Health-care inquiry overlooks bigger shortcomings

If a health care queuejumping inquiry is held in the forest, and no is there to care, does it still make a sound?

It may well be that the public inquiry into queue jumping will prove to be so uneventful that Albertans will simply fail to notice it. However, if it is uneventful by design, and therefore a pointless $10-million expenditure, maybe we ought to pay attention.

After all, most Albertans would surely agree that there are challenges facing our health-care system. There may be differences of opinion as to what the most pressing and formidable challenges are, but it hardly seems as though the question of queue jumping should rise above them all.

It might be another story if we had evidence suggesting systemic and widespread manipulation of the health-care system by MLAs or other top government officials — in other words, the sort of evidence that would make this inquiry appear to be something other than a waste of time and money. Of course, we have nothing of the sort.

Despite that lack of evidence, despite a police investigation that turned up nothing, and despite the existence of far more serious questions of wrongdoing and shenanigans within the health-care system, it is the issue of queue jumping — and only the issue of queue jumping — that was deemed worthy of investigation via public inquiry.

That may explain why the government felt it was safe to call this inquiry.

However, as recently as February, Premier Alison Redford was pledging a much more wide-ranging public inquiry that would examine issues of doctor intimidation and political interference as well as queue jumping. As to whether she thought such issues needed to be examined, Redford stated unequivocally that “they have to be.”

That same month brought us further confirmation that there were troubling questions still unanswered as to why and by whom Alberta doctors were intimidated and muzzled. A report from the Health Quality Council confirmed that such bullying was widespread. But rather than the report be- ing a jumping off point to a broader inquiry, it ended up being the last word on the subject.

Even after the narrow terms of reference for this inquiry were announced, the premier still tried to insist the inquiry could “follow the evidence” where it might lead.

We can now see how empty that assurance was. No such evidence has been explored, and when Liberal Leader Dr. Raj Sherman attempted to present such evidence during his testimony, he was shut down for straying outside the terms of reference.

Rather than hearing about the intimidation of doctors, the lawyer for the inquiry was much more interested in whether Sherman might have offered medical advice or examinations at his MLA office to his fellow politicians. To somehow argue that this constitutes queue jumping or that this would even occupy the time and resources of this inquiry, shows how absurd this whole exercise is.

So while Sherman was thoroughly interrogated, others with potentially useful or incriminating evidence have been allowed to skate through with softball questions.

Stephen Duckett, the former CEO of Alberta Health Services whose memo ordering an end to preferential treatment precipitated all of this, had little to say. He wasn’t directly aware of any queue jumping, and there was much he couldn’t recall. It was much the same from other notable witnesses, such as former health minister Ron Liepert and top health officials Lynn Redford and Brian Hlus.

Short of any tough questions, the only hope for any sort of explosive revelations seems to lie in the vain hope that witnesses would or will take the stand and directly incriminate themselves. Don’t hold your breath for that.

In the end, we’re still left with all sorts of unanswered questions about more pressing matters such as doctor intimidation, lengthy wait times and questionable expense claims.

It struck me that the government at this point might actually hope for a damaging bit of evidence, if only to justify this whole charade. However, such testimony might actually make people sit up and take notice of this inquiry with all its limitations and shortcomings.

That may be the last thing the government wants.