Many constituents have been contacting me regarding staffing cuts at the Bethany Care Centre in Airdrie. This long-term care centre is critical to seniors living in our community as well as their families and other loved ones. Particularly important, is that Bethany cares for many of our most vulnerable seniors including many with severe dementia and other age-related disabilities.
I have talked to several colleagues both in the Wildrose and PC caucuses about this issue and there is certainly consternation on both sides concerning why the minister in charge of seniors care is dropping the axe on frontline services for seniors when there is so much waste that can and should be cut elsewhere.
I will continue to work to have these funding cuts reversed and presented this member statement in the Legislature last week to all MLAs. Please email or contact the Associate Minister of Seniors, George Vanderburg at [email protected] and ask him to reverse the staffing cuts at Bethany.
Mr. Speaker – Albertans are getting more and more upset with this government’s irresponsible handling of our Province’s budget crisis. Although most understand the need to cut wasteful spending in order to balance the budget, Albertans don’t understand why the government is cutting directly on the front lines rather than axing corporate grants or trimming our largest-in-the-nation bureaucracy.
They don’t understand how we can on one hand spend $350 million on new MLA offices, $2 billion in direct industry grants to pump CO2 underground, and hundreds of millions in waste and mismanagement in our health-care system; and then, on the other han,d cut front-line services to the vulnerable.
For example, the Bethany Care Centres in Airdrie, Cochrane and Calgary, provide long-term care for 800 seniors, many of them with very severe dementia. The government has recently cut funding for these seniors resulting in the firing of 53 full-time frontline care workers resulting in pain and discomfort for these wonderful seniors.
Bethany has detailed how these changes have increased the time spent by seniors waiting for help to go to the bathroom, reduced the amount of offered activities, rushed meal times, and increased agitation where staff are often unavailable to assist dementia patients who become confused or disoriented.
I hope each of you on that side of the house think about this when you are looking out the window of your new $350-million MLA Taj Mahal next year, or perhaps when your RSP allowance comes in several thousands of dollars higher than it was when you were first elected.
When government’s make wasteful and irresponsible spending decisions, there are real life consequences for real people. Your poor decisions and unwillingness to cut the real fat in your bloated government is causing our seniors who built what we enjoy today, to suffer needlessly. These cuts to senior care at Bethany should be revered immediately.
Thank-you Mr. Speaker.
