Politics as usual isn't getting the job done

Here's how the province can restore public confidence, Brian Jean writes.

If I were running the province right now, two questions would keep me up at night:

■ Are we getting the data from Public Health and Alberta Health Services that we need to make effective policy decisions?

■ Is the government keeping the trust of Albertans by answering the questions they want answered?

It looks as if the answer to both questions is no.

On the issue of data, AHS is hiding critical numbers from Albertans. Public Health reports daily on some of the statistics they want us to focus on, but AHS stopped updating their quarterly dashboard of 35 key health system performance and monitoring measures one year ago.

These measures cover seven important areas of health performance — items like surgery wait times, acute care bed usage, hospital mortality ratios, cancer wait times, continuing care, juvenile mental health, et cetera. These are the measures that tell us how AHS is doing. How swamped our hospitals are. Are lives being saved? These metrics which are supposed to be disclosed quarterly but they have been hidden since last April. That is deeply concerning.

On the issue of eroding public trust, it is obvious that Albertans are becoming extremely frustrated and angry with the unacceptable moving of the goalposts. For most of 2020, we were told that cases and positivity rates drove policy. Then in January, it was hospitalization numbers. Now, we are told to focus on the percentage of Albertans with immunity. Given that we have never been told how many people have been hospitalized with variants of concern or how many Albertans have immunity because of prior infection, they would be right to think that they haven't been told enough to really know if Alberta's policy direction matches our situation.

Better information leads to increased public confidence and more people following the rules. But an absence of information leads to doubts and increased resistance.

At every stage in this pandemic there were things that could have and should have been done better. There are lessons that need to go into the playbook for next time. Here are three concrete suggestions that could still make a difference.

■The premier needs to call out AHS and demand they release the performance measures they are obligated to report to Albertans. AHS needs to explain why these metrics stopped being reported. AHS also needs to explain what impact pandemic decisions had on the roughly 2,250 NON-COVID excess deaths which Alberta had in 2020.

■ The premier also needs to demand that Public Health do a better job of answering questions Albertans have. Twice-a-week press conferences from Dr. Deena Hinshaw aren't providing the detailed information that Albertans need to feel comfortable about the policy decisions being taken. Most of the questions asked of

Dr. Hinshaw are big-picture questions, but Albertans are most concerned with the specifics and the exceptions that impact their daily lives. They want details.

Since details aren't always prioritized by the media, Dr. Hinshaw should regularly appear in front of a legislative committee to answer questions from MLAS. Dr. Theresa

Tam has done this in Ottawa. I have no doubt that UCP and NDP MLAS are keen to ask the questions that Albertans want asked. Albertans would benefit from deep diving into these topics.

■ Speaking of the NDP, the premier and others have often spoken of this pandemic as being like a war. Jason Kenney should follow the lead of his hero Winston Churchill and swear a member of the Opposition into the cabinet as a “minister without portfolio” sitting on the cabinet COVID committee. Churchill reached across the aisle during the Second World War when he had Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, serve in the war cabinet. A gesture like this would help bring Albertans together and tone down some of the politicized rhetoric that has not been helpful.

These proposals are very different from what has been currently happening. But COVID is serious. Serious enough to kill many Albertans, directly and indirectly, and clearly serious enough to dramatically disrupt all our lives for many years to come.

It should be serious enough to change politics as usual.