Fred Horne & Janet Davidson

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If you ever wanted proof there’s more to democracy than just elections, and that democratic protest can really make a difference, all you have to do is think about the screeching bootleg turn executed by Alberta Health Services yesterday.

The G-forces must have been strong enough from the speed at which the government changed course over who will provide services to severely disabled people in Edmonton and how far seniors in need of continuing care can be forced to move from their families that it’s surprising Health Minister Fred Horne didn’t pass out or suffer whiplash!

The government of Premier Alison Redford was shocked last month when large numbers of the province’s “persons with developmental disabilities” began to protest significant cuts to programs designed to make the disabled people more employable, as well as a planned switch in funding for some programs from non-profit organizations with a history of good work to large out-of-province for-profit corporations. (The government insists there are no cuts, only that money was being reassigned.)

Alberta’s political leadership seemed particularly astounded that the heart-rending demonstrations — conducted with real dignity and pitch-perfect messaging by these vulnerable citizens — quickly won both media attention and public sympathy.

At the same time, another recent government policy forced people needing continuing care to take the “first available bed” that came open even if it was 100 kilometres from their spouse or other loved ones.

There were reports of elderly couples forced into separate facilities kilometres apart, and the public reaction bordered on revulsion.

So yesterday — in a press release with the laughably bland headline “Alberta takes action to improve care” — AHS reversed course on funding to three Edmonton non-profits with a history of doing good work for their clients, and dropped the “first available bed” policy like the political hot potato it had become.

The province-wide health care behemoth also promised to look into and maybe do something about the impact of big changes to a palliative care program in Calgary recently downsized beyond the point of viability.

AHS CEO Dr. Chris Eagle even went so far in the release as to admit that the health care agency he theoretically heads had got it wrong — an admission unheard of in the annals of Conservative government in Alberta.

Now, fresh from Horne’s mass firing on June 12 of the entire AHS board and its replacement by a single “administrative officer” in the person of former KPMG executive Janet Davidson, the minister and Eagle tried to pass the change off as something that shows how the new broom is sweeping away bad ideas.

“Shortly after we appointed Administrator Janet Davidson, AHS is already making important progress,” Horne was quoted as saying in the AHS news release.

Well, as readers might imagine, this is a bit of a stretch. Just last week Horne was saying not much has changed at AHS since the board went over the side, and he was probably closer to the truth with that assessment.

Still, it’s difficult to be too hard on the government for yesterday’s limited decisions because they were so clearly the right thing to do — even if it was really the protests by disabled people and clear evidence of public disgust with the divorce-by-nursing-home policy that really got the government to budge.

Naturally, it would have been easer to believe the government and AHS were taking action to improve care if they hadn’t been taking equally vigorous action to muck it up just weeks ago.

The real lessons to be drawn here are, first, that protest and visible demonstrations of public concern about bad public policy can make even determined politicians change course — especially if the protesters are effective enough to have an impact when an election finally rolls around.

Second, as our disabled fellow citizens proved, the protests don’t have to be ugly or offensive to get results.

In fact, we’re far from being out of the woods on these and many other issues in health care. Alberta Health Services management remains a deep well of bad ideas.

But on these two small but important points, we can see some progress — at least for the moment — thanks entirely to the willingness of engaged citizens not to give up in the face of Alberta’s PC juggernaut.

As NDP Health Care Critic David Eggen put it: “It shows you can push back. Sometimes it’s possible to take the high road, organize and achieve something good.”

This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...