Residents had a chance to get to know provincial candidates in Lethbridge-East at a forum hosted by the Lethbridge Public Library on May 8. Rob Miyashiro (NDP) and Nathan Neudorf took questions from a media panel and a small crowd and had a chance to rebuttal the other’s answers.
Many of the questions were centred around healthcare, affordability and housing. The opening question was about competing with other regions in the province to attract doctors to Lethbridge.
“One of the things that we are going to do is ensure that not just in Lethbridge, but in Alberta, a million more Albertans will have access to a family physician and one of the ways we are going to do this is develop family health clinics and centred around family health too in order actually help communities develop and we are not going to develop them ourselves,” Miyashiro said. “Obviously you are going to have to train more people, there is not enough people in Alberta who are getting trained in allied health professions.” He added support for post-secondary institutions is important to train new healthcare workers.
Neudorf said the family health teams concept is not new and is used in Taber. “I actually think the concept for here in Lethbridge to attract and retain doctors is actually much broader, we need to look bigger. While developing services like the renal dialysis and a cath lab and increasing surgery capacity are good — if we don’t take Chinook Regional Hospital from a tier three health service to a tier two, which offers surgical services for cardiac, thoracic and neurological services, until we have that service, we will continue to have to take patients to Calgary or other centres. If we can develop that as a tier two level in Lethbridge, to actually appropriately meet the need of the 350,000 people that use this as a hub — if the Chinook Regional Hospital becomes a hub instead of a spoke, that will help attract doctors because doctors want to provide their patients with the best care,” he said.
The question came up again later in the forum, when one member of the audience said he believed it was not fully answered. He pointed out there are a lot of vacancies for doctors in Lethbridge-East and he wants to know how the candidates will fill them.
“The recruitment strategy that the Alberta NDP has, it will be rolled out during this campaign and I assure you that it is,” Miyashiro said, adding he cannot reveal the platform before the leader of the party does.
Neudorf said the UCP government had put $1 billion into attracting and retaining doctors and getting them to Lethbridge is the challenge. “We have never had more doctors working in Alberta than we do right now, never in the history of Alberta but we are still short. We are short all across Canada — we are short around the world and it’s not about pay. The next generation of doctors don’t want to work 80 hours a week to make $500,000 a year —they are happy working 60 hours a week and making $300,000 as an example. We need to do a lot of different things, including change our healthcare system because our system is not working as it is meant to and it is not allowing people to see the doctors that they need.”
Both candidates were asked whether they would support the return of a permanent supervised consumption site in the city.
“No, one of the first things our government did was when we took power was to remove that because we saw so much social disorder, petty crime, vandalism, littering downtown — it created a lot of problems for our small businesses and lots of people felt very insecure going there. It’s a problem when you have a four-legged stool and you only have one leg to stand on, it’s going to fall over and break and that’s exactly what we saw,” Neudorf said. “We still have an obligation to provide those services as it is part of the continuum of care for people caught in addiction. Sometimes they just need that cycle just a little longer so they can get to treatment they need but our focus has always been about treatment and recovery so they get off that hamster wheel of addiction.”
Members of the audience were not happy with Miyashiro when he would not give them a direct yes or no answer.
“The past two years have been the deadliest on record, far too many Albertans are dying from preventable drug poisoning deaths. These deaths are tragedies for everybody involved, the people obviously, their family, their friends, the first responders that have to discover the bodies. We can and we have to take better steps to prevent further deaths and we need to build a safe and healthy community for everyone while we are doing it. And this is a really complex issue—there is no simple solution to that. The Alberta NDP is taking an all hand on deck approach to this issue. It involves the health system, it involves housing, it involves treatment, it involves recovery, it involves harm reduction, it involves the whole gamut of services around an individual and people that need the support,” Miyashiro said. “If you know anything about addictions, if you know anything about dealing with people that are in need, you can’t force them into services. We also need to listen to the community to find out different way that we can reduce barriers to accessing life-saving drugs like Narcan and Naloxone. At the end of the day what we all need to do is meet the people where they are at.”
Some audience members pushed for a yes or no to the questions, before the moderator stopped them, saying they are not going to do a back and forth between the candidates and the audience.
The library will host a forum for Lethbridge-West candidates on May 9 at 6 p.m. Election day is set for May 29.
You can read about each candidate here:
Lethbridge-East NDP candidate focusing on how policy affects individuals
Lethbridge-West UCP candidate focused on healthcare, economy
Phillips focusing on healthcare, economy, and leadership
Neudorf focusing on affordability, jobs and healthcare
Alberta Liberal candidate for Lethbridge-West hopes to see new voices in government