'It’s a public health emergency': Friends of Medicare calls for housing help as winter sets in

Chris Gallaway, Friends of Medicare executive director, speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about his organizations concerns around health care delivery and housing.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: Let's start on the issue of Albertans living unhoused. How prepared are we across the province with winter weather now here?

Chris Gallaway: We're only a few weeks into winter weather, this was entirely predictable that this would be an issue. We’re in a housing crisis and the government hasn't prepared. We have thousands of Albertans living outside in winter time. That is a crisis that should be treated like one with urgent action.

For us at Friends of Medicare, we very much see housing as health care. It's a heck of a lot cheaper to house people and keep them housed than it is to treat homelessness through our emergency rooms and our operating rooms and our hospital system.

MH: You've specifically driven the narrative around this being treated as a public health care crisis. Put that into perspective for us, how so?

CG: Absolutely it's a crisis. We're only a few weeks in, and there's already been four individuals found deceased in bus shelters in Edmonton. We're already hearing horrifying stories of frostbite surgeries happening in our operating rooms again. The last two years, we've seen record numbers of frostbite amputations due to frostbite injuries from folks living on our streets. This was preventable.

These are traumatic events for the folks getting the surgeries, but also for the health care workers who are dealing with this wave of injuries that they know are preventable, sending people back out, discharging them into the community.

We have home care workers and community workers trying to deal with their care, knowing full well they're going to end up back in the hospital because of infection, because of other complications, because they don't have housing to go back to.

It's a public health emergency and we should be treating it that way. We should be housing people first, step number one, rather than spending a ton of money in our hospitals, in our emergency rooms, in our operating rooms, dealing with the issue after the fact.

MH: Last year, a hugely contentious issue was encampments. The provincial government stepped in last year and took more of an active role where Edmonton and Calgary are concerned. What was learned last year that needs to be factored into the response this winter?

CG: What we learned last year is when you clear encampments, but there's nowhere for folks to go, that we lead to more frostbite injuries, more frostbite amputations. The data shows that very clearly. To us, if the government doesn't care about humanity, our neighbors, about keeping people safe and healthy who are needing housing, they should at least care about the bottom line and keeping our health care system, that's already under such struggle, going.

We should be housing people, rather than sending them into the operating room to have a hand or a foot cut off because they had nowhere to go inside when it's cold. It's completely unacceptable, in a province this rich, that we don't have a housing plan to get people safe.

The minister plays a lot of games with housing numbers, shelter beds, so on. The truth is, thousands of people are outside right now. He should be acting to fix that problem, and other levels of government should be working together to make that happen.

MH: With the fall sitting quickly winding down the government has, as expected, passed a trio of bills pertaining to transgender youth. What does this say to you about access to health care in our province?

CG: It was disappointing to see those bills passed last night. It wasn't surprising, but it's still disappointing to see this type of very divisive politics designed to pit people against each other, to fuel hate and confusion, rather than dealing with the real issues, like the fact there's a housing crisis, like the fact our health care system is in a staffing crisis. It's a distraction.

We've also just been raising that this is a really concerning precedent that the government's now setting. They're saying that the premier is willing to step between you and your doctor and tell you what health care you can and can't have.

It's very concerning seeing similar signs around MAID, or reproductive health care, or even in how some folks in the government talk about vaccines. It's a very slippery slope to say that our premier and her government's going to decide what health care services you can and cannot access despite your own consent.

MH: In reflecting on dialogue around health care over the past year, the government's system-wide overhaul continues to be a focal point. Most recently the unveiling of Acute Care Alberta as a replacement for AHS. What it is to be made of the government's degree of progress in restructuring the system?

CG: It's been quite the year for public health care in Alberta. There was this announcement of this massive restructuring that, at the time, they said would be done by the end of this year. What we've seen since is chaos, uncertainty, last minute announcements, delayed timelines, new start dates, staff who don't know who they're going to work for next week, let alone next year. It's really creating the sense of chaos.

What they've really managed to get done is announce some new logos and some new CEOs for these sectors, but in terms of what it's actually going to look like, how it's going to operate, what it means for health care workers or for Albertans or patients, we really don't know.

It's a lot of delay, a lot of uncertainty, while at the same time not addressing the real issues in the health care system, which are staffing and capacity. We're not seeing plans for that. They're just so focused on destroying Alberta Health Services, this political fight, rather than providing health care to Albertans.

MH: Given what has been presented about restructuring this past year, what is your read on where the government is taking the health system?

CG: They seem very determined to pull it apart, even they have, sort of, admitted that they’re not sure how it's going to work together, work for patients. They now have that seamless patient experience review that Lyle Olberg, the former Conservative cabinet minister, is chairing to look at what this will mean for patients trying to access continuing care and mental health and acute care and primary care because have health care needs that overlap.

What is it going to look like as we split things further and further apart? They don't seem to have a clear plan. They have a lot of last-minute telephone town halls, last-minute emails to staff managers who don't really know what it's going to look like in the months ahead, not a lot of certainty.

We've been saying, stop, breathe, actually make a plan if you're going to do this and work with the frontline workforce to ensure it's actually successful for them and for patients.