Bill 17, Alberta Health Act, Amendment

November 24, 2010

Mrs. Forsyth: All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It’s a pleasure for me to rise and speak to the amendment in regard to the legislation of wait times. One feels a lot better when they’ve had a couple of hours of sleep and have the opportunity to get up and speak. Unfortunately, when you’re the health critic, not much sleep is granted. You’re keenly interested in what’s happening in the Legislature, so instead of sleeping, you end up watching what’s happening. You end up, believe it or not, talking until all hours of the morning to people who have been watching this and the health professionals, actually, who have been contacting us, wanting to get their two cents in.

I guess I said to one of the docs I talked to – I don’t know what time it was; 1 in the morning? I was quite surprised. I said to him: well, it’s quite late. They’re used to these hours, and the doctor from Edmonton-Meadowlark can probably attest to that. They’re keenly interested in what’s happening. They’re watching very much what’s going on, and I would assume a lot of the health professionals that are watching at this particular period of time have never ever tuned in to what’s happening in the Assembly. You just have to look at what’s happening in the e-mails that are pouring in to us and the twitters that are coming in.

I have to first of all put on the record that I’m going to stand up, and I’m going to support the hon. Member for Edmonton-Meadowlark. I’m going to support that particular piece of legislation because as the health critic for the Wildrose and the MLA for Calgary-Fish Creek people have clearly articulated that we’re in a crisis situation. It’s interesting when you start reading through Hansard. I’m trying to keep up with that. One member from the opposition says: no, we’re in a crisis. Another says: no, we’re not in a crisis. Then you have the Member for Edmonton-Meadowlark, who is an emergency physician and, if I can get on the record, a highly respected emergency physician: yes, we are in a crisis.

I think that not only are we in a crisis; this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s amazing to me that neither the health minister nor the new parliamentary secretary from Edmonton-Rutherford is aware of that. Quite frankly, he travelled the province all summer, and if he was listening instead of talking, he would have quickly realized that not only do we have a crisis in ER; we have a crisis amongst our health care professionals. [interjections]

You know, Mr. Chair, it’s interesting how you get the government talking away. I don’t mind that because I do that also.

Mr. Liepert: Stick to policy and not personal slams.

Mrs. Forsyth: Oh, it’s the former minister of health . . . The Chair: Hon. member, address the chair. You have the floor on amendment A3. Thank you.

Mrs. Forsyth: I am talking about A3. . . . the current Minister of Energy, who was the previous minister of health and managed to screw that up quite royally, not only the Energy file but the health.

I’m pleased to stand up and talk about legislated wait times. I’m going to go back to Hansard, when the current minister of health, from Edmonton-Mill Creek, talked after the Member for Edmonton-

Meadowlark tabled the amendment. He’s talking about: “When you put something into legislation, as [you] know, you are putting something into law.” Well, gee, that’s an intelligent conversation. “If you put something law and someone breaks it” – well, this is the same government that’s put things into law and broke them anyhow. I go to, you know, our deficit accountability act. I mean, you put a piece of law; then you break that law. We’re the ones, quite frankly, that are supposed to uphold the law.

Then he goes on to say: “Then there are going to [have to] be some repercussions for that. Now, that’s okay. That’s called accountability. But what you have to understand, though, is that you can’t just put one aspect of health care under that microscope.” I guess my answer to that is: why not? I mean, under the microscope right now, quite clearly, has been the emergency crisis that we’re dealing with. If you don’t think that is under a microscope, then you’d better wake up. Under this microscope all of a sudden we’re having talks with emergency physicians, which is in my mind quite interesting because the same emergency physicians that we’re talking to – I believe Dr. Parks sent a letter to the government in 2007 reiterating the problems with the emergency situation. Nothing was done. Nothing. I would expect that was under the Minister of Energy when he received that. Then it gets worse. It took a lot of courage, and quite frankly it took a lot of guts for a physician to speak out because of the fact that we’ve been told by numerous health care professionals about their fear with the code of conduct that came under Dr. Duckett.

So you go back and you think: this is not happening in 2010 in the province of Alberta, when the government continues to talk about this five-year funding and how it’s going to change the system. The minister goes on to say:

You would have to put all aspects of health care under that microscope because then others would come in and say: well, what about legislating wait times for cancer care, for access for kidney care, for brain cancer, for lung cancer? And the list goes on.

Well, Mr. Chair, what I would like to say to the minister is: why don’t you try a pilot project? The government is great at pilot projects. They have more pilot projects than you can count. So if you want to have one aspect of health care and you want to have one pilot project, then why don’t we try and talk about a pilot project, legislate it, and say: okay; let’s see if instead of talking about it, we can get it done. If the government is so committed to having this emergency care go from four to eight hours – I had a disturbing call from a senior yesterday who is a real sweetheart. She said to me: Heather, I talked to your mum, and I understand that you’re in Edmonton, and when you come home, I need to talk to you. I said: well, why is that? She was having some problems with her heart. She went to emergency and waited seven hours. Now, this is heart problems, and here we are supposed to be having this service that is supposed to be giving us some time. And that seven-hour time was only before there was anything even started.

What you see here is that things aren’t happening the way the government wants them to happen. You know, the minister goes on. Not only does he question where the wait times and legislation should be on cancer care, but then he talks about eye surgery. Well, that’s shown that’s worked after the monopoly and you start hearing from the eye surgeons and the long waits for seniors with cataract problems. I’m sure that’s going to roll out as one of the other most successful things the government has done. I can tell you that that’s another thing that’s going to start biting them in the butt: when you start dealing with what’s happening on that aspect of giving two companies a monopoly, and, yup, they can do the eye surgery. I can tell you that the ophthalmologists that I’m hearing from are quite concerned. The patients they’re dealing with I can’t even imagine. They’re getting me some numbers on the backlog of eye surgery that has gone from here to there and is backing up in the system with people that have got to have cataract surgery. You know, you can talk about whether it’s a simple procedure or very complicated, but he seems to think that the eye surgery doesn’t have to be legislated either.

Then he goes on to say, “Why not put into law wait times for access to continuing care or whatever type of care” you want? Well, I’m sure that we’ll be dealing with all of these other health issues when you start having people and doctors come out and speak about this.

Now he says, “Now, while it[’s] . . . easy to say that that could be done, it’s just not practical . . . as new improvements are made, what are you going to do?” You know what, Mr. Chair? That’s an interesting comment by a minister of health, when he says, “it’s . . . not practical because as new improvements are made, what are you going to do?” Well, you’re going to do exactly what we saw yesterday, when we had a piece of legislation that we were currently debating, and an amendment came forward.

If the minister felt that something necessarily had to be done and you needed to bring the House back and make amendments to a piece of legislation, I would suspect that every member in this Legislature would be back here. I mean, you see what’s gone on across the country when there’s been an emergency situation, whether it’s a strike action or something, where the Legislature has been reconvened, and members show up. We all deeply care about what’s happening in this province, and we all deeply care about the fact that health care obviously is a number one priority amongst Albertans; at least, it is for Calgary-Fish Creek.

I can tell you that Albertans and the health care professionals have made it very, very clear that there has been no improvement in the system. We continually hear the government talk about the new beds. I’ve gone to the dictionary, and I’ve looked up what “new beds” is. You know, while they open a new bed, they’re always closing more beds behind.

The Member for Edmonton-Rutherford wanted to talk about what other amendments we’re going to be tabling. I think that at the last count that we had, we had 10 of them. The more that they talk, the more amendments are coming forward in regard to what we think needs to be changed in the legislation.

While I think this bill may have had some good intentions, I can tell you that it’s deeply flawed when you have a well-respected doctor come out and talk about guiding principles. It’s an interesting amendment. He talks about: include as guiding principles that no unnecessary deaths, no unnecessary harm to patients, no unnecessary delays in care and no unnecessary waste of resources should occur.

Then he goes on to: set standards for lengths of stay in the emergency departments of hospitals consistent with the “Position Statement on Emergency Department Overcrowding” published by the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians and dated February 2007. That’s from emergency physicians.

We had this meeting – I believe it was last Friday – when they brought together 100 people to talk about that. They had given their idea of what they thought was important to improve the emergency situation. We will be interested to see if they table the minutes from that meeting because we had asked that particular question in question period.

Mr. Chair, you know, it’s sad when you see what’s happened over the last several days in regard to the Member for Edmonton- Meadowlark. Now we’re hearing about what’s happening to Dr.

Duckett. We’re also hearing that three people, possibly, from the board will also resign. It’s shooting the messenger. The messenger that was shot was just delivering what they were being told to by the previous health minister, who’s now the Minister of Energy. While it was unfortunate with the cookie situation – and I thought a great deal about that cookie situation – you wonder what kind of state the CEO was in to come out and talk about eating his cookie instead of about health care.

No one likes what’s happening. No one trusts the government. We have the Member for Edmonton-Rutherford speak in debate in Hansard. He talked about the Canada Health Act amendment that we brought forward, and he didn’t support that. He spoke the “we” instead of the “I,” which I found quite interesting.

The minister has also spoken about the fact that legislating times hasn’t worked because of the tie-up in the court system. Well, there won’t be a tie-up in the court system if the expectations of what’s in that particular legislation are met. You have to get a buy-in not only by the emergency physicians, but you have to get a buy-in by all of the health care professionals. They want to see a health care system that’s fixed.

We have seniors in an acute-care situation that should be in what the Premier calls – I don’t even know what he calls it. He has called it several things, where he wants to see partners together, long-time couples together. Well, that’s not happening. You can talk about it, but putting it into effect is very difficult. For example, what I see happening where my mom is staying. They’re in assisted living. One partner isn’t doing so well compared to another, so you have to move that particular partner into long-term care or a nursing home, and they’re separated. It’s a goal that has to be well thought out, well done, and researched to see what’s going to happen.

Mr. Boutilier: Cindy, is it that cold over there?

Mrs. Forsyth: She’s got her Grey Cup jacket on. I’m sure she bought that, too. It’s interesting, Mr. Chair, when you talk about a critical situation that we’re trying to discuss, and members on that side of the House are talking about the Grey Cup and bragging about their Grey Cup jackets. It’s just mind boggling to me at this particular time.

We want to continue to talk – and I’ve got to do some more assessment in regard to some of the notes – about speaking in Hansard that the minister of health has talked about. He talks about: The danger with having something like this in legislation is to say that the court system would become even more involved than it already it is. There’s nothing wrong with that to a degree, but in the health care system it would hold up so many things that need to be done and acted on quickly without coming in for a full debate per se to change an act or words to that effect.

Now, that’s an interesting comment by the minister. I briefly spoke about that. I guess he’s referring to the legislation. If we need a word changed that he thinks is going to add to or is needed in the amendment of the Member for Edmonton-Meadowlark, we will discuss that.

I mean, the government has an incredible amount of resources. An incredible amount of lawyers work for the government. I have had the opportunity in two different ministries to be able to work with the lawyers that are employed by the government. I can tell you that their number one priority is always to do what’s right and what they think is good for Albertans. We have lawyers, I know, in the health department, as we do in every department. It would be interesting to see if the minister of health has shown this amendment to the lawyers that he has under his employment. Maybe they can come back with an amendment that they think would be a deterrent to the amendment that Edmonton-Meadowlark has brought forward in regard to legislating the wait times. We’re not lawyers on this end, and as I indicated . . . [Mrs. Forsyth’s speaking time expired]