I know I said we were taking a break during the month of December but last week I received a copy of a letter written by Lloyd and Linda Lovett on behalf of the Whitemud Citizens for Public Healthcare that eloquently expressed the concerns that many of us have with the state of healthcare in this province.
Here it is.
The WCPH letter
“Most of us in Whitemud Citizens for Public Healthcare (WCPH) have invested a considerable part of our adult lives in health care and related vocations in the Province of Alberta. We are conscious of the co-operation, collaboration, and discourse by which health care in this province and in all of Canada has grown, improved, and adapted over many lifetimes. We are proud of the efficiencies and the universality of the public, egalitarian, single payer nature of it. Our goal is to encourage governments in their support of health care in Alberta through adequate funding and through support of recruitment, training, compensation and care of health care practitioners throughout the scope of professions, vocations and trades.
“We are also aware of the adaptive needs of public health care in Alberta as our population grows and ages. We know that events, often rare like the COVID-19 pandemic, test the system and provide us with opportunities to conduct informed, related system-wide evaluations of our infrastructure and practices, as well as those of the Government of Alberta. Without properly appointed and executed evaluations, confidence in the system will decline in every quarter.
“As we have implied, effective and universally available health care in Canada is a value that we uphold. We uphold it in Alberta and we uphold it as a program that exists organically with health care infrastructure in other provinces, all through discourse, collaboration, and co-operation. We are then dismayed whenever fighting and over-the-top partisanship change health care issues into political issues. For example, the most recent adaptation proposals, supposedly to meet present needs, have been manifest more as careless reorganization into packages meant for sale to private health care, even as they risk increased costs and decreased effectiveness for Albertans.
“And, for example, we are dismayed that the recent so-called evaluation of government administration of the health care system during COVID-19 has become a highly partisan report. The report’s writer offers it to the Conservative Party of Canada for use against their political opponents.
“A century ago in 1924 diphtheria became a reportable notifiable disease throughout Canada. That year 9,057 cases were reported, the highest number ever reported in Canada. In January of 1929, in an open cockpit aircraft, legendary bush pilot and World War 1 fighter pilot Wop May, with Vic Horner, flew diphtheria serum/vaccine 800 km from Edmonton to Fort Vermillion, virtually saving that community and surrounding Indigenous communities.
“There are still some cases of that particular disease reported around the world, though very few in Canada. The tremendous success in reduction of cases by immunization, especially in Canada, was achieved through collaboration, co-operation, discourse, and courage, in health care supported by government. It was not achieved by fighting between governments, and not by overheated partisanship.”
[Signed] Linda and Lloyd Lovatt on behalf of The Whitemud Citizens for Public Health, Edmonton”
Why I’m sharing this letter
WCPH was formed in 2009 in response to the efforts of the Stelmach government to “fix” public health. Now 14 years later we’re even worse off than we were before. As the nurse who texted into Danielle Smith’s PR show said, “We don’t need you to burn down the house. We need you to build it up.”
It’s time for Albertans to stand up for our publicly funded and publicly delivered healthcare system. One way to do that is to support groups like WCPH. You can find out more about WCPH here. https://www.facebook.com/groups/247338238324
Susan on the Soapbox 
I’m thinking we’re in need of a public protest with everyone carrying signs with the nurse’s words. This government is completely in control and we need to take the control back.
I recommend following Katy E @MargTokar on Twitter. People are coming together and they are organizing in opposition to the draconian actions of the UCP. We must fight back. Their website is https://citizensresearchforum.com/ David Gray (former Utilities Consumer Advocate) is also actively involved. Worth your time.
.
Marilyn Johnman: thank you for the suggestions. I checked out the citizens research forum website and was pleased to read that it’s a “nonpartisan volunteer society, dedicated to providing unbiased and factual information in a way that is most useful to our fellow voting citizens, of all political perspectives” Given the garbage information we get from the UCP government–the joint statement on COP28 by Smith and Schultz is a good example–this sort of nonpartisan factual information is desperately. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
PS: The Katy E Twitter account is pretty interesting as well.
tulum0303, what I really like about your suggestion is that it makes us visible; to Danielle Smith and the UCP who are in power, to the media, and most importantly to the healthcare professionals who are killing themselves day in and day out to deliver healthcare to Albertans under these dreadful circumstances. Thanks.
I am VERY CONCERNED for our future; our health care workers, doctors and support health vocations in this province. Health Care is a RIGHT, not a privilege!!!!!! It seems DS is determined to obliterate any socialized and universal shared deliveries all for the sake of capitalistic gains for the profiting companies that believe they can provide our health care services better (?). I am disgusted. It’s damaging and not properly investigated by those that are currently working our Health Care System. Shame on you DS. You are only serving a most fraction of our population – those that will gain monetarily….
Well said Kimberlee, why other than make a profit for their corporate friends would they want to destroy the health care system. The ” Right Wing ” have been trying to privatize since I arrived from Ontario in 1995. It seems that only the cons wish to mess with what works.
Brent isn’t it strange that with all the examples out there demonstrating that the privatization of public health simply doesn’t work, the conservative governments continue to do it. As you said, someone somewhere benefits, but it certainly isn’t the people needed healthcare.
Kimberlee, I 100% agree. Every time Smith goes near health services she screws it up. My husband had some blood tests done today. The healthcare professionals at the lab in Calgary said they’d finally received their notices saying they would be transferred back to Alberta Precision Labs
Dynalife took over all lab services in Dec 2022. By Aug 2023 it had collapsed and the government announced lab services would be returned to Alberta Precision Labs, and now in Dec 2023 it looks like that process is almost complete.
The cost of this in terms of money down the drain, the stress for all lab employees and, perhaps most importantly, the toll on Albertan’s health will never be completely understood.
I don’t know how many times we have to go through this kind of exercise before Smith ad the UCP finally realize that simply privatizing a service doesn’t make it better.
Thank you Susan. I agree completely with the writers’ of this letter….and wish to thank them for a valuable history lesson I hadn’t heard of. I believe it was also a Canadian who figured out how to cure diphtheria and Canadians who made the vaccine (dirty word that it is) available to the poor who couldn’t otherwise afford it.
We have many stories of courage and collaboration that went into building our single payer health care system, our public education system……….and at one time in the not so distant past…….our affordable to all Canadian young people of ability, public universities.
We need more connections to groups such as this……..and more celebration of the hard work and sacrifices that made Canada as different as she is from that free market republic to the south of us. Thanks for sharing this.
You’re welcome ingamarie: I was particularly struck by your last paragraph where you said we need more connections to groups like WCPH and “more celebration of the hard work and sacrifices that made Canada as different as she is from that free market republic to the south of us.” Recently I was comparing notes with someone who’d lived in the US for a while. Like us he said you start with the naive assumption that we’re alike and you quickly learn that we’re very different. Canada is a remarkable country. We need to keep it that way.
Susan: Thanks for sharing another great blog. There are times where matters of pressing concern happen from the government of Alberta, and we can’t keep silent. I see different things here, with the UCP, regarding public healthcare in Alberta, and there are big concerns. Danielle Smith enlisted former Alberta PC politicians, such as Ed Stelmach and Lyle Oberg, as well as other former far right politicians, such as Preston Manning, to work with her on the public healthcare file, and providing other services, including the covid report. We don’t know what Ed Stelmach and Lyle Oberg are getting paid for their “work”, but it is likely way too much. There is contradicting matters, and irony. Ed Stelmach established AHS, when he was premier of Alberta. Now he is helping Danielle Smith and the UCP to dismantle it. Danielle Smith was very critical of Ed Stelmach, when she was in politics before. Lyle Oberg was the one responsible for getting Danielle Smith fired as a public school trustee. Now he is on her payroll. Go figure! When he was an Alberta PC cabinet minister, Lyle Oberg had irks of how the party was being run, and mentioned about knowing about the skeletons in the closet, whatever they were. He got a timeout and had to sit as an independent MLA for a time. He then went over to the Wildrose party. In British Columbia, Lyle Oberg tried to have some sort of private for profit hospital set up, but that flopped. Preston Manning, as if he isn’t wealthy enough, from his political pension, from being a lifer in politics, got an astonishingly large salary of $253,000, and a $2 million expense account, from Danielle Smith and the UCP to come up with a covid report that is utter garbage, was likely prepared in advance, and basically absolves the UCP of any responsibility for their very poor handling of it. Many times, Alberta had the highest per capita rate of people with covid in Canada, and in May of 2021, Alberta had the highest per capita rate of people with covid in all of North America. Also, Preston Manning is no medical expert, and he was the one behind the scenes who coaxed Danielle Smith and around 8 of her Wildrose MLAs to cross the floor to join Jim Prentice’s Alberta PC party. As a result, Danielle Smith got defeated in her own riding in 2015, and the Alberta PCs and the Wildrose lost to Rachel Notley and the NDP. The other appaling thing is that Alberta has the highest cost of living in Canada (our inflation rate led Canada for pretty much the last 2 decades), with costs of things going up in Calgary, and in Edmonton, and Danielle Smith is going on a hiring binge, and paying has been politicians, who don’t need the money, including ones that fired her from positions she had, or made her time in politics sink. It’s quite clear that if Ralph Klein couldn’t entirely finish the job of getting private for profit healthcare in Alberta, Danielle Smith and the UCP will. Are there going to be massive layoffs of nurses, like we saw under Ralph Klein, and other cuts to the public healthcare system in Alberta? On top of this, UCP Health Minister, Adriana LaGrange is allowing naturopathy to come into the healthcare system in Alberta. What could possibly go wrong with all of this? Danielle Smith doesn’t care, as she is on another taxpayer funded holiday in Dubai. I’ll share some more music. This is from The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and it was recorded and released in 1965. It is a song that Paul Butterfield wrote, called Shake Your Money Maker. Elvin Bishop was part of this group, as was Michael Bloomfield, who passed away in 1981, at age 38. I have The Paul Butterfield Blues Band in my music collection. I did see Elvin Bishop 3 times live and met him. Elvin Bishop and Michael Bloomfield are brilliant guitar players.
Dwayne, that was such an appropriate song pick. “Shake Your Money Maker”. In this case the money maker is being able to demonstrate undying loyalty to the UCP cause. One day I’m going to have to come up with a list of politicians who denounced or criticized the policies Smith is espousing only to do an about face and stand by her 100%. We can start with Jim Dinning and work our way through half her cabinet. These people have no shame.
Susan: Here is my second song pick. This is from Elvin Bishop, and is his composition, Grab All The Love. It was recorded and released in 1975. Struttin’ My Stuff contains the hit song, Fooled Around And Fell In Love (that’s on the previous blog). Here, Elvin Bishop is on lead vocals, while Mickey Thomas, who later joined Jefferson Starship, is on background vocals.
Dwayne, Thank you. Elvin Bishop and these songs are new to me (I’m trying to remember what I was up to in 1975 that I missed them)
PS I remember Jefferson Starship and Jefferson Airplane. 🙂
Susan: Here is my final song pick. This is from Randy Bachman, who was in the Canadian bands, The Guess Who and BTO. It is Takin’ Care Of Christmas. It was recorded and released in 1995. I saw Randy Bachman 8 times live and met him. This is also in my music collection.
Dwayne, I love, love, love Randy Bachman! Great song. Thank you!
Amen to the WCPH letter. Apparently even the UCP supporter base is beginning to question the efficacy of the current government approach to ‘fixing’ health care. Smith apparently received a number of calls during one of her recent talk shows that were less than happy; her response was to ask the audience to provide the UCP with ‘more time’ to address the issues. What, they didn’t have enough time the last term to figure out how to ‘fix’ things? I guess they were too busy tearing up contracts, demanding wage rollbacks, interfering with the course of justice, threatening medical personnel & other such character building actions – if you are a card carrying member of the villain variety, that is.
No one agrees with the separation of those 4 areas of health care. We all know what is going to happen. A person needs more paper work to move from regular health to mental health and it will be even more confusion. N o one in the world thinks this is a good plan, but she goes ahead anyway and who cares? People can take the medication she suggests and who needs doctors or nurses? People will be dead before you know it especially if you do not have stage 4 cancer you do not need the hospital because you can cure it with smoking as she suggested.
This is an embarrassment and this province can go back 40 years if we do nothing.
The next big move is to continue the moratorium on renewables. Just wait. That is what emperor Parker wants.
This all looks like a real nightmare
Speaking of renewables, here is a small positive note on the subject.
Aquatera Utilities is the municipal corporation jointly owned by the City of Grande Prairie, County of Grande Prairie No. 1, Town of Sexsmith and Town of Wembley, that provides water, wastewater, recycling and solid water management to residents of its four member municipalities. It also holds contracts with a number of other municipalities around Alberta including Jasper and Hinton to provide those same services there.
They have just started up a solar power station to power one of their zone pumping stations. See story below:
https://www.aquatera.ca/multimedia-and-stories/media-news-releases/post/aquatera-harnessing-solar-power-as-a-hedge-against-rising-electricity-costs
So there is still interest in renewable energy even despite the government’s moratorium, even in oil & gas-obsessed communities.
Jerry thank you for this. I am happy that it seems people are starting to realize that there are enormous benefits with renewables. These industries are clearly in great growth and Hopefully they can just take off with or without the province.
Like you I should look more for positive stories like this one, and they are out there, We just opened a new LRT line here in Edmonton and it has a marvelous ride over the river.
Linda, as you said there’s only so much idiocy the people will bear before even the diehards say “enough.”
You don’t decide to “fix” AHS by tearing it apart when the ER wait times are 12 to 14 hours and ICU patients are being shipped out of town. It’s like deciding to redecorate the kitchen when the house is on fire. Idiocy!
Susan, how encouraging, inspiring is this story about pilots Wop May and Vic Horne, and all the others including the Public Health doctors at this time who acted in a concerted and cooperative way for the good of the community. What a concept!
Just the opposite of the political manipulation by our current self-serving UCP government of serious health events and situations- to the detriment of our society.
I couldn’t post the link to WordPress about this incredible story reported by Ingenium so I have cut and pasted it. Too bad, the photos are really amazing!
“In the middle of winter 1929, a serious diphtheria epidemic broke out in the small colony of Little Red River, Alberta (about 800 km north of Edmonton), threatening the health of the entire settlement. A Hudson’s Bay Company official had already died from the disease, and several others were sick.
“Today, people are vaccinated against diphtheria as babies but in 1929 it was a considerable threat, causing sickness and possibly death. By the time of this incident a cure existed for diphtheria, but the bad news was that Little Red River was 80 km away from the nearest doctor, in Fort Vermilion, and his supply of antitoxin was old and insufficient to contain an epidemic. Two men journeyed 480 km—travelling by dogsled over frozen, snowy ground for almost two weeks—to reach the nearest telegraph station at Peace River, where they could send an SOS message to Edmonton. The telegram came in to Edmonton on New Year’s Day: DIPHTHERIA. FEAR EPIDEMIC. SEND ANTITOXIN. There was not much time left to contain the epidemic.
“Ministry of Health officials in Edmonton acted immediately, quickly preparing enough diphtheria antitoxin to treat 200 cases. But getting the medicine to Little Red River was a challenge given winter conditions. The fastest option was to fly. Such a dangerous journey called for a skilled pilot: someone willing to risk his or her own health and safety.
“Health authorities contacted the small Edmonton, Alberta-based flying company, Commercial Airways Ltd., which was run by First World War veteran Wilfrid “Wop” May and his business partner Vic Horner. The two men owned an Avro Avian, an open-cockpit aircraft with a small engine and no landing skis. It wasn’t the ideal airplane for the expedition, but May and Horner agreed to take the 600,000 units of diphtheria antitoxin to Fort Vermilion where it would then be transported by dogsled to the tiny settlement at Little Red River.
“On January 2, 1929 at 12:45 p.m., they took off from Blatchford Field in Edmonton and headed north. The ground temperature was -30 Celsius. The antitoxin was wrapped in woolen blankets with a small charcoal heater to keep it from freezing. After only a short time in the air the two men ran into trouble: the heater had set the blankets around the medicine on fire! They made an emergency landing, threw away the blankets and heater, tucked the antitoxin vials under their armpits and close to their groins to keep the medicine from freezing, and took off once more.
“Darkness and a looming snowstorm then forced them to land at McLennan, where health authorities had wired ahead to have a landing strip prepared. May and Horner spent the night there, leaving the next morning as soon as it was light: 9:40 a.m. They travelled 80 km to Peace River, stopped to refuel the aircraft, and were on their way again. Following the railway tracks, they reached Fort Vermilion late in the afternoon, just as darkness was setting in. The medicine was then sent by dogsled to Little Red River, and all the inhabitants of Fort Vermilion and Little Red River were inoculated against diphtheria. There was only one casualty.
“Engine trouble and illness delayed their flight back to Edmonton, but a crowd of 10,000 gave May and Horner a hero’s welcome on arrival. Frostbitten, cold, and exhausted, both men made a full recovery.”
I started my Nursing career in Fort Vermilion in November 1985, as a new grad freshly arrived from Halifax — brrrr. There’s a plaque commemorating that mercy flight on the exterior wall of the St Theresa General Hospital* up there, beside the main entrance, and a display inside the air terminal secure side at Edmonton International Airport.
Wop May was famously the fighter pilot that the Red Baron — Manfred von Richtofen — was chasing when he, the Red Baron, was shot down during the First World War.
*There’s another St Theresa Hospital in Alberta, in St Paul. I don’t know why she rated two hospitals, when Queen Elizabeth II only rated one, but there you are.
Jerrymacgp: Amongst my relations, there are nurses. Ones who have since retired, and ones who haven’t. When Ralph Klein was premier, they had problems, and worries, because of what he was doing to the public healthcare system in Alberta. One relative had concerns about losing her career as a nurse. She was a single mother, because her husband passed away as the result of an accident, when he was in his late 20s, in the mid 1970s. At that time, she had two very young children to look after, so with hard work and determination, she went to nursing school, and became a nurse. Another relative, had to relocate to America, with her husband, before coming back to Alberta. She was fortunate that Ralph Klein didn’t lay her off. One of her fellow graduates rom nursing school wasn’t so fortunate. Still, another relative who was under a decade from retirement, was also concerned about what Ralph Klein would do to her nursing career. Under the UCP, there are concerns, and rightfully so, about what the UCP are going to do with the public healthcare system in Alberta. I have heard that hospitals are under stress, and this includes children’s hospitals, due to an increase in respiratory ailments. The UCP really don’t care. They have to appeal to their base, and TBA. That’s all that matters to them. It’s a warped ideology.
*from*
This is a great letter and of course I fully back it up.
We have gone through this many times in Alberta and there is no doubt that they have been escalating the war against public health care for as long as I have been here.
Danielle Smith does not care about anything public because public workers are always lazy and they need to be bullied and fired at will so that the leaders feel accomplished. Fascism is not about compassion, and much less about co-operation or discourse. You can easily see it in the way these people threaten health care workers constantly. Dave Parker comments about health care workers are just a great example of the respect they have for then or anyone else for that matter.
Why am I saying this? Well the appeal at the end of the message is what we have have done for years where poor Albertan has to help these organizations non-stop. If I was going to donate to every organization in Canada that is asking for help I would be homeless.
This is no longer a Mom and Pop organization problem. This starts with the Federal level that is not interested in protecting the Canadian Public funded system anymore.
Their silence during all the private health care threats, they showed little interest in it, basically pretending to close their eyes and little more. The liberals are in fact deep in their neo-Liberal philosophy and they cannot wait to see their doctors friends get way richer than they are already.
To me this is an issue that needs organizations like AUPE and others to stage a major protest in front of the Legislature and a strong campaign to scare the heck out of them. Other than that I think it is just naïve. No one matters in Danielle’s Smith’s world and as far as Parker, he thinks he is God but sooner or later the dream will be over because if we fail against these people, Alberta will no longer be a democracy.
I recommend following Katy E @MargTokar on Twitter. People are coming together and they are organizing in opposition to the draconian actions of the UCP. We must fight back. Their website is https://citizensresearchforum.com/ David Gray (former Utilities Consumer Advocate) is also actively involved. Worth your time.
Hi Marilyn
there is probably something missing on this URL – I cannot access it
In terms of supporting our group, the Whitemud Citizens for Public Health, we are just asking other concerned citizens group together in their constituencies to put pressure on their elected officials to build a strong public, universal system of healthcare. We do not take donations.
If people want to support organizations who do accept donations they can give to Alberta’s Friends of Medicare, the Canadian Health Coalition, or the Canadian Doctors for Medicare. Donate to or go to work for the provincial and federal political parties, the MLA’s, MP’s, candidates who agree that a strong public system is the most equitable, enduring, and efficient way to deliver health services.
Public Interest Alberta is also a good organization to publicly support. It was from that organization WCPH was “spawned”. Noel Somerville who was Chair of the Seniors Task Force for PIA in 2008 came up with the brilliant, but simple idea of people organizing themselves in their constituencies in small groups to visit and chat with their MLA’s about their concerns with Seniors Care. Noel called these groups the “MLA Taskforce”. Ed Stelmach was Premier at the time, and Ron Liepert was Health Minister. Ring any bells?
In our constituency of Edmonton-Whitemud four of us met around one person’s kitchen table. We were strangers to each other but we had the same concerns. We took them to our (PC) MLA at the time, Dave Hancock, but although he was affable and at least informed (he had been a Health Minister) we did not feel heard. Further meetings with him didn’t budge the government one iota. Our wives and husbands joined our group, and more friends and neighbours supported our efforts as more issues around health care in general were happening. We held a health care forum at Riverbend United Church- we expected maybe 50 people, but 700 showed up. We had to turn away 200. Dave Hancock turned up and had to answer to a very angry crowd. We raised our concerns about the PC’s plan to do away with the Seniors Drug and Benefits Plan, the plans to lay off hundreds of nurses in Edmonton and Calgary, their plans to close Alberta Hospital and turn those patients out into the “community”, and the PC government’s further plans for privatization of health care including seniors care. Our health system was still reeling from the devastating cuts during Ralph Klein’s tenure.
There were concerns in the PC government that if this could happen in the most solid conservative riding in Alberta, with the most popular and respected MLA, that the “revolt”might spread to other constituencies. Stelmach backed off the proposed policies and Ron Liepert was replaced with Gene Zwozdesky. Susan, who was kind enough to lend us her blog this week, came with us to visit Health Minister Zwozdesky- check her archives for her writing about it!
Anyway, WCPH has had many more adventures over the years, joining protests, meetings with MP’s, various Health Ministers, and people who became Premier: Dave Hancock, Alison Redford, Rachel Notley and even Danielle Smith when she was leader of the Wildrose Party. That was interesting.
Unbelievably, the situation in healthcare is infinitely worse in Alberta than it was 5 or even 10 years ago. The UCP’s plans, if you can call them that, are going to make our health care deteriorate even more. This should not happen in a province that keeps boasting about its wealth. But make no mistake, all the money in the world won’t save it if it is misdirected into private pockets and you have a government that has absolutely no caring or compassion for its citizens.
Our group has reached out to other citizens concerned about health care, advocacy groups, journalists, the AMA and College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta; our members regularly submit letters to Editors. We joined efforts with the “Protect our Healthcare” people before the last election, we canvassed Kaycee Madu’s constituency with door-hangers about Protecting Public Healthcare, we tagged along with Friends of Medicare to Calgary to ask for a meeting with Tyler Shandro when he was Health Minister (didn’t happen!) and we canvassed door-door in his constituency talking to people about their concerns around health care. And there were plenty! Basically the average citizen does not trust the UCP government to deliver on health care.
So, what to do? Get together with like-minded folks and have a coffee, talk about your experiences with health care. You don’t have to be experts. We are just Joe-bloes from down the street! And that, is what gives us power, and what they are afraid of. You can band together- especially if you have a UCP MLA, and ask for a meeting. Give your little group a name. Put up a Facebook page and engage with others on health care issues. Pay attention to what’s happening in the legislature.
If the UCP in Alberta manage to destroy public health care, other provinces will follow suit and we will lose Medicare. We can’t let that happen. Citizens, stand up for yourselves, for your kids. As one young man said after WCPH had their first health forum, “You guys just handed Dave Hancock his ass”.
Good luck!