What’s a government like the one run by the United Conservative Party to do with the public still riled up about that motel medicine meltdown, the health care controversy that just won’t quit?
How about launching an investigation in to the misnamed Contentment Social Services, the company that was discovered by the CBC to have placed a discharged stroke patient with high care needs in a $47-a-night motel in Leduc and dropped off fast food for the poor guy?
That may not be quite as good as being able to say the matter’s before the courts, but it’ll make a perfectly acceptable excuse for not saying anything until the investigation’s wrapped up – which could take a while.
And who knows? It might even take long enough for the furor to settle down and everyone to get excited about something else!
An investigation involving a judge might seem like a better bet for keeping a lid on the need to answer questions, except that judges have the bad habit of being impartial and independent. So we won’t be going there, will we?
Still, it’s a measure of just how worried Premier Danielle Smith and her UCP Government must be by the potential fallout from the murky case of Contentment Social Services and at least two hotels in Leduc that instead of launching just one investigation, they’re going to have four!
If the government is thinking, “Look busy, the voters are watching,” four separate investigations should do the trick, eh?
Seniors, Community and Social Services Minister Jason Nixon, accompanied by Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, told an unusual news conference yesterday morning in the Legislature Building that:
- His ministry will investigate why government income support funds taken by Contentment Social Services weren’t used to pay the bills for clients’ hotel rooms
- It will also look separately into whether elderly clients were abused or neglected
- Service Alberta will see if there were any consumer protection or residential tenancy issues
- And the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee will be check something out – news reports were not particularly clear about what, however
The newser was unusual because the government only allowed media to attend in person and published no news release on the topic – so there is no written or video record of what they had to say that can be scrutinized at leisure by interested citizens and bloggers with day jobs.
Suffice it to say, it’s obvious from the coverage that several important questions that need to be answered if what really happened is to be understood are not likely to be asked by any of the investigations.
For example:
- How did a company as obviously sketchy as Contentment Social Services get on the list of care providers given to patients with continuing care needs who were about to be discharged from hospital?
- How does any company get on that list?
- When was the list created, who created it, and when was Contentment Social Services added to it?
- Were the companies on it vetted in any way by AHS or anyone else? If not, why not?
- What are the names of the other providers now on the list?
- Who really owns Contentment Social Services? (This is a question not properly answered by the company’s Alberta corporate registration)
- What role did AHS discharge policies play in creating this situation?
- Did Premier Smith’s past suggestion discharged patients would be more comfortable in hotels influence AHS staff?
- Was there pressure from the UCP Cabinet or the Premier’s Office to get patients without a place to live out of hospital anyway?
The number of people affected by Contentment Social Services’ mismanagement also remains unclear – was it the 39 mentioned by Premier Smith last week, or the 27 said to be in the Park Inn hotel, moved there in some cases from the nearby Travelodge motel?
Does anyone have a picture of LaGrange looking awake or, at least, alert?
Is this what we can expect for the next three years to have to be reliant on “The Silent Sleeper”?
Lagrange looks like a character out of the Adams family.
Yes, so many investigations, so few questions likely answered. Well the UCP are masters of distraction, a skill which comes in handy when one gets into political trouble often.
Of course, it will be harder for those dedicated to getting to the bottom of things to keep track of multiple investigations and will give opportunity for confusion. No doubt people asking pointed questions of one investigation will be told another is looking into that. Add in different investigators, different timelines and perhaps different procedures as well. As a bonus it allows the government to seem more serious about the whole thing. Well that is at least partly true. They are serious about limiting the political damage.
It would be good to know who in the government came up with the motel idea and if it was inspired by Smith’s past comments. It would also be good to know more about those lists AHS supposedly keeps, who is on them and who owns Contentment. So I suspect these are questions they will try to avoid answering. At least until something else happens to take people’s attention away from this. On a related note, did I mention the UCP are masters of political distraction? Somehow I feel its worth repeating.
If this is the future of healthcare in Alberta, under the UCP, we are in for one rough ride. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. If someone were to get a serious medical condition, such as a stroke, is this the kind of care they will get in Alberta? Under premier Ralph Klein, healthcare was bad enough, from his brutal cuts, and people did have their lives put at great risk. This is what we are seeing again, under Danielle Smith and the UCP. Had Albertans listened to people who said that the UCP weren’t good, we wouldn’t be experiencing these problems. Who in the UCP ranks will take responsibility for this? The media was basically muzzled by the UCP, so reporters couldn’t ask the UCP important questions about this serious matter. Given how short the Legislature sessions are, Opposition MLAs can’t grill Danielle Smith and the UCP for answers either. On her Saturday talk show, callers who are concerned about this, will likely be cut off. If lawsuits happen from this, who will be sued? If Albertans were foolish enough to give the UCP another term, after seeing how bad they were the first time, would they actually speak out about this?
I can not understand what went wrong. We changed the label on the pancake syrup bottle and we still have these things happening.
The Alberta Advantage.
Have Albertans ever seen such a dishonest group in our legislature? This hotel idea was Dani’s all along. Pretending it’s a travesty and ‘how could it ever happen’ is an outright lie:
https://tinyurl.com/DaniellesHotelidea
May I suggest one more question?:
Do rules that seem like red tape to businesses providing the service actually serve a function?
I’d like to know what kind of police record checks this company’s employees underwent, if any. Were vulnerable sector record checks completed? Did the personnel who visited the motel to provide “care” have any professional qualifications and training, or were they people hired off the street? Did they work for CSS directly, AHS or were they hired from an agency? What is the name of the agency, if applicable?
Were police called in to check on the welfare of any of the people caught up in motel medicine? At least one person allegedly phoned the RCMP after being unable to contact their family member, likely when some people were moved to the second location. Does what happened constitute a crime — abduction, fraud, etc?
Are rural Albertans also being spirited away to motels outside of the local area, or is this treatment reserved for urbanites?
So many questions. The government of the day almost got away with it. When I told someone about this who lives outside Alberta but has elderly family members here, they didn’t believe me. That’s how incredible it is. Unfortunately, this is all too real, not a conspiracy theory. I hope people whose loved ones need access to continuing care at the moment ask a lot of questions and do due diligence. I’m not convinced that anything has been done to prevent this from happening again. How many more people remain trapped in this system right now by other operators?
“Well damn; now there will have to be some added red tape stuff that we want so desperately to be rid of!” Is that ministry involved too?
Just such incredible absurdity, as you said, involved in decisions taken when, by whom, and why?!!!
This performance by Nixon and company is an amazing display of childish behaviour by adults we’ve seen in a long time. Just like when kids did something wrong, and told each other not to say anything (hide it), but the parents could see what was perfectly obvious. I guess it’s the UCP/tba way.
Thanks for asking the right questions. What is Contentment’s connection to UCP or TBA? What about related political donations by its principals? Is there a record of Contentment’s people speaking out on privatization of healthcare?
Oh Wise Know It All, Please Tell Us What Is Important. LOL!
“The key to fooling someone with sleight of hand is to make the secret moves look just like a natural gesture that would happen normally.”
And so it is with the art of the ‘investigation’ and its ‘conclusions’, because the questions that are asked invariably determine the answers that are given or not given. Where it is further assumed that it (the ‘investigation’ itself) is all simply a part of the larger charade, that is, one of the myriad games that people love playing (i.e., the ‘politician’ game, the ‘policeman’ game, the ‘judge’ game, the game of ‘gangster’, the ‘soldier’ game, the ‘dominance’ game, the ‘submissive’ game, the game of conspicuous consumption ect., ect. or any other role playing game/belief system that the individual wishes to ‘try on’, or adopt depending upon individual acting/role playing ability/inclinations).
That is, “They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.” cf., for example, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts,” in the larger communal dreamscape.
In any case and more pointedly “But what happens when a government that is supposedly operating in a free democracy breaks the law to conceal its dealings with lobbyists?”
https://thenarwhal.ca/oipc-alberta-danielle-smith-foi/
Ah yes the list of agencies, and more specifically Contentment Social Services. Being a retired social worker who used to do contracts for foster care from agencies, I have lots of questions. First the list. Who composed it? Did agencies have any vetting and competence requirements to get on it? Were there any minimum staff requirements? Was costing fixed or negotiable, and if the latter by whom? Were outcomes monitored for compliance with standards – and were there any standard outcomes, e.g. measurables to be achieved?
These would be some of the questions to consider not only regarding this agency, but for others. There could well be other hotch potch hot mess agencies in the list, given it may be an unvetted, unqualified list of contractors.
Now, the peculiar thing that struck me about Contentment Social Services is there web site exhibits a complete lack of focus on which area of social service they propose to offer. Rehabilitation, addiction treatment, employment services, mental health and so on. Pretty much all of the private social work agencies I have dealt with in two provinces in 25 years have specific specialties not multiple specialties. This to me at least seems a signal of something off with the agency. This feels like a result of Alberta’s love affair with cowboy capitalism.
Patients, er customers beware.
Another example of incompetence & shoddy concern for public welfare by the UCP…have they done anything to help people struggling in Alberta, improve the public medical system.
They love to get their supporters all hyped up on Fk Trudeau but what have they done other than waste taxpayers money & pick fights…squat that I can see.
Alberta is one place not to live, if you’re thinking of moving there.
The people of Alberta voted for Dani and gang, so now they get to learn to live with it or die because of it.
If the government isn’t going to provide information, is it possible to take them to court to get the information. There must be records some where and if there aren’t any, one could conclude money from the government went into the air and disappeared. Perhaps its time for some or several some ones to have a real good dig, find the people who worked in these places and see if they will share their experiences. You don’t have to tell them exactly what you’re up to but friendly chats some times are very productive.
Some one could put an ad in the local papers asking: Was a friend or family member placed in a hotel while recovering……see what happens.
Wonder if one specific group was placed in these motels? Is there a case for a complaint to the provincial Human rights Commission. If only rural people are being subjected to this or disabled people
Having watched some of the “fun” we had here in B.C. with Gordon el gordo Campbell and Christy Clark, trust me, it doesn’t get better.