Norm Macdonald MLA                                Columbia River – Revelstoke

MEDIA RELEASE

For immediate release

April 30th, 2008

Macdonald promotes Opposition call for a Representative for Seniors

In a private member’s statement in the House on Monday, April 28th, Columbia River – Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald made remarks in support of Opposition Leader Carole James’ call for a Representative for Seniors:

N. Macdonald: I take my turn here to speak about rural health care, seniors care in particular, and to take the seven minutes that I have available to me to speak on that topic.

Seniors care in rural British Columbia is something that is, of course, critically important. Very often when we talk about health care we fall into numbers and figures, when the important information that we receive — the important information that we need to pay attention to — should be based on the experiences of seniors in our communities.

Last election in 2005, like many rural politicians I spent my time going door to door and talking to people in my area about what was important. Of the issues in front of people at that time, the most important issue in many cases dealt with seniors care. There had been a real adjustment in the facilities. A number of facilities closed. There were changes to home support and in many, many government services to seniors.

I can say with complete clarity that seniors care is of incredible importance to people in my area — and I would say, in speaking to colleagues and listening to people here in the House, that it is across rural British Columbia — and, I would think, to all British Columbians.

The last opportunity I had to move through the constituency and have community meetings specifically on seniors care was this February before the session began. In each of the communities that I represent, we had meetings with seniors groups. We heard at those meetings a number of concerns, a number of things that needed to be worked through. I'll just speak about a few of them that came forward.

One of them was around complaints mechanisms, about the need to be able to bring forward issues in a way that worked consistently for seniors.

The other issue that came forward at each of the meetings was around residential care and the need to increase the number of staff available to residents of residential care facilities. The feeling was that there were not enough people in place to look after their needs.

Now, the issues raised point to a need for us to do certain things better. Because of that, some solutions have been put forward by the Leader of the Opposition that I think provide mechanisms for making improvements not only for seniors in rural communities but for all British Columbia seniors.

The first of those acts was a private member's bill, the Community Care and Assisted Living Amendment Act. What it suggested was that we put in place a mechanism for going into residential care facilities, having those inspections unannounced, making sure that they happen a minimum number of times and having the results made public.

The other thing we talked about is the seniors representative act. The idea with the seniors representative act is that you would have an independent officer of the Legislature that would look at seniors issues, act as an advocate for seniors, investigate concerns that seniors bring forward, and report directly and publicly to the Legislature so that there could be no opportunity for the government to massage messages or try to control the information that comes forward.

Those are the things that we need to put in place to make rural British Columbia safe for seniors.