Today has been a day followers of Alberta politics have been waiting for since...Thursday.
In the Alberta Legislature last Monday, Dr. Raj Sherman announced on the floor of the assembly that Capital Health was paying millions to hush doctors up from speaking out against wait times.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It has been brought to my attention that due to fierce competition for finite operating time between surgeons about 1,200 Albertans are on a wait list for lung surgery, and 250 died waiting on that list, many with lung cancer. I've also been told by others that this happened under Minister Mar and the hon. Member for Sherwood Park and that Dr. Trevor Theman of the College of Physicians and Surgeons and Capital health and Sheila Weatherill knew about this. Is the Minister of Health and Wellness aware of this, and will he call the Health Quality Council of Alberta and carry out a fatality review?
Given that it has also come to my attention that physicians who raised these issues were either punished or driven out of the province or paid out in millions to buy their silence and the costs buried in the books under the former Capital health region, I'm not surprised that this was never made public. Will the hon. minister commit to investigating and auditing these payouts in addition to the deaths and delays in cancer care?
Given that people dying on cancer wait lists is absolutely inappropriate – and I agree with the minister; he is an honourable, caring, and honest man – will the minister conduct an independent forensic audit of AHS and Capital health records as it has also come to my attention that there were two sets of books while I was in the ministry, one balanced and the other with the details mentioned that may have contributed to the $1.3 billion deficit inherited by Dr. Duckett when he took over?
Today was the day that, at the behest of the Speaker, he was to table his evidence to the Assembly.
And he did. Sherman provided copies of his speeches and powerpoint presentations, emails he had sent to other MLAs, and people with healthcare sob stories they had emailed to him.
And what, you ask, about his damning claim that Capital Health and various Ministers of the Crown cooked the books to hide hush money paid out to doctors?
So, yeah, he can't back that up. He doesn't have proof, or evidence, or anything like he had claimed for the past week. He won't make the statement in the lobby he made in the assembly (where he is afforded infinite legal protection. Seriously! If during a session an arrest warrant came out for Ed Stelmach on suspicion of murder, the police could wait outside or ask the Speaker to be let inside and hope they don't get refused), he won't present the proof of the statement, and indeed now never claims to have had or insinuated to have had.
It's at this point we should probably turn back the clock to November, when it was revealed that Raj's caucus colleagues (as they were at the time) had been asking about his mental health. Now with Raj Sherman about three-quarters of an inch away from standing on a soapbox wearing a tinfoil hat, doesn't this story seem a lot different than the "creepy conspiracy" that was the common interpretation just 5 months ago?
