There was a time in Alberta when sending a stroke patient in a taxicab to a cheap motel room in Leduc rented by a sketchy sounding organization and calling the destination a continuing care facility would have sparked a province-wide scandal.
If it happened more than once, it might even have gotten big enough to topple a government!
And it wasn’t that long ago – say, about 10 years.
As a matter of fact, it was 10 years ago next Saturday that premier Alison Redford was finally driven out of office by a frightened Progressive Conservative caucus – MLAs terrified by what they were hearing from voters.
Redford submitted her resignation a decade ago Tuesday.
Sure, looking back now at the spring of 2014, many of Redford’s political sins seem picayune, even quaint.
Mostly, they were spurred by a kind of clueless entitlement. Like that $45,000 trip to South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s funeral, booking and then cancelling seats on the government plane so the premier’s party could ride in privacy, hiring a law firm where her ex-husband worked for a huge contract, and building a secret apartment for the premier atop a government building in Edmonton.
Many of them would have been defensible, if only the business had been conducted in public.
Not every Alberta premier comes from Edmonton, after all. So even the notorious Sky Palace might have been a good investment – except maybe for the butler pantry – had it only been announced with a press release.
But since then we’ve had four years of Donald Trump as president of the country next door to serve as a bad example to Canadian conservatives and just generally bring the tone down everywhere.
As a result, Jason Kenney, Danielle Smith, and the United Conservative Party (UCP) could do or say pretty well anything they liked.
Attacking the institutions of government, tearing down the health care system, giving billion-and-a-half-dollar tips to corporations for pipelines that never get built, setting up government-owned private companies to attack the government’s enemies, badmouthing public health officials, denying COVID-19 is thing, and jetting off to Dubai for a conference they weren’t invited to attend? No problem.
We’ve been desensitized.
As long as they don’t say how much the trip to Dubai cost (what do you want to bet it was more than $45,000) and keep saying bad things about vaccines, it’s all cool!
Stuff some poor guy in a taxicab to Leduc, thinking he’s going to a continuing care facility, and dump him at $47-a-night motel? Pfffft!
Health Minister Adriana LaGrange insists no rules were broken, and if any were, they were broken by Alberta Health Services (AHS). She says “proper procedures” were followed and blamed the patient for ending up at the motel.
Nothing to see here, folks. Please move along.
Seniors, Community and Social Services Minister Jason Nixon says his department never gave any money to Contentment Social Services, the company that was supposedly renting the motel room and sending people around now and then to drop off fast-food lunches.
It sure sounds like the government plans to try to ensure AHS ends up wearing it if this turns into “Motelgate.”
Social media posts indicate Contentment Social Services, which has a generically uninformative website and won’t return phone calls from reporters, was renting at least 10 rooms at the motel. Were they all occupied by folks receiving “continuing care” as well?
The company, which seems to have gotten its start in property management, does business out of a hot-desk office and mail drop in downtown Edmonton. The lights are on but no one’s home.
Then there’s also an entity called the Contentment Social Services Foundation – whose only listed officer has an ordinary sounding name belonging to someone who seems to have left no digital footprints at all on the Internet.
Meanwhile, the UCP has been beavering away removing even the inadequate protections that exist for people in continuing care.
United Nurses of Alberta reminded Albertans Tuesday that the Continuing Care Act passed in May 2022 eliminated language from previous legislation that identified a minimum number of hours of nursing care that had to be provided to patients in continuing care.
The previous legislation required continuing care operators to provide 1.9 hours of nursing and personal care per day, of which 22 per cent had to be provided by a Registered Nurse or Registered Psychiatric Nurse. In 2023, the Auditor General of Alberta said that was too low.
So the new act, which has not yet been proclaimed, and new regulations that are supposed to take effect on April Fool’s Day, require zero, nada, none at all. Hours of care are not even mentioned.
“This is clear, new evidence that the UCP plans to reduce the quality of care received by seniors and the accountability for that care,” said NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley.
Actually, the UCP will leave that to continuing care operators and say it has nothing to do with them. Indeed, they’re already doing just that.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
