It was a late night of debating in the Alberta Legislature as the UCP defeated Bill 201 by division on the second reading..It was a bill introduced by Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley..The NDP says the purpose of the act was to ensure all Albertans have consistent, reliable, and timely access to high-quality, publicly administered, and publicly funded essential health services by requiring that these essential health services be delivered to patients within a fixed and reasonable period of time.."Mr. Speaker, we identified three priorities that Dr. John Cowell is going to be addressing," Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said during question period on Tuesday before the bill was defeated in a divisional vote.."He has made progress on addressing a fast track into our emergency rooms, and we’re beginning to see the results. A few weeks ago we were seeing wait times of 12 and 14 and 17 hours. We’re not seeing that today. In addition, we’re going to see changes happening with EMS. We’re looking forward to announcing some of those in the new year.".Smith said based on the feedback that Alberta's government has gotten from the province's paramedics, the big issue is that Alberta has got 69,000 surgeries on it's surgical backlog.."We’ve got to make sure that we start addressing that so that nobody has an unreasonable wait.".The NDP claims Bill 201 would also be used to establish independent, expert-informed, and transparent standards for the delivery of high-quality essential health services by Albertans’ publicly administered and publicly funded health care system to ensure the government is held accountable for providing that system with the resources necessary to meet those standards.."It would also be used to ensure Albertans’ lives and quality of life are not unnecessarily put at risk due to a lack of transparency in respect of the resourcing required to provide essential health services within a reasonable period of time," the Alberta NDP stated..Bill 201, "The Public Health Care Delivery Standards Act" was designed by the NDP and they claim it will make a real difference in Albertans’ lives by empowering the Health Quality Council of Alberta to set health care delivery standards through consultation with patients, health care workers, and communities. The government would then be required to produce a response if, and when, those standards weren’t met..“The UCP’s focus is clear and it is not on solving the health care crisis that is impacting millions of Albertans,” said Notley..“The first bill Danielle Smith chose to introduce as the new leader of the UCP was the job-killing Sovereignty Act, a bill designed to create chaos, conflicts, and costs for Albertans. That’s where Danielle Smith and the UCP caucus’ priorities are and it is shameful.”.The NDP claimed Bill 201 was based on three principles, that all Albertans must have world-class health care, the care is publicly funded, and publicly delivered..The NDP says the legislation was designed to eliminate the opportunity for the government of the day to mislead or gaslight Albertans and instead establish clear lines of accountability..“Clearly this UCP government cannot be trusted with health care when at their first opportunity they defeat a bill that was supported by Alberta health care leaders including Dr. Trevor Theman, a former chair of the board of the Health Quality Council of Alberta, and Alberta Medical Association president-elect Paul Parks,” Notley said..“Albertans have it in their power to switch the focus to what’s important for Alberta families. Should we be fortunate to form government in May, the Alberta NDP is committed to fixing health care in our province by bringing real resources to the frontline and working collaboratively with healthcare professionals. We will make sure that Alberta families can get the care they need, when they need it, close to home.”.During the question period, Notley said the Bill 201 proposal empowers the Health Quality Council to hold government decision accountable.."Yet the UCP has refused to even debate our bill," Notley said.."The premier could commit to supporting it today and starting real work, not a conversation for three weeks but real accountability and responsibility. Why not?"."The NDP is a little bit late to the conversation, because that’s exactly what we announced when we put Dr. John Cowell in place on November 17," Smith said. ."We identified at least 10 different measures that we’re going to look at. I’ve had a meeting with the statistics division of Alberta Health Services. They have identified the measures. They’ve asked for a few weeks to be able to get the benchmarks and then be able to show some improvement in reporting.".Smith said she is looking forward to the NDP supporting UCP measures when they're able to reveal those in a couple of weeks.."The NDP’s Bill 201 is another empty promise, it adds nothing to the work we’re already doing to reduce wait times, and commits not one more dollar than the record health budget we’re already spending," Alberta Health spokesman Steve Buick said.."The NDP had four years in government to do something about wait times, and they did nothing. They watched wait times for surgery and other care get longer. They even bragged in 2018 that they had cut growth in health spending in half, to 3%, when we were nowhere near the national targets for surgery wait times.".Buick said the Alberta NDP had "a choice" when they were in power.."Budget or wait times, and they chose budget. So now they promise to spend whatever it takes and it’s just laughably fake.".The bill says the NDP would provide public funding only to “public” service providers in section six, Buick added.."That means they would shut down every contracted Chartered Surgical Facility, and stop 20% of all our publicly funded surgeries; they would shut down every contracted home care and continuing care provider, and half our lab system," Buick said.."They would throw the system into chaos, for nothing but NDP ideology. This is their commitment on health care: people will keep waiting too long, but they’ll wait only at 'public' facilities. Independent partners could help patients get surgery and other care faster but we don’t care, we’ll shut them down.".Buick then claimed even with that promise "their (NDP) core ideology is fake."."They contracted every service that’s currently contracted for four years in government. How many contracts did they terminate? Zero," Buick said.
