It’s not exactly news that Alberta needs a staffing strategy for continuing care homes to prevent worker burnout and the kind of deaths seen the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That thought led the news just the same in Alberta after the province’s auditor general published a report, COVID-19 in Continuing Care Facilities, stating the obvious.
Doug Wylie’s mostly mild mannered observations got the expected response from the government – Health Minister Jason Copping pledged to do the right thing and accept all the report’s mostly anodyne recommendations and those in another recent report on seniors’ in long-term care.
“Insufficient preparedness, severe care staffing shortages, and outdated infrastructure were among the key findings in a newly released Report of the Auditor General – COVID-19 in Continuing Care Facilities,” said the lead sentence of Wylie’s news release.
Now, this should be a damning indictment. Sure we had a plan … it just wasn’t much of a plan. And, yes, we were short of staff, but judging from the situation throughout the health care system and the country, nobody in power actually has any ideas about how to fix things, especially if that means paying health care workers what they’re worth. Plus the private sector’s infrastructure is a shambles, a predictable consequence of letting the profit motive influence health policy decisions.
It wasn’t as if the Alberta Government wasn’t warned of the problems inherent in all of those things.
But, gee whiz, Wylie said, “We cannot overstate the dedication, focus, and care shown by people across the system in responding to COVID-19.” This is an indisputable fact, but it does very little to fix the problems in continuing care.
“It is critical that this same unwavering effort now be directed to learn from these experiences and make the necessary improvements to better care for our vulnerable seniors,” his statement continued, also true, but also unlikely to result in meaningful change.
Copping’s response was upbeat and optimistic. “Alberta’s government is already working to address the concerns listed in the report, like enhancing infection control measures,” he said in a news release that praised the AG’s work.
“Budget 2023, if passed, would also provide for additional action on the recommendations from the auditor general’s report,” he said, pretending that there’s always a possibility that the UCP majority in the Legislature might not pass next Tuesday’s budget and bring down the government instead just as an election is looming. Needless to say, this is not likely.
“The government has accepted all of the auditor general’s recommendations identified in both reports, and we are committed to undertaking this important work for the benefit of all Albertans,” Copping concluded reassuringly.
Alas, as Opposition Health Critic David Shepherd observed the problems of the system stem from the flaws of the private, for-profit delivery model preferred by the UCP government.
Shepherd told the CBC’s reporter that, if elected on May 29, the NDP would open only publicly run continuing care centres.
Interestingly, that point was not made in Shepherd’s news release, which did note though that “many of the Auditor General’s recommendations are ones that were put forward in 2021 from the government’s own committee that looked into long-term care.
“It is cynical of the government to say they will accept the recommendation for paid sick leave now that the height of the crisis is over,” he said. “Paid sick leave was something we began advocating for in 2020 and they rejected it when it was most needed.
Well, fair enough. But half a loaf is better than none – if a UCP government could be trusted to keep such a promise, that is.
Shepherd made another important point that bears keeping in mind
“Under Jason Kenney, we had one of the worst COVID-19 responses in the country. Now, we have a premier who spent much of the past few years, in the midst of this pandemic, downplaying the gravity of the situation. Danielle Smith is still trying to claim it was all some kind of hoax.
“Imagine if Danielle Smith had been in charge. I fear it would have been one of the worst responses in the world,” he said. “It’s frightening to contemplate what would have happened if Alberta had followed Danielle Smith’s advice to copy the disastrous responses in South Dakota or Florida and simply let the virus rip through seniors homes, schools, and workplaces.”
There is that, isn’t there?
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Nick Seebruch, editor
