Dozens of people concerned about the direction of Alberta's health care and senior's care systems boarded the People's Bus enroute from Edmonton to Calgary on Wednesday to bring those concerns to Minister of Health Tyler Shandro in the constituency of Calgary-Acadia. (rdnewsNOW/Sheldon Spackman)

By rdnewsNOW staff

Rallying Cry

People’s Bus takes health care and senior’s care concerns to minister’s riding

Feb 12, 2020 | 1:11 PM

A bus carrying dozens of Albertans concerned about the government’s actions regarding health care and senior’s care made a stop near Red Deer on Wednesday.

The People’s Bus, chartered by Friends of Medicare and Public Interest Alberta, was travelling from Edmonton to Calgary and made a stop at a business along Gasoline Alley with the end goal of canvassing the constituency of the Minister of Health, Tyler Shandro.

The groups say they are concerned about deep cuts and privatization the provincial government is imposing on Alberta’s health care and seniors’ care systems.

Joel French, executive director of Public Interest Alberta, says the province’s health care system is under attack.

“Getting rid of coverage – pharmaceutical coverage for a lot of folks who used to have it, cutting front line health care staff, really taking our health care system in the wrong direction and our senior’s care system in the wrong direction,” says French. “We think his (Tyler Shandro) constituents need to really be engaged in those discussions and I’m sure some of them are already, but we want to have some more conversations about that.”

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French says 46,000 people have now been cut out of the province’s drug plan, with talk of possibly more being affected through income testing and eliminating universal coverage.

“They’re also laying off about 5,000 health care staff, so that’s going to decrease the quality of care, it will stretch the staff that are left even thinner,” warns French. “They (health care workers), despite their best efforts, can’t do the quality work that they want to because there simply aren’t enough of them. That problem is only going to get worse with these cuts.”

French feels the government’s corporate tax cut is making the issues worse.

“We need to have a conversation in this province about our tax system and how when we compare it to every other tax system in the country, that’s really where there is a gap, is we really don’t raise enough revenue for the services that we have,” adds French. “Revenue is where the solution is and cutting these services that families rely on is the opposite direction we should be going.”

Public Interest Alberta and Friends of Medicare claim the recent Alberta Health Services (AHS) review is a grisly reminder of the government’s focus on directions of privatization and off-loading costs onto patients, seniors, and their families.

Sandra Azocar (left), executive director – Friends of Medicare and Joel French (right), executive director – Public Interest Alberta.

Sandra Azocar, executive director at Friends of Medicare, says the government’s recent decisions around health care are an erosion of the public system.

“Definitely the issue around the privatization and commercialization of some of the important areas of our health care, such as surgeries,” she points out. “That initiative that they’re going to be implementing will mean that it’s opening up our health care to profit making and potentially the creation of a parallel system where even though currently is being paid out of our tax dollars as opposed to reinvesting that money, we’re going to be investing it and creating a private system.”

Azocar says it’s not about investing more money, but addressing issues such as inflation and population growth.

“There’s definitely more of a need for us to have more accountability and transparency as to where our health care dollars are,” suggests Azocar. “By contracting out, by out sourcing an integral part of our health care system, that accountability and that transparency is not there.

“This government is asking us to take a lot of this contracting out of our health care based on faith, but they have failed to provide any kind of cost analysis and that’s a huge issue, it should be a huge issue for all Albertans,” she added.