Jim Prentice's campaign bus rolled into Lac La Biche on April 19, when the Progressive Conservative premier stopped at the Bold Center to meet with supporters and constituents — and to take a quick lap around the skating rink.
Jim Prentice’ s campaign bus rolled into Lac La Biche on April 19, when the Progressive Conservative premier stopped at the Bold Center to meet with supporters and constituents - and to take a quick lap around the skating rink.
There were no speeches, but Prentice did take time to hear local concerns from some residents on hand.
In a brief interview with the POST, the premier spoke about highway maintenance, health governance and local tourism.
One top area of concern - as voiced by the county council, the fledgling local health foundation and many residents - is local dissatisfaction with dialysis services being provided in a mobile “dialysis bus” outside William J. Cadzow Healthcare Centre. After the province’ s recent Rural Health Services Report recommended a move from a province-wide health authority back to smaller district health boards, locals have speculated about whether the proposed new system could work to move dialysis services inside the hospital.
The coming district boards - there will be eight to 10 across the province - will have power over services, repairs and recruitment. Decisions about “major capital projects” and “introduction of new technologies” will still be made in Edmonton.
When asked whether moving dialysis in Lac La Biche would be considered a major capital project, or a service-related decision, Prentice said that determination would have to be made by Alberta Health Services.
“It should probably be an AHS decision, made at the operational level,” Prentice said, “because nobody among the elected representatives would have the expertise to make decisions on whether dialysis would fit in a capital investment, or operational.”
Another top-of-mind issue for local representatives is the maintenance of area highways: Lac La Biche County Council recently sent a letter to Prentice expressing dissatisfaction with the local highway maintenance contractor, Carillion Canada, and what they saw as a lack of resources to make highways safe in the face of winter snow and ice. A letter in reply from Prentice rejected the council’ s proposal for another salt and sand shed along Highway 881, as there are “no communities north on Highway 881 and operators would need to drive to the new shed before beginning work.”
When asked about the letter, Prentice said his government was committed to safe highways, and would be investing more money into highway maintenance.
“We are investing more money in highway maintenance than ever,” Prentice said. “We’ ve been under-investing in maintenance, so we’ ve tripled the maintenance of infrastructure assets generally, but especially highway assets....You’ ll see significant improvements in the roads because we’ re going to triple the rate at which we do resurfacing, for example.”
On the topic of tourism, Prentice said he was aware of the local push to expand camping facilities in the Lac La Biche region.
“We want to see more emphasis on tourism,” Prentice said. “We need to diversify around our core strengths - that’ s energy industry, agricultural, our knowledge base, industries around the universities and colleges, and tourism is a big part of that.”
After a quick meet-and-greet in the Bold Center lobby, Prentice stopped in for a public skating session to skate with some local children. Within an hour of arrival, he was back on the campaign bus and bound for Fort McMurray, his staff said.
Lac La Biche County Mayor Omer Moghrabi wasn’ t available to greet the Premier, as he was on a federal lobbying trip to Ottawa. Deputy Mayor John Nowak filled in for him, and asked Prentice if he would also stop by Cadzow and the dialysis bus - a request that wasn’ t fulfilled due to the premier’ s time constraints.
“I would’ ve liked him to stop [at Cadzow], for sure,” said Nowak. “I’ d like to think that health care is much more important than recreation, but that’ s just me. I understand what they’ re doing here today, it’ s not just about lobbying, right? They’ re campaigning. But as the deputy mayor...we try to take every opportunity we can to bend the ear of our provincial elected officials and try to push what’ s best for the community.”
Darrell Younghans, Progressive Conservative candidate for Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills, was at Prentice’ s quick visit and said he was glad to see his party’ s leader stop in Lac La Biche.
Through his campaign so far, Younghans has left his stance on many issues open to constituent input - but on health governance, he’ s been a consistent proponent of local autonomy. When asked what he thought of AHS making the call on whether or not a local board could decide on dialysis services, Younghans said it had some drawbacks, in his opinion.
“Then we really haven’ t solved much, I don’ t think,” he said. “I’ ve said it many times - we’ ve got to make sure that what we’ re proposing does work, and I think it’ s only going to work if you give some local power, as well as responsibilities and accountability.”
