the
real need to institute all-sided protective measures and adequate
staffing and wages and working conditions for everyone is ignored.
As for our schools, the Alberta government posted a map showing
those that had outbreaks but the link is broken. Teachers and parents
are getting information from Support Our Students, a public education
advocacy organization of volunteers, which reports that there were at
least 59 schools on outbreak status as of September 18. An outbreak is
declared when 10 per cent or more of the students in a school are
absent with a respiratory illness.
When there is an outbreak, parents get an email letting them know. Only then are students and staff able to get tested.
When cases reach the point where ICUs are on the verge of being
completely overwhelmed, a switch is flipped and various things are
closed. When COVID-19 cases return to some arbitrary acceptable level,
they open up again.
On top of this, Alberta teachers have hanging over their heads a new
curriculum which has been almost universally rejected. School boards
will not pilot it. Teachers have absolutely rejected it. Tens of
thousands of people have joined online groups to discuss what kind of
curriculum is needed. They are demanding that the United Conservative Party's racist,
xenophobic, anti-democratic, sloppy, plagiarized, unprofessional
curriculum, which was cobbled together in a manner that suggests those
writing it never actually met a child, be declared dead and
buried. 
Demonstration at the Alberta legislation, September 11, 2021 against proposed new curriculum.
We can sum up the situation like this. Those who have shown
themselves unfit to govern continue to use their police or arbitrary
powers in a manner that endangers the lives of Albertans, while the
workers continue to make herculean efforts to keep everyone safe, and
to demand the measures they need but have no power to institute.
Wherever and
whenever they can, workers are actually taking on the functions of the
public authority, identifying problems and providing solutions. But the
need is for political renewal so that workers can speak and
act in their own name, not for them to shoulder the burden of crisis
management which thirty years of the anti-social offensive have proven
is not sustainable.
 This is precisely why we are experiencing the current crisis of the
neo-liberal system: the working people can no longer shoulder the
burden of absorbing the anarchy, chaos and violence that the rulers and
their cartel parties and state agencies have imposed on society as a
result of their pay-the-rich schemes and arrangements.
The pandemic is further revealing the need for democratic renewal.
More and more it is giving rise to the working people speaking out in
their own names on this need so that they can institute the measures
required to cope with this crisis. They cannot continue to step into
the breach where the government is failing to do its duty.
It is the health care workers, teachers, packing house workers,
postal workers, retail workers, oil workers, farmers, along with
Indigenous peoples and others who work to make a living who have shown
they can be trusted to act in defence of the rights of all. Why would
we want to put decision-making in someone else's hands? Having problems
is not new. What we need are measures which empower the people so that
they can provide these problems with solutions which favour them, not
the rich.
This article was published in
September 20, 2021 - No. 85
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08852.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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