Alberta Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky is the top dog in Alberta’s public health care system.
Now, how many dog packs have you heard of that are led by co-top-dogs?
Nope, something’s gotta give.
Wait! Let’s come at this from a slightly different angle.
Back in the day, when Ron Liepert was the bull in the health ministry’s china shop, Mr. Duckett was brought over from Australia to be his No. 1 lieutenant in the massive shakeup of public health care the minister planned for Alberta. It started with the creation of Alberta Health Services, the province-wide “superboard,” and moved on from there to the increasing disquiet of the province’s voters. It’s fair to say that, in those days, Mr. Duckett enjoyed Mr. Liepert’s complete confidence.
Nowadays, ever since that aforementioned public disquiet began to reach levels audible enough to make Premier Ed Stelmach’s ears ring, Mr. Liepert isn’t the health minister any more. Mr. Zwozdesky is now the captain of that ship, and “steady as she goes” is the order of the day.
The official story – and how could it be otherwise? – is that Mr. Duckett enjoys Mr. Zwozdesky’s confidence just as he enjoyed Mr. Liepert’s. But there are lots of hints this just ain’t so.
To continue with this barrage of dubious metaphors, judging from the many cautious statements Mr. Zwozdesky has made about who’s the boss and what’s (not) going to happen next, it seems very much as if he and Mr. Duckett are not singing from the same hymnbook. Certainly, they are not a harmonious duet like Messrs. Duckett and Liepert.
Notwithstanding the Edmonton Journal’s assurance last month that “great minds think alike” – the great minds in question belonging to Mr. Zwozdesky and Mr. Duckett – the suggestions of disharmony are hard to discredit. The busy AHS rumour-mill has it that superboard headquarters staffers were seething about Mr. Zwozdesky’s sensible decision to back away gingerly from the disastrous plan to close beds at Alberta Hospital Edmonton.
So it is not beyond the realm of possibility, shall we say, that Mr. Zwozdesky might wish for someone just a little more simpatico than Mr. Duckett, who has so ably served as a lightning rod for those opposed to the Liepertian approach to health care reform.
But who could that be?
According to the rumour du jour, who better than Sheila Weatherill, former supremo of the Capital Health Region, back in the day when the CHR was a leading health care innovator lauded around the world for its effective programs?
Yeah, that Sheila Weatherill, the “health care genius” Edmonton lost when Mr. Liepert set about wreaking havoc on the health care system. You know, the one who, according to the Journal, “set out to turn the Edmonton health system into the Mayo Clinic of the north, a world centre of excellence in pediatrics, cardiology, neurology, women's health care and a variety of other fields.” (Well, those days are gone!)
Evidence? Not much, but a glimmer.
Last fall, when Doug Horner, now the deputy premier, named the “incredible team” who would lead the province’s five new Alberta Innovates agencies, who should be on the board of AI’s Technology Futures division but Sheila Weatherill. So, obviously, Ms. Weatherill still has her foot in the door and continues to enjoy the confidence of the people who are now calling shots in Mr. Stelmach’s cabinet.
From a political standpoint, Mr. Zwozdesky would do well to make things look as much as possible like they used to, keeping the health system as quiet as possible for as long as possible to fulfill his mandate of making Mr. Stelmach re-electable once again.
Ms. Weatherill would seem perfect for that role but for one thing – the controversial $1.5-million payout plus pension she was handed when she was skidded by Mr. Liepert in the summer of 2008 to grease the wheels for his dream of … well, whatever his dream was.
So, yeah, with every aspect of the Liepert vision looking daily more like a huge political liability, something does gotta give. But this? The jury’s still out on the rumour du jour.
7 comments:
The baroness would definitely be an improvement over the man from OZ. She is a Canadian citizen and grew up in a health care system, ours, while he is not a Canadian citizen and learned about health care top down and is foreign to our culture. She can give her exit bonus to Duckett, so that he can pay for a one-way ticket back to OZ.
I dont want to pay Duckett a cent to send him home. He is on contract. THE NEW BOSS SHOULD CHANGE HIS MANDATE AND MAKE HIM FIX WHAT HE HAS DESTRYED. To pay out severace to him is a waste of my tax paying dollars.
What did Weatherill collect in severance when she left?
Only to be re-hired again a year later?
You can't make this stuff up.
your facts are wrong Mr. Duckett is from New Zealand
Weatherill severance package was 1.5 million.
If she gets hired on again, her demands will be the same or possibly higher.
With what has been happening over the past year what has suffered the most is patient care due to shortages of staff. Where would everyone be if people remained healthy and didn't need hospitalizations for illnesses and surgeries? It seems in all these money mongering schemes, the patient is being failed, however others pockets are being lined.
Mr. Climenhaga
After reading alot in blogs where Americans are dissatisfied with their Prez and his wanting to fashion a healthcare system such as Canada has, their biggest complaint is they think it's communism and Maoism, however for as many who complain about the Canadian system, there's many more border jumping for free healthcare/hospitalizations here. In one year Ontario hospitals saw .5 million Americans. I tried to find facts from other provinces but was unable to. Recently the Premier of NFL stated he had to seek heart surgery in USA as he didn't have that option where he is. Very recently I saw people here from 2 provinces east who had to come here for a certain procedure because their authority said there were too many of these surgeries in Manitoba and they wanted more options for heart surgeries.
Some of these Premiers are aligned with a well known author named Brian Crowley whose main objective was for Atlantic Canada to join with USA. Most of these brainstorms seem to be hatched by neo-conservatives, of which we have enough of here too. IMO there are political players who are creating problems which will be used as examples of why our system is failing. The last thing we need is a system like USA has and they don't want ours either, however there are millions border jumping for free services here and draining our system. IMO of course.
David Climenhaga, you are grosssly misinformed about the state of Capital Health under Sheila Wetherill.
Yes there were advances in specialists procedures in Edmonton, but I believe that was done entirely at the expense of neglecting primary care, that being family docs and in case you never noticed, the emergency departments were plugging up and people dying, but that is ok...Sheila opened up the Mazankowski, which is nearly empty most of the time. She did a great job hob nobbing with CEO's and boards and the rich and famous, but did little to actually deliver good health care. Its kind of like running a restaurant that is good out front, but has dirt, cockroaches and dead bodies out back.
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