All posts in Gene Zwozdesky

Two additional reasons morale is better at Alberta Health Services: Liepert & Duckett are gone

by David Climenhaga on June 16, 2012 in Alberta Health Services, Alison Redford, Chris Eagle, Doug Knight, Ed Stelmach, Fred Horne, Gene Zwozdesky, Ron Liepert, Stephen Duckett with 3 Comments
Dr. Stephen Duckett, right, doesn’t mince words while talking to Doug Knight, then the President of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, in September 2009, Below: former Health Minister Ron Liepert.

Morale among doctors, nurses and other medical staff is dramatically better than it was two years ago at Alberta Health Services, the massive health board that runs all the province’s public hospitals.

When AHS executives announced the results of their 2012 survey of employees, medical staff and volunteers who work in the AHS system yesterday, they were justifiably pleased by the improved morale, which according to a Calgary newspaper they attributed to “employee recognition, increased decision-making at the local level and an unqualified commitment to support patient advocacy.”

But that’s only part of the story of why morale is better at AHS than it was the last time the survey was conducted, in 2010.

There are two other big reasons that AHS didn’t mention in its rambling and earnest news release and which didn’t come up in the coverage on a day when most reporters were chasing a very different story:

  1. Ron Liepert is gone
  2. Stephen Duckett is gone too

Mr. Liepert was the minister of health under former premier Ed Stelmach from March 2008 until January 2010, so the 2010 survey was conducted while the office door was still swinging behind him.

During his time in the Alberta provincial cabinet, Mr. Liepert earned a well-deserved reputation as a bull in a china shop. He was controversial all right – the kind of controversial that caused crowds of seniors to spontaneously boo him when he entered a room. I’ve seen it and heard it with my own eyes and ears.

On the policy side, Mr. Liepert leaned toward the idea private care is better. You may agree that the controversial kinds of reforms he advocated were needed and helpful, or you may think they were unnecessary and dangerous. But almost everyone agrees that he was forceful and undiplomatic in the way he went about doing his job.

He was a broadcaster by trade, and medical professionals didn’t hold his views in high regard. Morale suffered.

Public outrage about the state of Alberta’s health care system and Mr. Liepert’s role in it was so intense by January 2010 that premier Stelmach, who obviously held him in high regard notwithstanding his infamous bluntness, moved him to the important energy portfolio. He has since retired from politics.

Mr. Liepert was replaced as health minister by Gene Zwozdesky, a conciliator with a reputation for bringing parties together and cajoling them into getting along.

Dr. Duckett was the Australian PhD economist that Mr. Liepert hired as president and CEO of AHS in the spring of 2009. During his time at the helm, Dr. Duckett earned a well-deserved reputation as a bull in a china shop.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Dr. Duckett could be extremely rude. (His defenders chalked this up to his using charming Australianisms that Canadians didn’t understand. This is nonsense. He may not have always been rude, but he certainly was when I heard him in action.)

After leaving AHS, Dr. Duckett has portrayed himself as a defender of public health care, and maybe that’s true. He has a fair complaint, perhaps, if as he says he was brought in on the understanding he’d be running a well-funded health system and was then told when he got here he’d have to cut a billion dollars out of it.

But his decisions were sudden and mercurial, and seemed to employees, health professionals and the public alike to have been made without consideration or contemplation.

One minute we had a province-wide nursing shortage and then, according to Dr. Duckett, there was no shortage of nurses at all. (Now there’s a nurse shortage again.) One minute we were about to rebuild a major psychiatric hospital and the next, after Dr. Duckett waved his calculator, we were going to close it down. (Now it’s being renovated again.)

He was a technocrat, and medical professionals didn’t hold his views in high regard. Morale suffered.

Perhaps unfairly, Dr. Duckett became a lightning rod for everything large numbers of Albertans thought was going wrong with their health care system.

Finally, in November 2010, came the renowned “cookie incident,” in which Dr. Duckett was breathtakingly rude to a group of reporters – with the action captured on camera and quickly loaded onto Youtube. Mr. Zwozdesky had had it up to here – or maybe it was there. At any rate, Dr. Duckett was spectacularly fired. He has since returned to Australia.

If Mr. Liepert and Dr. Duckett hurt morale on their own, the combination somehow added up to something more than the whole of its parts. They didn’t just seem like two bulls in a china shop. It felt like there was a whole stampede. Morale at AHS headed for the sub-basement!

Mr. Zwozdesky, the old smoothie, replaced Dr. Duckett with Dr. Chris Eagle, a physician, and a soft-spoken, courtly man.

Under Premier Alison Redford, who replaced premier Stelmach, “Zwoz” has gone on to be Speaker of the Legislature. But Dr. Eagle remains in the top job of AHS.

They Didn’t work miracles, but they did pour soothing balm on the troubled waters of Alberta’s health system. The public feels better. The medical professionals – as we saw yesterday – are feeling better too.

Ms. Redford has helped too, by persuading Albertans she means it about preserving our public health care system. And her Health Minister, Fred Horne, may not be quite as reassuring as Mr. Zwozdesky, but his manners are good and he proceeds with diplomacy.

Big challenges remain getting Alberta Health Services back on track. But the sounds of hooves stomping and crockery smashing have gone away. There is peace in the valley.

This is a big part of why morale is improving at AHS.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Zwozdesky’s in, Kowalski’s out and all’s right with the Tory universe

by admin on May 24, 2012 in Alison Redford, Gene Zwozdesky, Graham Thomson, Ken Kowalski, Laurie Blakeman, Peter Lougheed, Raj Sherman, Speaker with 2 Comments
Gene Zwozdesky, Alberta’s new Speaker, with your blogger and a Speech from the Throne … though not today’s.

This compliment may come out sounding a little more backhanded than intended, but the Alberta Legislature could have done a lot worse than choose someone like Gene Zwozdesky to wear the Speaker’s three-cornered hat, as its MLAs did yesterday.

This concludes the principal business of this otherwise silly six-day legislative session: naming a replacement for former speaker Ken Kowalski, who is no longer a member of the House and whose influence, rest assured Premier Alison Redford long ago concluded, needed to end forthwith.

That goal has now been achieved, Mr. Kowalski has passed into history taking his embarrassing $1.2-million transition allowance and remaining influence with him. The Legislature’s 87 MLAs can now get on with the Speech from the Throne later today, passing Bill 1 and whatever other insubstantial matters require their immediate attention before political Alberta lapses into a restful summer slumber with the Conservatives back in driver’s seat as God and the Tory Patriarch Peter Lougheed clearly intended.

Like any Speaker in a modern Canadian legislature where the governing party enjoys a substantial majority, Mr. Zwozdesky is certain to exhibit a degree of partisanship. But he will likely be fairer than most Tory MLAs from the Caucus of 2012 would have been in his shoes, and he has a smoothly diplomatic way about him.

As a former Liberal in the House, moreover, he knows what it’s like to sit across from the government, and one can hope this will inform his rulings as the arbiter of what may and may not be said and done in that chamber.

Indeed, the chief knock at Mr. Zwozdesky as a minister was that he would never make up his mind, opting forever for more study. But the Speaker of the Legislature is like the referee in a hockey game – indecisiveness is not an option! One suspects Mr. Zwozdesky will quickly learn how to be decisive – at least, decisive enough.

Finally, as a former professional crooner, Mr. Zwozdesky can continue Mr. Kowalski’s harmless tradition of encouraging rip-roaring performances of the national anthem in the public galleries at the opening of each Legislative session. By these small notes do we measure the progress of democracy in Alberta!

In the end yesterday, none of the rumoured Progressive Conservative candidates for the job other than Mr. Zwozdesky came forward in the actual contest. As suggested by Edmonton Journal political columnist Graham Thomson, this no doubt reflected the will of Premier Redford that there not be a non-Conservative in this crucial position.

The whips then presumably cracked, and those Tories who might have dreamed of occupying the Speaker’s chair quietly faded into the woodwork to await another favour, or perhaps another day.

As for Liberal Laurie Blakeman, her candidacy – though she pursued it with the vigour of the truly desperate – had no hope once the ballots had been counted back on election night, April 23.

The Legislature would only have chosen someone like Ms. Blakeman, who not so long ago was a credible candidate for the Liberal leadership, if the Wildrose Opposition and the Progressive Conservative caucuses had been in a dead heat in seats, or very close to it, after the election night dust had cleared. That is likely why she was already running hard for the job before the election.

Alas or her, and for all who enjoy politics as pure entertainment without much thought to its consequences, that was not to be.

As a veteran MLA like Ms. Blakeman surely realized, her valiant effort was doomed the moment Ms. Redford’s PCs posted a clear majority.

Having hung in and won re-election, then lost her bid to be Speaker, there’s not much for Ms. Blakeman to do but soldier on painfully under the leadership of the mercurial former Tory, Raj Sherman, and be ready to shoulder the responsibilities of leadership should Dr. Sherman spontaneously burst into flames.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.

Alberta MLAs get down to work – sort of

by admin on May 23, 2012 in Alison Redford, Bill 1, Dave Hancock, Ed Stelmach, Gene Zwozdesky, Jack Major, Ken Kowalski, Laurie Blakeman, Mary Anne Jablonski, Raj Sherman, Robin Campbell, Wayne Cao, WCB with 4 Comments
Bill 1? It’s a secret! Alberta MLAs may not be exactly as illustrated.


It’s great work if you can find it!

The first session of the 28th Legislature of Alberta opened today and will sit for … hold onto your hats, people … all of six days.

In their defence, sort of, that’s about all Premier Alison Redford and the rest of the Legislature’s 87 MLAs are going to need anyway, because they only plan to deal with one piece of legislation, something called, appropriately enough, Bill 1.

Bill 1 is … well, actually, Bill 1 is a secret. You’ll find out what it’s about tomorrow at the same time as the rest of us.

Presumably some people know what Bill 1 is about already, because the government has had to print up a Throne Speech and copies of the bill. The general assumption among the Alberta punditocracy is that it won’t be anything all that earthshaking – because the Redford Government intends to save the earthshaking stuff for the fall sitting, which will be a little longer.

You never know with Alberta Tory majority governments, though, and a lot of us will worry that they’re going to ban the right to assemble in groups larger than three, especially if the purpose is collective bargaining, or outlaw the clanging of pots and pans or other forms of free expression in the streets, historically a sign a government has completely lost control of the population, or whatever, until we actually see what’s in Bill 1 later today.

Most likely, the professional pundits have informed us, Bill 1 will be a law to require the Workers’ Compensation Board to cover firefighters and police officers who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. This is a laudable enough goal, of course, but why just first responders? Why not, indeed, a serious shakeup of the whole appalling WCB, with its private-insurance mentality and meat-grinder approach to compensating injured and traumatized workers? Well, don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Meantime, speaking of compensation, if not for workers, Progressive Conservative House Leader Dave Hancock announced yesterday that the government will accept almost all of retired Supreme Court Justice Jack Major’s largely sensible MLA pay recommendations – except his suggestion of a $335,000 annual salary for the premier, which almost caused a province-wide meltdown when it was first proposed during the campaign leading up to the April 23 general election.

Politically speaking, Ms. Redford had no option but to turn it down under those trying circumstances and to leave it turned down now. How big her salary will be – like the topic of Bill 1 – remains a mystery for the moment. Probably bigger than a breadbox, smaller than a house.

Acceptance of the rest of Judge Major’s report means MLAs will be paid a base salary of $134,000 with the possibility of getting up to $67,000 more depending on the additional responsibilities they are assigned. Like the rest of us, the MLAs will now pay taxes on the full amount – which means that the rest of us will be paying more, too, because we’ll have to pay their federal taxes. But as Mr. Hancock observed, almost certainly accurately, that seemed to be what Albertans wanted, so that’s what we’ll get.

Work remains to be done on their pensions, which by the sound of it will be proper defined benefit plans, which will set a good example for the private sector and cause the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to issue hundreds of news releases. The job also includes, as they say, other competitive benefits – including the ability to expense almost everything, including car washes.

Unlike the rest of us, the MLAs will only have to actually show up for work six days between now and roughly when the snow starts to fly – or so Alberta’s oral tradition of record-keeping says. Good luck finding any official reference to the length of this sitting on the Legislature’s website, or in the public prints. Still, those naturally inclined to work hard will find worthwhile things to do. Indeed, we can count on an enthusiastic and bombastic performance for a while from the new Wildrose Opposition.

That’s why it’s great work if you can get it – which only 87 Albertans can.

Meanwhile, the odds makers were having fun yesterday calculating who is most likely to be named Speaker of the House now that Ken Kowalski has retired.

Since we last discussed the topic in this space, Yellowhead MLA Robin Campbell dropped out to be named to cabinet as aboriginal relations minister and Red Deer-North MLA Mary Anne Jablonski, deprived of her Ed Stelmach-era cabinet post, joined the race.

Previously mentioned candidates still in the race are the creamy-voiced Edmonton-Mill Creek PC MLA Gene Zwozdesky, a former health minister and professional crooner with the demonstrated ability to sooth the savage breasts of angry politicians, Edmonton-Centre Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman, who would dearly love the excuse to no longer have to sit as a member of Liberal Leader Raj Sherman’s dysfunctional caucus, and Wayne Cao, PC MLA for Calgary-Fort who served as Deputy Speaker under Mr. Kowalski.

Although Ms. Blakeman was the favourite of this blog’s readership, as readers can see from the poll at right, the smart money favours Mr. Zwozdesky to win the secret ballot vote today. It’s said here, however, that no one should count out the sunny and likeable Mr. Cao.

The Speaker election is scheduled to take place at 1:30 p.m. The Speech from the Throne with its associated pomp and circumstance is scheduled for 3 p.m.

This post also appears on Rabble.ca.