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Laurie in Debate

2007-08 Supplementary Supply Estimates

Alberta Hansard – November 2, 2007

2007-08 Supplementary Supply Estimates debate in the 26th Legislature of Alberta, 3rd Session by Ms. Laurie Blakeman, MLA Edmonton-Centre

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I think I’m going to lay out questions in a number of areas and then allow ministers to respond when they get an opportunity. I would think that the government members would be wanting, crowding, pushing each other out of the way to be here and talking to us about the different departments that are up for supplementary supply. [ interjection]

Oh, I’m getting an indication talking about the number of members I have present. Well, if you’re the government, you want to be accountable. I notice that there are 16 departments that have additional money, and I’m afraid I don’t have a corresponding number of ministers here, which is a great disappointment. I would have thought they would be proud to be talking about additional money in their departments, but I guess that’s not the case. I would also note, Mr. Chairman, that members of the Official Opposition received the supplementary supply during the very beginning of Orders of the Day yesterday, so we’ve had 24 hours to have a look at what is being brought forward in supplementary supply, which is a very quick turnaround for us even with additional staff that we secured. Those staff are for the policy field committees, not to do additional work like this. I’m just querying why the government felt that they had to do such a quick turnaround on this. Most interesting choices there.

We are debating $ 1.5 billion in today’s supplementary supply, which is a honking amount of money. That comes out to about $ 1.5 million a minute in the time that we will have this afternoon, which indeed is, again, an awful lot of money to be trying to get answers from ministers as we go through.

Starting with the Department of Health and Wellness, for which I am the shadow minister, I’m finding it very interesting that we now don’t really get an explanation of what’s happening with this money in supplementary supply. We used to get a couple of sentences that described what was happening. Now we’re just referred back to an announcement that was made on a particular day, to which I thought, “Oh, great; I’ll get a lot of detail out of that.” But I go back and I look, and in the supplementary supply on page 44 it says that $ 53.5 million is available for additional capital maintenance and renewal projects, as announced on August 22. Well, when I go to the August 22 announcement, that’s a generic announcement for the entire government, and of course you’ve got to dig through it a bit to get your particular department out of it.

That announcement on the 22nd was actually an announcement of $ 350 million in a number of departments, six different departments. So I’ve been referred to go and look at a press release in which the department I’m trying to inquire about is mixed in the midst of six other departments. I think: “Well, okay. Great. There’ll be a lot of detail about what’s happening there.” No, Mr. Chairman, there isn’t. It just talks about the $ 350 million, and some people say some nice things, but it doesn’t actually tell me what the Department of Health and Wellness is planning on doing with the $ 53 million that they’ve been allocated.

Mr. Hancock: I’d be happy to.

Ms Blakeman: The minister is indicating that he’s happy to tell me right now, and I hope he can give me the level of detail that I’m looking for because a one-sentence referral to a press release that gives me absolutely no information is not cutting the mustard right now.

The second thing I find very interesting is that if you read the small print that’s available on page 45, Mr. Chairman, it indicates, “ Adjusted Gross Amount reflects the transfer of: $ 23,172,000 for emerging capital purposes from Infrastructure and Transportation.” All right. We’ve got 53 and a half million dollars coming in, but that actually isn’t new money; $ 23,172,000 is being transferred out of Infrastructure and Transportation.

So I’m going back to this original media release of the 22nd going, okay, that $ 53 million was also indicated there. Were the transfers from Infrastructure and Transportation included in that $ 53 million? It doesn’t say that in this media release. Were we going to get $ 53 million on August 22, and now part of it is coming from somewhere else? Where did the rest of the $ 53 million go? Well, that’s my question. If you take 53.5 and subtract the 23 and change off it, you still end up with $ 30 million. So where’s that money? Did we not get it, or did it transfer? Why?

We were told that this was new money in the August 22 news release that we were given, but when I look at it, the $ 53 million is not new money. Thirty million of it is new money; $ 23 million of it is a transfer from someone else. So I go: where’s the rest of the money? If it wasn’t there, if it was never there, then why wasn’t that in the August 22 announcement?

You know, this government gives rise to conspiracy theories because when you start to look at stuff like this – I’m not a great conspiracy theorist. I have some experts that are around me, however, and I have to say that it does give grist to their mill because you do start to wonder what is going on here. Now, it may well all be above board, but the amount of detail that is made available to members of the opposition, members of the media, and members of the public for how government is choosing to spend their money is reduced every single year. We get less and less specific information about what’s happening.

So in this budget for Health and Wellness we have an additional amount of money of $ 1,150,000 going to the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission. Oh, look, Mr. Chairman. I’m referred back to a press release from November 5. Okey-dokey, let’s have a look at that one, then. Well, that, actually, is in the middle of a $ 26 million investment to help contracted agencies hire and keep staff, certainly something that we’ve been asking for as very much needed and, I’m sure, that the sector that is contracted agencies really appreciate.

When I’m trying to look at a supplementary supply budget, I’m looking for $ 1.15 million, and it’s buried somewhere in the middle of this $ 26 million media release. So I start skimming through it, looking for details, and there is, indeed, a paragraph: “ The government-funded agencies that are contracted by AADAC [ are highly valued and] . . . this funding will help these highly valued agency professionals respond” and continue to respond. Okay, well, what programs? I get no detail at all about this. It’s just sort of throw it all in a big pond, you know, and you guys should just trust us that it’s all going to be okay there.

You know, Mr. Chairman, when I was elected to this Assembly in 1997, I did trust the government. I believed they were good and pure people, and I’m afraid that in the intervening years I’ve become a cynical old woman because I’ve been proven wrong in that trust over and over and over again.

My specific question around the one million and change to the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission. I specifically would like to know, because it was through the contracting of other agencies that a previous executive director of AADAC was able to finance himself, in quotation marks, to the tune of some $ 600,000 or $ 800,000, and I believe he’s now just been brought back into the province to face fraud charges – here we have an initiative where we’re putting more money into that contracting. It is supposed to be going for improved wages, one assumes, but what has been done to make sure that we don’t end up with the repeat of that situation, where I think it was $ 600,000 that walked out the door into that person’s pocket?

I have a number of questions that are really asking for specifics from the Minister of Health and Wellness. Please explain the discrepancies between the $ 53.5 million, the money transferred in. How much new money is involved here? Was the infrastructure transfer money in that original press release? If it wasn’t, where did the $ 30 million go? Specifics, please. It’s saying that it’s for additional capital maintenance and renewal projects. What we’re getting here is nothing new, I’m assuming, but I’d like that explained. It is ongoing maintenance and larger maintenance projects on existing facilities. Which facilities, please?

Also some details. I know that there’s a new executive director in for AADAC. I’m pretty sure it’s a woman, so I’m pretty sure she would have cleaned this up. I’d like on the record, please, what has been done to make sure that contract money is adequately supervised and there’s a good audit trail in place there, actually, to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

Now, I’d like to go next, if you would allow me, Mr. Chairman – actually, as I said, Minister of Health and Wellness, thank you for your eagerness, but I am going to put on record a couple of different departments, and then I’ll sit down. I’m sure he’ll give it to me in writing, so I can peruse it.

The next ministry I’d like to raise some issues around, please, is Seniors and Community Supports. Okay. What we have here is $ 15 million that “is requested to provide funding for a portion of the $ 25,000,000 required for cost escalation of previously approved Rural Affordable Supportive Living projects.” For those following along at home, this is on page 58 of your supplementary supply estimates book.

Now, I’m assuming that what this is is inflation. You know, I’m sympathetic to the rural areas that are trying to get affordable supportive living projects happening because, given this government’s whipping of the horses of the economy, we are now in hyperoverdrive here and are looking at significant cost overruns on anything that’s being built or probably even maintained. I’d like some descriptions, please, of exactly which projects are being funded under this amount of money.

Now, the second part of this says, “The balance of $ 10,000,000 is available from the budget for the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped program owing to a lower-than-budgeted rate of growth in caseloads.” I’m really interested, Mr. Chairman, because there was a change in the spring around the eligibility criteria around AISH. My colleague had done a couple of written questions looking for information because we felt that people were now being denied from AISH that would have qualified previously.

I’m specifically concerned about the use of activities for daily living as a criteria for determining eligibility for AISH. That criteria, for anybody that’s following along at home, essentially is asking a physician to make statements on things like: a mild deterioration of activities of daily living would be if the patient is generally independent in activities of daily living, only requiring little or temporary assistance, and is fully capable to continue involvement in community, social, and recreational activities as compared to, say, severe, where the patient is markedly restricted in their ability to complete activities of daily living, is frequently housebound, is limited in independent interactions with community, social, and recreational activities, and/ or the condition is diagnosed to be terminal.

I’m looking at this and going: hmm, $ 10 million was not spent in an AISH budget. I believe that there is some evidence to suggest that people not successful in getting onto the AISH benefit program would have been under different criteria earlier.

I’m also increasingly aware of two situations happening, Mr. Chairman. I have a number of people on AISH who are trying to live independently in the community. I have quite a bit of older housing stock, 1950s and some even before that, those sort of three-floor walk-ups, you know, 12 units in a building. I have a lot of those. They were, generally speaking, cheaper rental accommodation, and a number of people living on AISH took advantage of that because they could afford to rent one of those apartments. Let’s face it, they were old apartments. They weren’t well insulated. They didn’t have new windows or anything like that, so utility costs were pretty high. But, you know, they were fairly safe, and they were okay accommodation, not grand by any means. They were able to afford to live there.

Since the government’s – I’m searching for a term that is printable – ill-advised decisions on lack of rent of control in this province, it used to be that an average one-bedroom unit in these older apartment buildings was around $ 500, $ 550. I can’t find one for less than $ 850 right now. Everyone, I hope, is aware that people on AISH are collecting a benefit of $ 1,050. If the cheapest apartment they can find that is still safe, as compared to, you know, something truly horrific in a basement with bugs, is $ 850, we’ve now left these people $ 300 for all of their additional drugs that they have to pay for, for additional medical testing equipment or whatever else is not covered by the program, their food for a month, personal toiletry items, cleaning supplies, and everything else: $ 300. So I’m a little bit ticked when I see that 10 million bucks is being handed over to another deserving project. I will say that, but it’s $ 10 million that I think should have been redirected to people who are collecting AISH benefits to help them pay that increased cost of the rent that they’re facing in independent living situations.

The other thing that has been brought to my attention recently – Mr. Chairman, you know, sometimes I go to these meetings at night, and I think: oh, man, I’m just too tired for this. But a very interesting evening I had last night. I went to the local meeting of the PDD board in my constituency, and there was a presentation there from a local society – and I haven’t actually spoken to them, so I’m not going to mention their name so that I don’t embarrass them – that provides services to people with developmental disabilities and also people with mental health issues in a number of locations.

In some cases they offer services, and in most cases they offer services and housing. Their point is that right now for AISH recipients who live in an accommodation that is a nursing home as defined under the Nursing Homes Act, a hospital or auxiliary hospital as defined under the Hospitals Act, a facility or part of a facility approved by AISH as a designated assisted living unit, or in some very unique care needs a residential facility, the private monthly accommodation rate is $ 1,469, and the standard rate is $ 1,205.

Now, Mr. Chairman, if we have nonprofit agencies that are trying to offer housing for hard-to-house individuals who can only charge the basic AISH rate of $ 315, these groups cannot stay in business. They will have to stop offering housing because they can’t afford to do it. We’ve got AISH people out there on their own who can’t afford the rents. We’ve got 10 million bucks here that has not been distributed back to those people who need it to pay for rent. For shame. I would like to hear the justification from the minister as to why these choices were made.

We’ve been talking about the plight of AISH recipients in this province regarding rents for some time now, and we’re not getting a good answer back. The department that is dispensing the rent supplements is completely inconsistent as to who gets these rent supplements and who doesn’t. My office has been told that AISH recipients can’t get it because they’re already getting a government subsidy, and other constituency offices have been given different information, and even from the same office they’ve been told different information on two different people.

It’s a mess, Mr. Chairman. What we really have is vulnerable people that are trying to live their life with dignity who are being faced with paying up to 80 per cent of their income for accommodation in independent living, and we have housing societies and assistance societies that want to help them that are going to go broke trying to offer housing on the reduced AISH rate. Why can’t that money be given to those housing associations and help associations along the rate of what’s being suggested and what’s being given to nursing homes, auxiliary hospitals, AISH-approved designated assisted living units? They should be able to get that $ 1,205 rate that is given to those other agencies.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.