Protesting cuts to programs

Times Contributor     

 

Wheatland seniors and disabled citizens are under attack, while saved tax dollars are being put in the pockets of private companies. 

“A great gulf has been opened between man’s material advance and his social and moral progress, a gulf in which he may one day be lost, if it is not closed or narrowed,” said Lester B. Pearson, who implemented universal healthcare in Canada, during his time as Prime Minister.

The Alberta government is enlarging the moral and social gulf, by placing a material value to health care dollars saved through washing its hands of responsibility, and passing our vulnerable citizens off to private businesses. If private providers raise their fees, charge for service, employ inadequate help, cut staff hours and services, the government, like Pontius Pilate, will wash its hands and issue press releases stating government doesn’t dictate terms to private business.

Seniors needing chronic care are being moved from the hospital to Sagewood. This week, home care providers were cut to 10 agencies province wide. By July 31, the private company Bayshore Home Health will be running Wheatland Lodge and home care services in Wheatland County, again displacing workers and unsettling clients. Extensive cuts were also made to programs helping the disabled. 

“This PC government continues to show how out of touch it is with the priorities of patients and everyday Alberta families,” said Heather Forsyth, Health Critic for Wildrose.

Wheatland residents confirm Forsyth’s allegation. Ongoing pickets on the streets of Strathmore over the last month, by health care staff and concerned citizens, were wake-up calls about unjust government. A protest advocating a stop to health cuts, support for the disabled, support for seniors and displaced medical staff was held in Kinsman Park on June 8. MLA Jason Hale, Alberta Union of Provincial Employees Vice President Glen Scott, local politicians and senior’s representatives joined over 100 supporters in the rally. 

The Canadian Charter for Human Rights prohibits discrimination on the basis of age and disability. If pickets, letters and rallies don’t work, votes will. Until election, perhaps it is time that taxpayers placed their taxes in a holding account, released when the Alberta Conservative government admits these program cuts are discriminatory and endanger health. Hold the funds, until they restore programs and transparently account for all the retracted or reallocated dollars.

In the 90’s, when the Alberta government tried to implement user fees and extra billing for medical supplies and services, citizen outcry forced the Federal government to step in to stop the erosion of health care. The Federal government withheld Canadian Health Transfer (CHT) dollars. The Alberta Government divesting health care to private providers is another run around tactic, to achieve what they set out to do the in the 90’s. 

Under the CHT program and the Canada Health Act, it is stated that continued access to quality health care without financial or other barriers are critical to maintaining and improving the health and well-being of Canadians. The primary objective is to protect, promote and restore the physical and mental well-being of residents of Canada and to facilitate reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers. Mapleleafweb: The Canada Health Act: Provisions & Administration Another provision in the CHT is that insurance plans must provide for reasonable access to insured services on uniform terms and conditions, un-precluded, unimpeded, either directly or indirectly, by charges (user charges or extra-billing) or other means (age, health status or financial circumstances). Will private providers provide care to those without adequate insurance? Will seniors or disabled be getting the same care as other citizens? The Alberta government is no longer the healthcare provider when they have passed clients into private hands, and so are they technically even entitled to CHT taxpayer dollars?

This step is the first in the ultimate decline of health care provision. Before universal healthcare started, Malcolm Taylor wrote that most Canadians daily faced potential catastrophic physical and financial consequences of unpredictable illness, accident, and disability, and any providers unwilling to deny needed care for those who needed it had growing bad debts. 

Universal healthcare is woven into the fabric of Alberta and Canadian society. We are known throughout the world for our concern for our fellow man. When we cease to care for one another, society will cease to care about us.

Alberta government officials need to look at cutting their own material comforts, reawaken their moral and social values and walk a mile in these people’s shoes. No one gave these seniors a profitable retirement bundle that will supply all their retirement needs, but seniors and all Alberta taxpayers does give that to government officials and more. Albertans expect their elected officials to find a way to provide for and honour the citizens that built this province. Through many years of hard work, blood, sweat and tears, they have earned the right for exceptional, not just adequate and definitely not inadequate, healthcare. We need to make them listen or their hardships will be our own.