Five years ago, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was already gaming out how to dismantle public medicare, discussing how to get the federal government “out of the business of health care.”

In an episode of a podcast she hosted in 2021 for right-wing think tank the Fraser Institute, she mused about how she could build a parallel for-profit system—even if it involved breaking Canada’s foundational health care laws.

“You can tell me if our starting point needs to be throwing out the Canada Health Act,” she told her guest, the Fraser Institute’s senior fellow on health policy Nadeem Esmail.