Baffin health board chair praises board’s work

SEAN MCKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Dennis Patterson came to Astro Hill not to bury the Baffin health board, but to praise it.

At this week’s meeting of the Baffin Regional Health and Social Services Board, Patterson told board members that the most constructive course would be to move on and to help the government assume it’s new role as the sole governing body for health care in Nunavut.

“The challenge is to make this work and to help the government,” Patterson said.

Nonetheless, his fellow board members took the news of the group’s demise rather hard.

Members such as Tommy Evic from Pangnirtung and Liza Ningiuk from Grise Fiord called for board members to go back to their communities and ask their constituents whether they supported the government’s decision.

“I’m not here today to criticize the new Nunavut government’s very bold decision [to abolish regional health boards] that was announced two weeks ago. Time will show whether their decision was the right one,” Patterson said.

He then went on to enumerate all of the advantages of an non-elected health board and the flaws in the Nunavut government’s decision.

“Being appointed gives us the freedom to do what is right. Because we are appointed people, we don’t have to worry making decisions that are always popular or doing what will allow us to be re-elected,” said Patterson.

The health board made a number of controversial decisions, he said, including moving to Ottawa from Montreal for health services, shutting down the drug and alcohol treatment centre and ending the contract with Iqaluit to provide social services to town.

Patterson criticized an accountability study commissioned by the government that he said was “set up to give a clear, unambiguous result.”

Patterson said the government had used the report in it’s decision to abolish the health boards. He took exception to an evaluation grid in the report that gave health boards a negative number for accountability.

“It took a very legalistic view of accountability,” Patterson said. He said that while board members are not elected, anyone in a community can call their local board member. He said that some MLAs represent more than one community and nine of the MLAs have ministerial portfolios to take care of too.

The report also used old budget figures in concluding that significant money could be saved in health care by eliminating boards, Patterson said.

Patterson and other board members said the decision had been made too quickly and without enough consultation.

But on Wednesday, Health and Social Services Minister Ed Picco reminded members that his government consulted the public and Inuit groups throughout the fall and winter of 1998 and during 1999.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to move this way if I didn’t honestly believe it’s the right thing to do. The decision had nothing to do with what this health board or other health boards have done,” Picco said.

Some of the board members were optimistic about the future however, pointing out that one of the report’s suggestions was that the government set up an advisory health and education committee. On this point Picco was conciliatory.

“(If we set up an advisory health and education committee,) I would expect some of the members of this board would sit on that board.”