Subscribe to our Newsletter

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Bill 31 - Financial Administration Amendment Act, 2008

October 28, 2008 - Committee of the Whole

Ms Blakeman: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to speak to Bill 31, the Financial Administration Amendment Act. Oh, yes, this is the omnibus bill. You know, there’s more to this bill, and I know there’s more to it. I just can’t quite figure it out yet. This was the one that was repealing section 82, and my concerns were that in repealing section 82, two protections were being removed. My question was: are they somehow going to be reinstated somewhere else? I’m beginning to see that there actually might be a necklace of acts that are moving along here that are all pieces of the same chain.

Dr. Taft: Dismantling fiscal responsibility?

Ms Blakeman: Well, no. I think this is around the health care system. This is talking about provincial agencies that are discontinued. And what provincial agency has been discontinued recently in this province? Well, let me see. Hmm. That would be – oh – the regional health authorities. Now we see a piece of legislation today, Bill 42 – 31, 42, maybe we’ll end up with a 53. It’s all part of a sequence of 11s. Serious conspiracy here.

Perhaps the President of the Treasury Board will be kind enough to answer my questions about where these protections have gone. Are they completely eliminated, or will they be reinstated in some other form? The provision that I wanted to note and that I had raised the questions about was the section that says: “The discontinuance of a Provincial agency does not extinguish any liabilities of the Provincial agency or relieve any person of an obligation the person has to the Provincial agency.” That’s now been wiped out.

To my mind what that says is that insistence that even though a provincial agency might be discontinued, its liabilities continue on or anybody’s obligation to it continues on, is not true anymore. The person’s obligation doesn’t have to continue, and the liabilities of the agency don’t have to continue. I’m sure there are some people that have some legal liabilities that are registered with the regional health authorities that would be very upset to hear that their liabilities can just be wiped off the books like that.

The second piece was in the winding up or dissolution of a provincial agency. There are to be arrangements for any undistributed gifts, specific bequests or donations that were made to that provincial agency, and then it goes on to make arrangements for what should happen, that it should be administered by a successor organization or should go to the Crown to be distributed for the same purposes. My point was that we’d had a lot of bequests that weren’t made specifically to the regional health authorities, and now Bill 42 talks about the Cancer Board, which is also being dismantled.

I was looking for reassurance that somehow these things would come back, and I didn’t get it, Mr. Chairman. This is why I’m starting to see this as a necklace, but that may well become a ligature because this is what I’m starting to see. There are protections that are being removed, and then the next piece along is dismantling those organizations, but now the other protections that used to be there are no longer there. So what are the next couple of pieces in this string that could close around the neck of the public in Alberta?

[interjection] The Deputy Premier is teasing me. He says there’ll be some regulation, which of course would just launch me into my next 20-minute speech about how the government is putting far too many things under regulation, and of course we can’t see it, and it allows them to change it all behind closed doors. I mean, I’m making light of it now, Mr. Chairman, but it’s not something that should be made light of.

We are looking at fairly substantial changes to our health care system, and this is being done in a way that’s not open and accountable. It’s not something the people can get out and discuss in Tim Hortons and go: “Okay. I understand why this is happening, and now here is my opinion on whether I think it’s the right thing or the wrong thing to do.” That discussion is not taking place in Alberta. We went through an entire election campaign where the government produced absolutely no information on what its policy on health was going to be, yet they now stand up and say: we have a mandate from the public to do whatever we want on health care. That’s absolutely not true. That was never raised during that election campaign, to say: “We plan on doing x, y, or z to the health care system. Let’s put that out there during this election campaign, and you can decide whether you want to elect us based on what we plan to do to the health care system.” That never came up.

Now what we’re seeing are these very small, incremental pieces coming along. We can’t get an explanation of how they fit into the whole system, but I’m starting to see that pattern, and no one will give me the answers back about it. I think there are serious problems here and not in any one given piece of legislation. Could I genuinely say, “Oh, I think this is the truly evil piece of legislation that is the nail in the coffin of public health care”? No, I can’t say that based on what’s actually written in Bill 31. But am I suspicious that this is part of a longer string of changes that at the end of them will be a significantly different health care delivery system, health care administration system, health care payment system? I think that’s what’s going on here.

Supposedly this is about taking out a sunset clause that states that all provincial agencies – yes, section 82 is basically meant to deal with the sunset clauses for all provincial legislation. In fact, the act goes through and amends seven other bills by arbitrarily saying: this act is continued now. I think that in most cases it’s to 2013. Yes, December 31, 2013. The original change was to ’04 and then to ’09 and now to 2013. But I think there’s something else that’s going on here, and I’ll be very interested to see how this progresses once we’ve had some time to look at Bill 42, which just came out today.

I haven’t had a chance to read it, but I did notice on the first page there that it was about dismantling the Cancer Board and AADAC. I’m saying on the record that I’m willing to support this bill, but I’m also stating pretty clearly that I have deep reservations about what this connects to and how this works with what the government plans to do and what the current minister of health plans to do with our health care system. It’s not tracking well for me.

Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.