Congratulations to Sundre and our entire region — you did it. Long-term care will remain in place at the Sundre Hospital and Care Centre and our hospital will continue to be fully used.
It was clear from the very beginning that our community would never accept Alberta Health Services' plan to eliminate long-term care in our community and to shut half the capacity of our hospital. On your behalf, this was the message I conveyed to our provincial capital. After several meetings with the minister of health, the local Sundre Hospital Futures Committee, and senior management at AHS, I am proud to report that our region's high-quality long-term care will remain in place and that our hospital will continue to be used to its full capacity. This will allow local seniors the ability to remain in our community for years to come and our medical professionals the ability to address our community's ongoing medical needs. This is undoubtedly the right course of action. AHS sought no meaningful public input and provided no data to justify its shortsighted plan, whereas our community's approach was based on facts and meaningful public and stakeholder input.
There is no doubt in my mind that our community's calm, focused response to this crisis proved crucial. I want to express my gratitude to the many community leaders who joined me in Edmonton, to the Sundre Hospital Futures Committee, the Town of Sundre and Mountain View County, as well as all of you who attended my town hall meeting, organized and signed petitions, contacted my office and raised awareness on social media. You simply would not allow AHS to treat our community as an afterthought, and I could not be more proud to serve as your representative.
Articulating factual arguments to a minister willing to accept advice from local community leaders proved pivotal, and I commend the minister for looking at the facts and working with our community to get it right. At a time when AHS is growing increasingly unaccountable, I believe community engagement is the key to improving frontline service, decreasing wait times and improving efficiency. The fact is that public input does not weaken health care; rather it makes our system stronger and more responsive to local realities.
Folks in communities like Sundre have a vested interest in the success of local medical professionals and the services they provide. Our advice should be embraced, not pushed aside. This is why one of our official Opposition's key objectives is the decentralization of health care with a return to localized decision making. This is a policy we have long supported and one for which I have personally campaigned.
As your elected representative, I was pleased for the opportunity to stand up to AHS. This was a real victory — not just for me and not just for Sundre, but for all of our fellow rural communities that are routinely disregarded. We share common concerns about the inefficiencies and waste within our health system. Moving forward, we must find common cause to solve these daunting problems.
The immensity of our community's accomplishment cannot be overstated. This marks the first time in recent history that a community has gone up against AHS, argued the facts and won. This is a remarkable turn of events, and we must work to ensure it is no aberration.
Victories of this type may be all too rare, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we're just getting started.
Jason Nixon
MLA for Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre
