How big a role did the colourful image of popsicles play in the Alberta Government’s decision yesterday to drop the appalling Alberta Health Services policy of not providing frozen treats, juice boxes, water and snacks to kids recovering from cancer treatments?
Never mind the letterhead on the memo or the excuses we’re hearing now, it’s the Alberta Government that owns the penny-wise, pound-foolish policy that under the circumstances can only be described as depraved.
As a cost-saving strategy, the measures outlined in nearly impenetrable bureaucratese in the memorandum from the senior operating officer responsible for nutrition, food, linen and environmental services at AHS were both foolish and heartless.
But the United Conservative Party Government had fired the AHS Board and named former senior civil servant Andre Tremblay Official Administrator to replace it, vowing to transition the agency into “a hospital-based service provider” on January 31. The memo was dated March 17.
The buck, as they say, has to stop somewhere and the calendar shows where.
Needless to say, when contrasted with the image of Alberta’s premier racing south to Florida at public expense to help raise money for a YouTube propaganda boiler room, the optics were unimaginably bad.
Yesterday, Mr. Tremblay, who has recently been rebranded Interim President and CEO of AHS, executed a screeching reversal and announced the changes outlined in the memo to take effect yesterday had been dropped.
This happened after the issue embarrassed Health Minister Adriana LaGrange the day before, when it was raised by a reporter during a news conference on an unrelated health care topic. And if that wasn’t enough to push the government to act, surely the harsh column by a usually understanding newspaper columnist with a big readership helped.
So the point of Mr. Tremblay’s statement yesterday on the AHS website and social media – assuming it wasn’t an April Fool’s prank – appeared to be both to drop the hot potato ASAP and to blame AHS for the problem.
“In September 2024, Alberta Health Services approved changes to the way food is supplied in our emergency departments and other non-inpatient areas,” Mr. Tremblay’s statement began.
“After media reports surfaced, the Minister of Health raised concerns about the implementation of this policy and asked me to look into reports that food and drink may not have been made available to patients,” he continued. (I’ll bet she did!)
“The proposed policy was not meant to deprive patients of food. What was meant to change is how food is stored and delivered to patients in an effort to reduce waste that is occurring in our hospitals. I have reviewed this policy which was brought forward prior to my arrival at AHS and, after feedback from clinicians, have decided that AHS will not move forward with these changes.” (Emphasis added.)
“We are concerned by the misinterpretation of this proposed policy and are looking into reports that food and drink may not have been available to patients.”
But that dog won’t hunt. It is not at all clear the policy was misinterpreted. “Clinics are encouraged to remind patients to bring snacks, meals, and money for food purchases,” the March 17 memo said in part. “Departments must adhere to the established core lists and refrain from requesting additional items from any other source.”
Moreover, at the time it was issued, it was no longer really a proposed policy, although it hadn’t yet been implemented. The “reports,” by the sound of it, were based on real events that had already happened.
Did it occur to anyone that depriving patients, some of them small children, of food – and water – was exactly what such a memo would achieve? Of course that concern was raised by front line staff and, presumably, ignored.
Sarah Hoffman, the Opposition NDP’s health critic and a former Alberta health minister, was right, if a little too alliterative to set the proper tone for a serious news release, when she observed that “the UCP government is more focused on cuts, chaos and corruption than providing care, comfort and compassion to kids with cancer.”
It’s unlikely the policy ever would have been changed if the parents of kids in care hadn’t raised a ruckus on social media. “Don’t take away this small and sweet piece of joy to these unlucky kids enduring hell,” wrote Amanda Moppett-Beatch on Facebook below a photo of her son Easton, 11. “Find something else to pick on. Us Oncology families are dealing with enough…”
But even then the policy might have passed unnoticed had it remained, in the words of the March 17 memo, a matter of a restricted list of “established core items” and “essential nourishment items.”
I’ll bet it was the image of the popsicles, the benefits of which anyone who’s ever taken care of a sick kid understands, that shamed this usually shameless government to walk this back.
The alliteration kind of writes itself to be fair. My concerns are about cuts, coal, and corrupt, craven Conservatives, and, yes, I wish they would take better care of the kids and the caribou and the cutthroat trout. Interesting that the federal Conservative candidate for Edmonton Centre is ‘currently a Senior Director at the Government of Alberta’s Department of Health, where he works tirelessly to improve the province’s healthcare system.’ He’s probably a fine fellow, but I’m sticking with Trisha Estabrooks, thanks very much.
The UCP have the heart of a skeleton. Devoid of any feelings or compassion. There are medical reasons why these things are given to children in cancer wards, but that is also beyond the UCP to be able to comprehend. Meanwhile, this is the utter garbage that the UCP peddles, and people are foolish enough to fall for it.
https://www.reddeeradvocate.com/news/red-deer-south-mla-delivers-leaflet-calling-team-canada-a-fake-team-7918391
Sadly, just about everything Smith and the UCP do could be used as an April Fool’s joke. It was decent of Braid though to take a day off from catching farts for the UCP and take the side of the children. We most likely will not be hearing anything from Bell on this matter.
Braid has the capacity from time to time to be reasonable — unlike the Dinger, who carries so much water for the UCP it sloshes over the page.
Jerry: Mr. Braid was a fine reporter and is a good writer. He is not a nut. He is getting on – he’s past 80, I believe – and I can attest to the fact that we do get more tired as we get older. I can’t believe, though, that he’s not under pressure to write what Postmedia tells him. I think it would be more dignified, and possibly more profitable, it he resigned and started a Substack. I’d subscribe. DJC
Just when you think Marlain-a-Lago and Lagrange can’t possibly set the bar any lower they find another way to demonstrate their incompetence and malevolence towards public health care. Unless it puts money into their cronies’ pockets, they could not care less about public health care. Stormy Danielle has not one shred of basic human decency. And Lagrange tries to project a sense of humanity, but it just comes across as hypocrisy.
Between 2017 and 2020 I was in four different hospitals in the Edmonton area 8 times and had four operations and I won’t forget the popsicles and ginger ale that I consumed with nurses encouragement to take them. I felt like a little kid again, I hadn’t had a popsicle for years.
These Reformers aren’t happy unless they are pissing off some segment of the population every day, now it’s kids. That’s how stupid they are, isn’t it?
Alan Spiller: The UCP have shown that they are worse than Ralph Klein was. When you thought that Ralph Klein was so bad, the UCP beat him. These children can’t vote, but their parents and grandparents sure can. The next time, they should help remove these phony Conservatives and Reformers from power in Alberta, and they should keep the CPC and Pierre Poilievre out of power, because imagine what he will do to healthcare in Canada if he is given the chance. It won’t be good.
Coining a phrase from the man himself, Klein was the Wayne Gretzky of populist corporate puppets. While the UCP are certainly a generational squad of Grifto-kons, the achievements of Ralph “Raging Bull” Klein and his battalion of beak-wetters should never be understated. Jim “don’t mind if I do” Dinning was definitely the Messier to Ralph the Great One.
Murph: Beak-wetters? Bed-witters? DJC
Danielle Smith truly is following in the footsteps of her hero Ralph Klein, at the stage in his life when his alcoholism was spiralling into dementia.
No one thinks this is the first time Alberta government policies have regarded patients undergoing treatment in hospitals as garbage, do they? No, of course not! I recall a hospital that did not provide water to inpatients following surgery. Want water? Walk to the end of the hall and get it yourself. Can’t walk? Staff won’t help, so no water for you. Too bad, so sad. Oops — now you’ve got a migraine from no food and water for the 24 hours leading up to surgery, and 12 hours after? Here, have some narcotics.
The only difference now is that this kind of thing is somehow uglier when applied to children, in contrast with Madam Premier’s extravagant trips to balls in Washington, Florida and beyond. Imelda, please.
Abs when Klein was closing hospitals, 1,500 hospital beds, and cutting 5,000. nursing positions his father Phil said to me “Al what in the hell is the matter with that son of mine? While he gives away billions in oil royalties he’s making us try to survive with an inadequate healthcare system. This could cost some people their lives.” Phil was right that’s exactly what it did and the lawsuits that Albertans were responsible for proved it.
So, help me understand this. The Government of Alberta paid approximately $70 million for unsuitable Children’s Tylenol from Turkey. Then they store the defective meds and pay millions for the storage. Now, they are cutting beverages, snacks and popsicles for children who need cancer treatment (or other treatments) in Alberta hospitals to make up for their losses. They have no idea what they are eliminating from the budget! Or, they don’t care and it’s a wait-n-see kind of strategy.
Carolyn: It beats the hell outta me. I have no information, so can’t really write a blog post about this yet. It is idle speculation at best. Well, let’s call it informed speculation. In situations like the current one at AHS, frightened senior managers who want to keep their jobs will try to carry out the orders of the political leadership no matter how harmful. Panic is passed down the line and lower-level managers will come up with cruel foolishness like the May 17 memo to please their supervisors. Or, they may be ordered to produce such nonsense, which is why I didn’t name the signatory of the memo, who may well have been pressured to do this against her better judgment. On the floor, nurses will often go out and buy needed food for the patients they treat out of their own pockets, just as teachers buy teaching supplies in Alberta schools. This is a proper and decent thing to do, but the lack of resistance only encourages the bosses, all the way up the chain, to be even worse. Such fear is rife within AHS now thanks to the UCP program of revenge, destruction and resistance to public health measures and the ideological dogma of the UCP. DJC
The memo shows a sender’s name. She could be in for a load of nastygrams, perhaps undeserved. If someone thinks of doing communicating in such fashion, I suggest sending such vitriol instead to the former school board ‘passer of notes’ extraordinaire. She won’t read them but her lackies have to and will count the number of such missives which may be duly reported to her. More pressure equates to changes in procedures as we have just witnessed.
I think claiming that Mr. Tremblay has been rebranded is a bit of a stretch. What we see is at most a henna tattoo. On his Linkedin page, Mr. Tremblay still identifies himself as “Deputy Minister, Alberta Health and Interim President and CEO, Alberta Health Services.”
Petty, popsicle petty. The UCP is known to be petty and mean spirited, but even they realized this one was too much.
However, this is what happens when a government scrounges around for savings while spending wildly on trips for the Premier to Florida and elsewhere. By now with all her travelling, she should be able to use frequent flyer points.
Perhaps lost in the shuffle, was the Feds new $200 disability amount, which while not as generous as wanted, is better than nothing. So what does the UCP do? Reduce Alberta support to the people getting this by the same amount. As I said, petty. This is not an accident. It is their general way of operating and thinking.
“They” have an obsession with patients drinking “ginger ale”, proven fact, forms and all for permission.
So what’s next? Hospital toilets without toilet paper and soap? Bring your own?
Next they’ll be charging you for the water you flushed, with…
Remember when Jason Kenny tried to cut $1 million from school lunch programs for hungry children, at the same time that he gave billions in tax cuts to wealthy corporations (most of whom were foreign, who then laid off thousands of workers)? Seems the UCP thinks taking food from the mouths of sick and hungry children is a good thing to do. Sick bunch of puppies, aren’t they?
^^^^^^^^
Uh…I didn’t say this? Autofill bein weird? Not that I disagree.
Like everything else they do, they’ll rationalize it to their base of medieval peasants with the tried a true con excuse “can’t afford it”. Neo-fascist scum.
Just curious, do kids fighting other diseases also get free popsicles? What about seniors in oncology or other wards? I’m all for supporting kids – but other groups are unfairly ignored or marginalized. BTW, yeah, effective picture, but that’s why it was selected, right? Not because it adds information or context. I’m looking for information from the news, not manipulation.
Myrkr: Yes, under the old, and apparently retained, policy. Also adults. DJC
Are you sheeting me? Is this what’s happening to Canadians? I can’t think of a single person I know that would deny anyone the chance for their child to have Popsicles during cancer treatment, a healthy school lunch (also, avoids the whole peanut butter debacle without embarrassing anyone) and really…compared to other government programs that are far more wasteful and especially those farmed out to overpriced contractors…what do they *actually* cost?
Gobsmacked I tell ya. Gobsmacked.
Conservative priorities are seriously flucked. Wanna save money? Stop supporting your private contractors and devoloper besties and handing out corporate welfare hand over fist. Amazon debacle. Need I say more?
What is *wrong* with these people?
Gallows or guillotines?
I can’t decide. Both are effective when dealing with bad behaving officialdom.
Guillotines are too humane.
I prefer prison sentences. Where they can spend a long time locked in with some of the people their poor-hating policies have affected who might have little compunction in telling them the obvious effects of those policies.
Conrad Black was humanized by it…for about a week and a half after release.