'People can’t be patient': NDP holds health care town hall

NDP MLA & Shadow Minister for Health, Sarah Hoffman, speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about their recent health care town hall.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

 

Michael Higgins: Let's start on the physician compensation deal. What's your perspective on why this remains unresolved?

Sarah Hoffman: The premier told doctors in May that she would have it signed within a few weeks and then in August she delayed that until September, and now we're in October.

We had a town hall here in Lethbridge on health care and there was a family in attendance. Their son has recently been discharged from Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary, sent back to Lethbridge to find out that their family doctor is leaving. So when the premier asks people to be patient, and they're sick themselves or have loved ones who are sick, many people can't be patient.

The doctors have been patient. They've already reached this agreement with the province and it's time that the province enact it to stop doctors from feeling pressured to shut down their practices and many leave the province. It's not good patient care and you can't ask that sick child to be patient.

MH: You bring up the town hall meeting on the issue of health care in Lethbridge Tuesday evening. Why Lethbridge? How different is the health care dynamic there compared to the rest of the province?

SH: They've had a significant shortage in obstetricians, many women being told to go to Calgary to have their babies. It's not acceptable, it's not okay.

I was also down here meeting with our local candidate for the byelection that's coming up probably very soon here in Lethbridge. It will be a chance for us to elect, hopefully, Rob to the legislature and give Lethbridge that real strong voice that we all need.

MH: Are there more health care town halls planned across the province?

SH: I'm definitely going to do more. My predecessor did one in Medicine Hat not long ago. We heard from about 40 people last night and the stories were heart-wrenching. Both from patients, as well as health care workers, who just want to do their best in serving their communities.

There's lots of people who need to be heard and we will absolutely be holding more.

MH: The premier’s out with a six-minute long video on proceeding without delay, the introduction of legislation this fall on transgender youth. From a health standpoint, what are you prepared for in debating this in the legislature?

SH: It is so anti-science, it's anti-evidence, it's anti-parent. There are many parents who've said we need to delay puberty for our child to give them a little bit more time.

And for the premier to think she knows better than health care professionals. I talked to a respiratory therapist the other day who said if they don't delay puberty and they do end up as adults needing to change their voice and the way that they speak, it's a lot more time consuming and harder on them if they've gone through puberty, as opposed to being able to delay it.

So the premier's making decisions that are anti-science, I would assert anti-human rights, and they're just cruel.

We will have much to say about this in the legislature. I'm sure our leader, Naheed Nenshi, feels very passionately about it as well.

MH: In the video the premier’s inviting all Albertans to join the conversation as the legislation is debated. How much of a conversation is there to be had in that regard? How much of a voice do Albertans have?

SH: Albertans have a lot of voices, it’s if the premier's willing to hear them, I guess we'll find out. But there definitely are a lot of people who have been speaking out since she first raised this cruel attack on some of the most vulnerable people in our province months ago.

She does it with soft lighting and tries to sound empathetic, but the truth is she's taking agency away from children and parents because she thinks she knows better than any of them do. Psychologists, the Alberta Medical Association, they've told us that this is not evidence-based and that it's cruel and they're opposed to it.

MH: Alberta's Minister of Infrastructure, Peter Guthrie, is currently in Boston meeting with construction and public health authorities touring health care infrastructure projects. You were health minister in the Notley government, what are your thoughts on how such a fact-finding trip could benefit Alberta's health sector?

SH: I think he'd have a lot to learn if he actually visited the hospitals that we do have here, including the amazing, new Calgary Cancer Centre that recently opened, and the expansion we did at the Misericordia hospital. Those were design build projects done in house, they stuck to budget, and were often under budget, those types of projects that we did when we were in government.

The other thing I would like him to tour is the operating rooms that are not working to capacity right now because we've been losing anesthetists and nurses to private surgical centres. Originally they said that these centres were supposed to add capacity, but what they've actually done is take people out of the already paid for public hospitals that we have. Many of them aren't working to their full capacity today.

Instead they want to build more buildings for private for-profit health care and that is counter to what most health care workers and Albertans at large want. What they want is service that meets your needs, the right care in the right place at the right time. We have a lot of that infrastructure, we just need to use it to its capacity. Which means signing deals with doctors and nurses and getting out of the way and letting them do their job.

MH: Given the ongoing overhaul of health care, might a trip like this to Boston be a sign the Smith government is preparing to invest in health infrastructure? Take its finger off the pause button on a South Edmonton hospital project?

SH: They just finally admitted that they did cancel the South Edmonton hospital, so I doubt it. The fact that they're going to the U.S. instead of other public regions, including here in Alberta or other places across Canada, makes me quite nervous because they have talked about Americanizing health care for years.

We know that the premier has talked about people paying out of pocket, potentially, for things like family doctor visits, and now they're going to study health care models in the States, infrastructure or otherwise. I'm nervous about that.