By Sheldon Spackman and Troy Gillard

Notice of motion

Lacombe city councillor urging formal support for local doctors

Apr 15, 2020 | 5:06 PM

A city councillor in Lacombe is urging his colleagues to show support for local doctors in their ongoing negotiations with the provincial government.

Chris Ross introduced the following notice of motion during Tuesday night’s regular council meeting:

“THAT Council direct Administration to send a letter to Lacombe area doctors (cc’d to Ron Orr, MLA, and the Honourable Tyler Shandro, Minister of Health), identifying the high value our community places on their services, and Council’s support as they continue to negotiate with the provincial government.”

Ross says the motion stems from a public meeting hosted March 9 in Lacombe by local doctors who shared their concerns over changes to the pay structure for doctors in Alberta. Those changes took effect April 1 after the province ended negotiations when a new master agreement with the Alberta Medical Association could not be reached.

“In light of that (meeting) with a lot of the facts brought forward, we – myself, councillors and public who attended – felt that the provincial government was putting forth a lot of measures that were going to harm the relationship with our central Alberta doctors,” Ross explains. “We want to demonstrate our support for our two local clinics in Lacombe, and we think there should be more negotiations in good faith.”

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Ross says the fact that about half the doctors in the Lacombe area come from outside of Canada is noteworthy.

“Throughout rural Alberta, we have a very strong South African doctor presence. If that wasn’t available to Alberta and the rural family practices, I think Alberta would be in great trouble,” he says.

“We wish they (government) would come back into negotiations,” he added, “so we don’t feel that we would lose our current presence of our doctors as we’ve heard from other communities that there has been some loss of family practitioners.

“If we didn’t have the presence of doctors in rural Alberta we would be in a very difficult situation,” Ross concluded. “They came to Alberta for a reason… that’s the last thing we want to do is to not have Alberta be a destination to come practice medicine.”

The notice of motion will be discussed at the next meeting of Lacombe city council scheduled for April 27.