Standing Order 30 H1N1 and Edmonton-Centre
Ms Blakeman:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to add some of my comments to this debate flowing from Standing Order 30 requesting an emergency debate on the government’s preparation for H1N1. This is of great interest to me because, as some members of the House may know, I spent the greater part of September going out and making presentations on the work that I’ve done as their member to all of the seniors’ residences and activity centres in my constituency.
Of course, one of the things that I made sure to talk about – I actually did up a special brochure – was preparation for H1N1. I was primarily concentrating on the fact that in Alberta we have not had a major crisis, in memory, where people might be ill in their homes and others couldn’t reach them or couldn’t reach them for a period of time. There could be some additional problems.
The way I was explaining it was, you know, in Quebec they had the ice storm; in Ontario they had SARS. There are places in Canada that are a little better prepared to deal with this on a sort of personal basis. I was urging my seniors and, indeed, my constituents to take reasonable precautions, the whole thing about the handwashing and the use of the sanitizers, that sort of thing, but also to not panic but do plan on how they could prepare their home, make sure they had food supplies and supplies for their pets and that they had some additional things that may be helpful, masks and gloves and water and things like that in their home, in case they were sick for a period of time and there was possibly a lag in others being able to come and assist them.
I was trying to get people to kind of use their common sense, not to panic but to make arrangements so that they could be as comfortable as possible. I actually didn’t talk at all about, you know, whether they’d be first in line or last in line for an inoculation for a vaccine because I didn’t know. So I actually didn’t talk about that part. If I may offer my advice to members of the House as well, please don’t panic, but please do plan, and I think we’ll all be a little farther ahead.
The second thing I did was that I phoned around to some of my contacts in the federal government and anybody else I could find that might have been working on pandemic planning because I wasn’t getting a sense from the government of what was going on. I’ve got to say here, folks: you guys are becoming so hypersensitive about security and any information leaking out that you’re doing yourself a disservice in this area and in a number of other ones.
I couldn’t readily get a good feel for where the government was in its pandemic planning, so I asked around, and the response I got was: well, they’re doing not too badly. I mean, it’s not a flat-out disaster, and I was glad to hear that.
The two exceptions were that there were problems in the system because of the chaos created by the constant restructuring in the health system and that that was having some fallout, and the second area that I was advised to look for was surge capacity. I would argue that that continues to be a critical area where I’m not getting a sense from the government that that is well under control. When I use my common sense and look at, you know, the news reports, when I look at the number of code reds, I look at what people are saying in the media, I look at what people are saying that work in the hospitals, we don’t have a lot of surge capacity, and I don’t know how big our need for that surge capacity may be. I mean, at one point they were talking about 15 per cent of the people that got H1N1 would die when the average is more like 6 per cent. I don’t have a sense of that. But I also don’t have a really clear sense of where this government is on that surge capacity.
I’m noticing that in this debate there is a reluctance from – and maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe government members are feeling a little defensive about what’s been coming at them around this. To be fair, I don’t think that reflecting on what people have said to us should be taken as a personal attack by members of the government, but it is reflective of how the public is feeling or at least how certain people in the public are feeling.
So when this debate started, I went out and phoned my office and said: please bring over a couple of the e-mails that we’ve received that we can verify are from constituents of Edmonton-Centre. I still get ones from across Alberta, and I’m sure you’d like to deal with your own people, and I’m happy to send those back to you. But these are from Edmonton-Centre, and I will table these at the appropriate time tomorrow.
One woman, Ann Campbell, notes, “Why [were] the at-risk people not handled on a priority basis?” Well, my friends, that’s a question that’s been asked by an awful lot of people. The government made a choice to open it up and say: please be considerate; at risk people should go to the front of the line, but we’re not going to police it. It was a choice they made. People are interested in why that choice was made. Indeed, Ann is asking that question.
She also asks: Why is vaccine not being made available through the primary care networks where many of those with chronic disease are registered and attend? And, I would add, attend regularly. Why are the clinics that have been established under staffed? How many dollars have been spent on pandemic planning? All of those, I think, are pretty reasonable questions and should be aired and asked, especially in a forum like this.
I also have a question from Victoria Stevens. She says that there’s a sheer terror that the media and our government has been feeding them. Yesterday, the clinics were shut down due to a shortage of the vaccine, this after the government assured Albertans that there would be enough for everyone. So there is confusion out there, and it would be helpful if the government could be more open in sharing some of that information for people because I think they’re genuinely seeking it.
She also asks: Why did the government change their minds? Why did the government decide that allowing the masses to take over is better than making sure our most vulnerable are taken care of? And why is the government pushing this vaccine so forcefully on all Canadians? I’m assuming she’s asking why there’s been such a campaign to get the uptake on H1N1, but then clearly she prefers that people should be in a priority lineup, and she names them: “pregnant women, children under . . . five, aboriginal peoples, and people with underlying severe health problems.”
The other thing that I will say just by way of a hopeful statement is that one of the schools in my constituency was one of the ones that had an outbreak in the first round of H1N1, an absolutely devastating thing to happen to a school, as you can imagine. They had to close the school. They had to admit that they had a child in the school who had tested positive. They had to clean the school.
If you can imagine if they said to us here today: “Sorry, but if there’s H1N1 in this building, everybody get out your rubber gloves. Here are the bleach wipes. Go to it. Scrub down the walls, every door, every telephone, every armrest on every chair.” That’s what that staff had to go through at that school. They did it with great good humour.
Here they are six months later, and they have had no further outbreaks in that school. They went to an extraordinary length to be able to deal with it, and they really pulled together to do it. That school is Grandin school, and I am so proud of that school. It’s a small school, but boy do they have spirit. They’re led by a fabulous principal, Reny, and he and his staff really did a marvellous job with that.
So there is life after H1N1 as they well show to us, and by pulling together, they got through all of that. The last thing I want to mention and to recognize is, in fact, the work that has been done by many of the front-line workers. Again, as part of coming into session, I had gone out and met with a number of the not-for-profit groups that work in Edmonton-Centre. As you know, we have a lot of them because there’s a lot of service provision through that sector delivering either contracted work for the government or charitable work.
You know, all the shelters are in downtown Edmonton in my riding, a lot of the missions, the church groups that offer support, the soup kitchens, and groups like that but also organizations like the Boyle Street Co-op. They were certainly watching this and waiting and planning. They were worried, and they were looking for information at the same time, but of course they’re going to do a good job. They’re looking after people who are extremely vulnerable, and the staff there know it.
Again, they were trying to get out ahead of this and get as much information as they could ahead of this so they could prepare as much as possible for the protection of their own staff but also the protection of the clients and people that come to them.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
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