UPDATE, 9:40am: Health Minister Fred Horne has fired the entire AHS board
ORIGINAL POST:
It's certainly not the first time that Alberta Health Services has made life difficult for the Redford government, but this time the Tories have a real mess on their hands.
It's taken the government a while to come around to the position that AHS senior executives might not be the most deserving of bonuses, and now might not exactly be the best time to be doling out bonuses to said executives. Yesterday, Health Minister Fred Horne decided to take a stand, sort of. He declared that the government could not and would not accept the bonuses. But his demand to the board was only that they reconsider their decision.
Well, the board reconsidered it, and decided they were confortable with their original decision. In other words, the bonuses stay. In fact, board chairman Stephen Lockwood was quite defiant and all but dared the minister to fire him. And maybe the minister will have to do just that - or maybe fire the whole board while they're at it. The government can't state that they won't accept something only to then decide that they'll have to accept it after all.
Now Alberta Health Services is supposed to be at arms length from the government. But does that mean that they can overrule the government? We have this odd situation where the government runs health care, but the Alberta Health Services board isn't accountable to the government - or to the voters, for that matter.
Keep in mind, that this is all of the government's making. They created this monster and now it seems they can't really control it anymore. Maybe the obvious response is to simply scrap the superboard. Unfortunately, it looks as though the government's going to continue to wrestle with this beast instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment