Caught in the Act

The Alberta government works best in the dark with as little oversight as possible. By 'best', I mean they can ram through the most vicious, cold-hearted abandonment of the weakest and most vulnerable to help pay for scuttling any attempt to make the wealthy and the resource industries pay their fair share of the social contract.

When a light is shone on their latest act of fiscal brutality they scuttle for cover like cockroaches.

EDMONTON — Alberta’s minister of children and youth services has apologized for a plan to cut pay for foster parents looking after disabled kids.

“There will be absolutely no change in practice,” Minister Yvonne Fritz said Monday. “I apologize that this had to happen to those parents. The good work they do. They don’t need this (stress) added to it.”

Earlier in the day, the Alberta NDP released a presentation made last week to foster parents in the Edmonton region. It laid out a new “fair compensation program.”

Under the proposed plan, homes that cared for children with extreme medical and psychological problems were to receive a maximum of $100 a day to pay for extra services and supports.

Homes that received less than $100 a day could also have had their fees cut under the new assessment plan.

Until Fritz’s reversal, the plan was to begin on April 1.

“These are very seriously disabled children,” NDP MLA Rachel Notley said. “And this is what is so awe-inspiredly cold-hearted, because this is truly the most vulnerable, voiceless group of children within our community.”

Notley said the proposed cap suggested the government doesn’t care much about its foster parents.

“If I were a foster parent, I would seriously question whether the system truly wants to support me and my work,” Notley said.

There is a very narrow window of opportunity right now, with this terrified lurching beast of a government, to make them reverse themselves on any number of things. Healthcare was taken away from the brutal thug Ron Liepert and given to former Liberal turned Tory Gene Zwozdesky and the government is trying to soft peddle the deep cuts to social spending and back down when confronted with the most egregious examples.

They're terrified of the Wildrose Alliance on the right and trying to avoid flareups on the left as well.

Good time to give their tightrope a vigorous shaking.

UPDATE, Jesus, what balls:
Stelmach is quite indignant... that the NDP chose to go public with this situation, rather then quietly and politely bringing it to the government's attention in private.