Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the Thanksgiving weekend something horrible happened. A young mother in her youthful prime had a stroke, and because of her condition level, she needed to be sent to an Edmonton hospital to meet her needs. So she was medevacked to Edmonton Monday night and arrived around 11 p.m. with her daughter and three month old nursing son in tow.
As anyone can imagine, this is a difficult situation, but what can be noted here at this specific point is that it has the appearance that the system may be working. That is, you get sick, and the publicly funded system, via taxpayer dollars, is there to care for you when you need it most.
However, this is where the system did not work, because when this mother needed it most, it seems to have fallen off the rails. When she got to the
Edmonton hospital, there was no room to forward her to. When she got there, she spent the remainder of that evening and most of the next day in emergency. In total, she sat there almost 19 hours in the emergency room — again, with two in tow.
I don’t know what the reasonable level of health care is and how it would be defined by our Health Minister, but, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that if we stepped outside of this building, no one on these streets would tell you that waiting 19 hours in emergency is considered a reasonable level of care considering our taxpayer dollars are paying for something much better.
Why do I keep pointing to 19 hours? Well, that’s when an enclosure in the emergency room was found. I don’t know where it may have been. Maybe it had been lost. To be honest, Mr. Speaker, I don’t even know what an enclosure is. Is it a broom closet? Is it a coffee room? Is it a storeroom? I just don’t know. Again, this is not a reasonable level of care that I would normally define. I only wish the story ended there, Mr. Speaker.
So this woman with a stroke, two in tow, waited 15 more hours in the enclosure. But I’m pleased to say, that as of 9 o’clock this morning, after 34 hours of this whole ordeal, she finally received a room.
Now, this is very important. As I’ve come to understand the situation, a memo had been forwarded to the Health Minister almost two weeks ago saying that there were no rooms available. That’s two weeks ago. How can that be? How can we leave health care to chance? Mr. Speaker, this stresses me out just thinking about this statement. How do you think the husband felt? How do you think she felt? How do you think her children felt? No one should feel abandoned by our system, certainly not like this.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
Unanimous consent granted.