BANNED from ALL HOSPITALS for a journalistic inquiry regarding a SUSPENDED FOREIGN DOCTOR

I’ve been banned from every Alberta Health Services hospital for a year after a short visit back in March in which I calmly asked a nurse if a doctor would be available for an interview and left when told no.

No raised voice, no confrontation, no refusal to leave. In fact, I was never even asked to leave. Yet a full facility-wide trespass ban was served to me months later.

The doctor in question is suspended in South Africa, and he is now accused of negligence over the death of Baby Alita. I was doing my due diligence as a journalist attempting to extend him the opportunity for his side of the story.

The ban is disproportionate, retaliatory, and completely unwarranted. Public interest journalism in Alberta shouldn’t be punished; it should be protected. I haven’t experienced such a ban even in South Africa, which supposedly has less press freedom than Alberta.