Bill 24, Health Quality Council of Alberta Act

2^nd Reading

November 22, 2011

Mr. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is indeed a pleasure to rise and speak to Bill 24, the Health Quality Council of Alberta Act. During the recent PC leadership race the Premier made a very specific promise in order to get selected as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. This promise set her apart from the crowd. It even got the former Premier so upset as to scold her publicly. He called her a Liberal, in fact, which got her instant attention in the media and support.

Last June in the wake of Dr. Duckett’s allegations of rampant queue-jumping by those with connections to the PC Party, she said without equivocation that if elected, she would call a full, independent public inquiry. She said that those claims and others alleging intimidation of health care whistle-blowers demanded an inquiry. She said, quote: it’s about what has happened in the system to ensure that we get to the bottom of this and, if there has been any of this, meaning intimidation and so forth, that we all are completely open about it. Unquote. And she added this, quote: I know that it’s not something that Albertans are going to accept, and nor should they. That’s why we need to have this inquiry.

Unquote.

This wasn’t just a media stunt either, Mr. Speaker. In September she was still talking about how absolutely urgent it was to have this public judicial inquiry because, quote, in Alberta we’ve had so much political interference in health care that I don’t think Albertans have confidence that the system has been allowed to work. Unquote. She said at that time what the Wildrose and other opposition parties had been saying all along, and she was right at that time.

But as with so many other issues what the Premier said before she was elected as PC leader sounded great, but what she is actually doing as Premier is just as disappointing. Whether it’s fixed election dates or balancing the budget or, as we heard earlier today, finding $107 million of in-year savings or fixing the

Human Rights Act to protect free speech, the list is growing every single day. This Premier is constantly – constantly – flip-flopping on the promises that she made to Albertans and, indeed, to her own party members.

This flip-flop is maybe the most blatant, however, and has the most serious consequences. We need a truly independent and powerful body to look into the dozens of allegations of government intimidation of health care workers and political queue jumping as well as interference with the health care system. And now we don’t know if we’re going to get it. We also don’t know if we’re going to get it before the next election, another promise that she made. She made a promise during the campaign that this public inquiry would be well under way before the next election so that voters would have all that information in front of them, openly and transparently, before they went into the ballot box and selected a member to represent them in the Legislature. She’s flip flopped on that promise by implementing this needless bill, thereby delaying the process so that we will not have this public inquiry before the next election, another broken promise.

As the Premier made perfectly clear when she was running for the PC leadership, the repeated allegations of bullying by politicians and AHS executives could not be handled by anybody but a judge. She was right about that, absolutely right about that. This needed to be done publicly so Albertans could be assured of the truth. It needed to be open so that the media could be there and could report to Albertans on what was happening so they could have their confidence restored in the health care system and those overseeing it. She emphasized that partisan considerations didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Albertans’ faith in the system was restored. As I said, she even said that it was so very urgent to proceed quickly so that the inquiry would be well under way by the time the next provincial election was called.

But now, Mr. Speaker, she’s waffling. She’s flip-flopping. I don’t even know if waffling or flip-flopping are the right words because there are other words that are unparliamentary to use for what she has done. Clearly, she’s breaking a promise. We’ll use the parliamentary words. This is a flip-flop of the highest order. To quote today’s Premier and then candidate, “It’s not something that Albertans are going to accept, nor should they,” meaning that this would go on without a public inquiry.

This has to stop. This Premier needs to start keeping the commitment she has made to Albertans, and it starts by keeping her promise to call an independent public judicial inquiry into the allegations of health system intimidation and interference. Earlier this month the Wildrose along with the New Democratic and the Liberal caucuses penned a joint letter to the Premier asking that she keep this promise to Albertans and laid out five criteria that the inquiry must include in order to be legitimate, effective, and in line with the Premier’s aforementioned commitment to Albertans on the matter.

These five criteria are as follows. First, the inquiry must be entirely public and open to the media. We don’t try extortionists or fraudsters behind closed doors. We do so publicly so that the entire legal process is open and transparent. The point of this inquiry is to restore confidence in our health system and to give health workers the confidence they need to openly advocate for their patients without fear of reprisal.

It is also about who, if anyone, was involved in the intimidation of health professionals, whether any person used their political influence to interfere with the administration of the health system, such as queue-jumping for example, and whether any such intimidation or interference adversely affected the health of patients, the health of Albertans. The inquiry will be considered an absolute sham if it is conducted behind closed doors.

The second criteria. The inquiry must be judicial, meaning that it must be presided over by a qualified judge with the power to subpoena witnesses and evidence. It is not enough to simply appoint a panel with a judge included on it. A qualified judge should have complete authority over the entire process. He or she must have full powers of subpoena and the experience to properly weigh evidence and assess the credibility, or lack thereof, of the witnesses that come before him or her.

This is not a job for doctors. Not only are they unqualified to weigh evidence and assess witness credibility compared to a judge; they are also conflicted in that they are being asked to judge their fellow health colleagues and current political bosses, who pay them, indirectly, their salaries. The judge must also be a federally, not provincially, appointed judge with absolutely no known ties to the PC Party or the provincial government. This must be a federally appointed judge, just so that there is no appearance of influence even if there isn’t.

The third criteria. The inquiry must be focused on alleged wrongdoing, intimidation, or interference by government members, officials, or surrogates with health professionals or the administration of the health system that has resulted in harm to patients, health workers leaving Alberta, unnecessary costs incurred by the health system, or health professionals being forced to stay silent as it pertains to advocating for patient care. This inquiry is not about health quality issues such as why our ERs are overcrowded and what we can do about it. That would be a question for the Health Quality Council. That is what they are qualified to look into, health quality issues, not allegations of wrongdoing and breaches of ethics, as is being alleged in this case.

The promised public inquiry is about the alleged intimidation and government interference with health care, and those are the clear criteria or the clear parameters that a judge-led inquiry or a judge presided- over inquiry should look into.

Fourth, the inquiry must be well under way or complete prior to the next election so that voters have the information they need before making a decision at the ballot box. The Premier must not delay the process in order to avoid having uncomfortable findings come out prior to her spring election call. This would be exceptionally cynical and disrespectful to Albertans, who have the right to have all relevant information in front of them before they mark their X in the ballot booth.

This is critical, this point, and it is clear to me above all things. From everything that I’ve gathered here in the last couple of days, through question period and so forth, the number one reason for this legislation has become quite clear. By using this legislation and this process, by extending it out, by making sure that this goes well into the spring before we have the legislation, before the Health Quality Council makes their first report, and so forth, what it does is that it allows the Premier to extend the process and not get started, in any significant way anyway, until the next election is over with.

Her plan is very simple. Her plan is to make sure that there are no uncomfortable truths that are made public prior to the next election. What an absolutely, frankly, shameful motivation that is. For someone who ran on transparency, who ran on accountability, she’s starting to sound like the Member for Calgary-West.

Finally, the inquiry should be called using the Public Inquiries Act. There is no need to pass new legislation as it relates to calling the inquiry. If the Premier wants to pass additional legislation to strengthen the Health Quality Council so that it can better conduct investigations related to health quality issues, that is a good thing, and I think all opposition parties would support that. However, strengthening the Health Quality Council has nothing to do with the public inquiry we are referring to. The public inquiry deals with alleged wrongdoing, ethical breaches, waste of tax dollars, and the buying-off of health professionals to stay silent. As mentioned, the Health Quality Council deals only with health quality/ care issues, like the reasons behind long ER wait times or dirty surgical instruments in the hospitals and how to solve such issues in the future or keep them from happening.

Delaying the inquiry in order to pass new legislation is unacceptable. It’s needless. The Member for Calgary-Mountain View spoke very eloquently earlier about the fact that we have a perfectly legitimate and well-proven, well-used Public Inquiries Act. It’s there. We know it works. There is no reason that the week after the new Premier got elected, she couldn’t have used that legislation to call this public inquiry. Absolutely no reason. Instead, we sit here. We’re now – what? – approaching two months of her being in office, and she has managed to delay, delay, delay. It is absolutely shameful. She is passing this legislation simply in order to delay the process that she could call at any time if she had any true intention of getting to the bottom of the alleged outrageous acts by government officials and AHS officials.

There is only one reason why the government would go to all these lengths to create something that meets some of the Premier’s promises out of the Health Quality Council instead of just using the existing Public Inquiries Act. They have something to hide. They are not telling us something. They know that there is something there that is going to be very, very damaging to their political re-election chances, so they will hide it. It may come out a little bit right after the next election, but they’re banking that if they can just hold on to that information a little longer, till after the next election, then they can spend a couple of years after that trying to repair the damage and separating themselves from their wrongdoing.

Clearly, people within her party, like the former health minister, who publicly said that he would fight her on this inquiry, have gotten to her and have explained to her how many of their careers could be ruined by a public inquiry. For someone who campaigned as an outsider who would do things differently, it sure didn’t take her long to let Albertans down. I hope this Premier flip-flops again on this bill and just calls the public inquiry she promised and knew was needed before her election. She can prove to Albertans that she really is bringing renewal to this government and isn’t just the newly crowned queen of the same old boys’ club, but, Mr. Speaker, I won’t be holding my breath.

Thank you.

The Deputy Speaker: Standing Order 29(2)(a) allows for five minutes of comments, questions, clarifications.

Mr. Boutilier: Well, I find it interesting. The Member for Airdrie- Chestermere had made some very important points and clearly indicated that, you know, this Premier and the word “promise” obviously must have a new meaning to what has gone on over there.

My question to the member, though, is this. You made reference to a former minister of health, that’s been often referred to as Mr. Gibberish, but I thought it was important that there were also some very inappropriate actions being taken by the now minister of health, and as that was going on, the question is: do you perceive that potentially the perception is that there was something trying to be hidden by the actual minister of health that stands in here today, that represents under her leadership?

Mr. Anderson: Yes, I would. You know, one of the real issues here is the many conflicts of interest that are present. We have, for example, the former minister of health, now the current Minister of Finance, who essentially seemed to know what the Health Quality Council was going to find even before they announced their interim report. He said: “Ah, they don’t have anything.

They’ve got nothing. There’s nothing worth pursing there.” This is before the Health Quality Council even came up with their interim report. That’s a questionable thing, isn’t it? It’s almost like the government has a pre-notion of what’s going to happen. Of course, that calls in the whole question of the independence of the Health Quality Council itself. That’s the problem here. I don’t blame the members of the Health Quality Council for it. I blame the government members for allowing the perception of bias or the perception of nonindependence that their comments, particularly that minister’s comments, have allowed.

The other problem, of course, as you alluded to, is that the current minister of health is allegedly involved in this scandal, as we saw. One of the clearest displays in the last year and a half of this problem was, of course, when the now Leader of the Official Opposition was sitting as an independent after being kicked out of the Tory caucus. He was emotionally talking about his experiences in coming to this country and his family coming to this country and his grandfather, all these incredible stories. He was trying to relate that to why we shouldn’t allow intimidation like this to occur in our country, et cetera, et cetera. He was getting slightly quivery in his voice. Apparently, the now minister of health decided that he would phone the head of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. P.J. White, and have a conversation with him about the potential mental state of the Official Opposition leader.