The next two stories in our countdown are about regional issues that are important to pretty nearly everyone who lives and works in Peace – Healthcare and the Alaska Highway.
#9 – Kealy collecting data on healthcare in Peace River North
Sick and tired of waiting for an external audit of Northern Health that may never come, Peace River North MLA Jordan Kealy is taking matters into his own hands, gathering data from residents of the riding on their experiences within the healthcare system.
In post on Facebook on Wednesday, Kealy asked Peace River North residents – including those who work in healthcare – to email his office with their experiences in the system, personal experiences, not hearsay.
It’s not about complaining about the healthcare workers, Kealy said, but gathering information.
“It’s primarily to gather information, who needs help, what avenues they might be able to go through to get help, and whether or not I can help them directly; steer them in the right direction or work with the Minister of Health to be able to help them.”
The information Kealy is looking for includes experience good and bad within the healthcare system; if you have been turned away when seeking healthcare; if you’re fighting your way through the system; have given up and don’t know where to go; and are looking outside the country for healthcare options.
“This is my avenue to try to figure out how I can help people – and right now, the region has been kicking and screaming asking for an external audit, and we never get it,” Kealy said.
#8 – Province pens “polite no” to request to revisit twinning highways to AB
When the County of Grande Prairie asked the Peace River Regional District for a letter supporting its application to the Alberta government to twin Highway 43 to the British Columbia border, the PRRD was happy to provide the support.
As a result of that conversation with their Alberta neighbours, the board felt that the possibility of twinning Highways 97 and 2 from Fort St. John to the Alberta border was worth revisiting. But when the PRRD board wrote to Minister of Transportation and Transit (MOTT), Mike Farnworth asking that the Province revisit the potential project, the answer was, as Dawson Creek Director and Mayor Darcy Dober described it “a polite no.”
In their June 12 letter to Minister Farnworth, the board asked for the project to be revisited to facilitate cross border trade, movement of goods, enhanced safety for the travelling public and safer emergency response.
“On the Alberta side, they’re focussing on this and pushing it forward because there was one major accident, and one is more than any should be,” said Dober at the July 17 PRRD board of directors meeting.
As Dober noted during the May 22 PRRD meeting when the board decided both to support the County of Grande Prairie’s request and write to Farnworth, the concept of twinning the highways from Fort St. John through to the Alberta border is not new.
In 2011, when Peace River South MLA Blair Lekstrom was the Minister of Transportation, the province announced projects that were “the first steps in a long-term plan to widen the corridors to four lanes on Highway 2 between the Alberta border and Dawson Creek, and Highway 97N between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John,” according to a Ministry press release on July 25, 2011.
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