On 8 January 2002 the report of the Alberta Premier’s Advisory Council on Health was released. Chaired by former Deputy Prime Minister Don Mazankowski, the Council’s groundbreaking report has generated a tremendous amount of discussion across the country and the political spectrum. Within 24 hours of the release of the report, there were 16,000 hits on the website to download the report, and 4,700 to download the appendices. Within days of its release, the government of Alberta had to print a second run of the report as they were running out of hard copies.
AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley was a member of the Council, in recognition of the innovative public policy work done by AIMS in the health care policy field. Two AIMS projects proved to be particularly helpful to the Advisory Council in its deliberations. The new AIMS research report, Public Health, State Secret, more fully explores many of the themes and arguments that are presented in the Alberta report. Health Care’s Hidden Face, an ongoing interactive research initiative of AIMS, supplied valuable background and comparative information that was fed into the Alberta process.
