Fair warning, dear reader, I didn’t want to yap for the third week in a row about health care, but Ernie made me do it. When will you ever learn, Ernie?
PEI’s bumbling, oratorically challenged Minister of Health Ernie Hudson has never met a question he wants to answer directly. He seems to fancy himself fast on his feet. It’s closer to a senior shuffle.
Whether in Question Period or with media, the minister tries to evade direct responses by pivoting to something else. It’s a skill some politicians have. Ernie Hudson is not one of them.
The King government has been stone silent since Derek Key quit as chairman of the Health PEI board of directors. He tendered his resignation December 6 and finished December 31. Not a word from government was said.
Key’s departure didn’t become public until mentioned for the first time in this space two weeks ago. The former chairman let government have it in his see-ya-later letter. He laid out a litany of issues that are negatively impacting health care in this province including Health PEI not being able to hire who it wants, when it wants; political interference in the delivery of health care; and a lack of accountability across the board.
Derek Key is not some small town Tory (he is a Conservative) looking for a patronage plum. He doesn’t need it. He’s a successful lawyer who was also the first Islander to chair the Bank of Canada Board of Governors. He didn’t need the Health PEI gig, but Dennis King needed his credibility to make it seem government was actually interested in solving problems.
Government cooed nice things and played upon Key’s bias to do the heavy lifting of community building. He assumed leadership of the board believing government’s desire to implement change was sincere.
He was wrong.
Ernie Hudson knows that. But instead of acknowledging the factual accuracy of Key’s assertion, Hudson decided to play cute with the facts. The minister said ‘we have to take a delve into them, to have those discussions, to review.’
Tense is important. The minister didn’t say we are. He didn’t say we’ve begun. He didn’t say ‘I hauled my deputy and leadership team in and demanded action’.
Nope. None of the above.
What he said, without saying it, is the Department of Health and Wellness has known of Derek Key’s resignation, and the reasons for it, for seven weeks and did absolutely nothing, despite the former chairman citing ‘serious policy failures’ that have made delivery of health care inefficient in this province.
The one who should be out the door is Ernie Hudson. Incompetent doesn’t begin to describe the minster’s consistently evasive leadership, parroting whatever the premier’s office and the Department of Health and Wellness want him to say.
Rather than deal directly with Key’s resignation, the minister tried to convince us solutions are coming in the form of a ‘module’ that will guesstimate how many doctors, nurses and other professionals we will need in the short, mid and long term. It’s the type of planning you would expect would already be done, considering chronic staffing issues that have exponentially increased over the past five years.
Hudson’s module has little, if any, connection to issues Derek Key raises. The module won’t remove politics from health care. It won’t remove the stubbornly bureaucratic hiring process. It won’t deliver autonomy to Health PEI. These are all issues Hudson and the premier have known existed for years.
Hudson chirps that health care delivery is more than hiring doctors. That’s true. It’s also true the department has done little to effectively hire and retain health care professionals across the board. His module won’t change a thing.
When you see this type of political BS it makes me - a guy who defends the need for strong, effective rural health care - say maybe we need to throw it up in the air and start from scratch.
The King government has had four years to change a broken system. Instead it enables dysfunction, inefficiency and political manipulation.
Premier King is the problem. Ernie Hudson is the problem. The Department of Health and Wellness is the problem. If Dennis King cares about PEI, remove Hudson and make the changes necessary to reset the system.
Derek Key is right. Health care is no place for politicians motivated by four-year election cycles.
Paul MacNeill is Publisher of Island Press Limited. He can be contacted at paul@peicanada.com
Publisher
Winner of more than 50 regional, national, international awards for commentary and investigative journalism. Founder of The Georgetown Conference on building sustainable rural communities. Featured in A Good Day’s Work. Talking head for CBC Radio and TV.
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(1) comment
Sounds like old Ernie is taking lessons from our dear leader Trudeau. Never yet met a question that he could avoid answering.
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