The Province of Alberta is now experiencing a raging controversy over our health care system. In particular, Albertans are up in arms over the situation facing patients in Alberta hospitals emergency wards. Stories of patients dying in Alberta hospital emergency rooms have made front page news, across Canada. The situation has become very embarrassing for the provincial Conservative government, especially because
one of its own members, a doctor himself, and parliamentary assistant to the health minister, has been highly critical and public about the situation. He got booted from the caucus as the price to be paid for his conduct.
A particularly interesting aspect to the story concerns Mr. Stephen Duckett, who is the CEO of Alberta Health Services, the top bureaucrat who oversees the health care system in Alberta. When he was approached by news reporters about the emergency room crisis, Mr. Duckett was eating a cookie. Rather than responding to reporters' questions about the situation, he quite pointedly told them that he was too busy eating his cookie. He in fact waved the cookie in their faces to emphasis his point. A U-Tube spoof video on the cookie incident has become a must watch.
Now in truth the emergency room crisis in Alberta seems from all reports to be very
serious. Whether Mr. Duckett answers reporters' questions or chooses to continue to munch on his cookie is not the problem which needs to be dealt with. Nevertheless it is interesting to watch how this cookie eating episode has enraged Albertans, more so than the stories of people dying while waiting for treatment. It's as if the incident was just the triggering event; the event that took the cork out of the bottle and let all of the public's anger about government and bureaucracy come out. It's one thing for Martha or Henry Albertan to try to get their heads around a situation as complicated as fixing Alberta's health care system. But the public knows when its concerns are being blown off and dismissed.
Mr. Duckett has apologized. This I do not think will be enough to calm angry Albertans. Whether it will be the catalyst for our own little tea party, remains to be seen.
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" It's as if the incident was just the triggering event; the event that took the cork out of the bottle and let all of the public's anger about government and bureaucracy come out."
ReplyDeleteYes, I think that's right. I've been waiting for Duckett to get axed for his arrogance, high-handedness and ineffectualness for years. I suspect, however, that the moment in the video when he shoves the cookie into a female reporter's face particularly incensed many other people besides myself. We can all guess he wouldn't have done that to a man.
But isn't it sad that the guy who made him and the whole mess possible, the equally arrogant and high-handed Ron Liepert, continues to thrive in public office, merely quietly handed off to another ministry?