Rejection of the ISA Proposal by the Honourable Mary Anne Jablonski

20090503

9603 96 Street
Edmonton, T6C 3Z1

Honourable Mary Anne Jablonski
Room 227 Legislature
10800 97 Avenue
Edmonton, T5K 2B6

Dear Madame Minister,

This letter comes from the Circle of Chairs of Seniors’ Advocacy Groups which has requested the Province establish an Independent Seniors’ Advocate (ISA). I have been asked to reply to your letter of March 11, 2009, in which you have indicated that the Government of Alberta will not be pursuing the ISA issue at this time.

In para two of your letter you mention your pleasure in meeting the Circle on March 30, 2008. We, too, were very appreciative of the opportunity to meet with the Premier and you on the ISA idea. It was unfortunate that the meeting date happened to coincide with the day the that the ducks flew into the tailings pond in Fort McMurray. Consequently, we found the Premier to be preoccupied over that incident. Similarly, when the Circle arrived at a previous meeting with your Seniors’ Advisory Council as requested by your predecessor, Mr. Melchin, we were dismayed that we were meeting with only the Chair and two newly appointed members of that council. It turns out that over the last six years we have met with previous Ministers for Seniors on this issue prior to your appointment. So, I regret not being able to talk directly and personally to you on this matter as suggested in my letter of 20090403. I had understood you to be sympathetic to the idea when you took on your role.

Having been told by the Chair of your Seniors’ Advisory Council, Mr. VanderBurg, that the last thing the government wanted was an ISA because such positions cannot be controlled, we were not surprised that you have rejected our request to establish an ISA to assist seniors in distress.

In para three of your letter you state that there are a number of services already in place to support seniors. We have no basis to argue with you about the services now in place. The intent of the ISA is to help seniors in distress in navigating through those services available in the local community and across all levels and departments of governments. This is an important function because all of the Chairs, who have each had voluntary experiences helping distressed seniors find help, have found it a very complex and frustrating business being referred from one agency to another and back again. Our conclusion is that the whole process would be immeasurably complicated if one were elderly and under severe distress.

There is an important second outcome to this navigational function in assisting seniors in distress. The ISA would be in a position to gather evidence on a continuing basis to use in a nonbiased evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of services provided to help seniors in their declining years of life. So, our issues have to do with navigating a very complex system and with evaluating that system to the benefit of seniors in real distress.

In Mr. Melchin’s letter asking the Circle to meet with his Seniors’ Advisory Council, he asked us to present our research on the need for an ISA. When the Circle met with Mr. VanderBurg, we indicated to him that our evidence of need for an ISA was not based on published research. Our evidence was experiential, based on requests for help from seniors across the province who were experiencing real levels of distress.
We said we were all from voluntary social justice groups which do not have great financial resources, but which relied on the abilities and commitment of volunteers with something of a social conscience. We also indicated that we were, therefore, not in a position to do such requested research, which should be undertaken on a continuing basis by our wider community as embodied in our provincial government. Further, it is interesting to note that every single Chair and Vice Chair in the Circle has had the experience of having to advocate for his/her own parents in situations of distress the parents encountered as a result of aging! I must add that such experiential evidence does have scientific validity and to simply dismiss it is unwise.

In para 4 of your letter, you also cite that we have no clear research or evidence to support the need for an ISA.

Page 2, para 4 of the ISA paper states:
A search for resources available to such distressed seniors has found that each government department must be contacted individually by telephone, internet or email to get information. Distressed seniors often are afflicted by a number of distinct problems which compound each other, and which can only be resolved after a thorough case investigation through an holistic, interdepartmental, interagency and, sometimes, intergovernmental approach. No province-wide, provincial government, interdepartmental service with intergovernmental and agency linkages and home-based investigative capabilities to help seniors in distress has been found.

Therefore, we ask you, can you provide us with clear research or evidence that evaluates, on a recurrent basis, the effectiveness and efficiency of the necessarily complex intergovernmental, interdepartmental and local agency service agencies that exist province wide to assist seniors in distress? Can you cite clear research or evidence that indicates an ISA is not needed?

In para 4 of your letter, you also suggest that the two million dollar cost of the ISA proposal would not be a prudent investment. As seniors born in the depression era, we are very cost conscious. That is one of the reasons that the ISA proposal features seniors themselves as the field arm of the office. This is a very prudent feature. (See Appendix A for more on this aspect of the ISA Proposal. Look for reference to ISA Elders) We feel there is a real need now for the programme and that need will be accentuated when baby boomers come on stream, beginning in 2011, less than two years from now.

In the closing paragraph of your letter you ask us, should we be aware of seniors in distress, to contact the Senior’ Information Line. We take it on good faith that that line is very useful in helping most seniors tap into resources that will be helpful to them. We suggested above that because seniors are, first and foremost, people, they may need to be referred to other departments than yours, to other levels of government, agencies or services. Our experience with seniors in distress is that they typically are exhausted and literally at their wit’s end and that their cases are usually very intricate. These people require face to face attention rather than referral to another telephone number. The reverse of your advice should apply. When the Seniors’ Information Line receives a call from a senior who appears to be in distress, the operator should get the contact information and indicate they will have an ISA representative (an ISA Elder) meet personally with the senior in distress.

Before closing this letter, I raise the Dziekanski case. That case clearly highlights the inadequacy of police investigating themselves. The lessons learned from that case apply to other government provided service arms and agencies. A Province of Alberta advocate for seniors in distress must have no other interest than the well being of the person in distress. This will mean that evidence gathered on each such case will not be subject to possible bias or dismissal by Ministerial or departmental officials in leadership positions. However, it will also mean that the government will be able to adjust policies and programmes on solid evidence rather that political considerations. Further, because services for seniors are necessarily delivered by so many departments, it is inappropriate for a member of one department to investigate possible inadequacies in another department. The ISA position must be as an officer of the Legislative Assembly.

The ISA is a very important and cost effective programme which has the strong support of seniors’ groups with over thirty thousand members. The concept has had the support of both opposition parties and the Alliance, Greens and Social Credit Parties. Our research on the ISA also included meetings with other existing Officers of the Legislative Assembly or their officials, that is where we leaned that the Ombudsman, for example, cannot be an advocate. We think the government’s energies should focus on innovation and preparedness. We regret you are not prepared to work with us as we move forward to the establishment of an Independent Seniors‘ Advocate as an Officer of our Legislative Assembly. Kindest regards.

Sincerely,


Brian Staples for the Circle of Chairs, Copies to the Premier, the Circle of Chairs, Opposition Leaders, others consulted in preparing the ISA proposal
Attached as Appendix A- the cover page of the ISA Proposal




APPENDIX A- LETTER TO MINISTER JABLONSKI

A PROPOSAL FOR A PROVINCE OF ALBERTA INDEPENDENT SENIORS’ ADVOCATE BY
A CIRCLE OF ALBERTA SENIORS’ ADVOCACY GROUP CHAIRPERSONS

“When you’re down and out, when you’re on the street, when evening falls so hard, I’ll comfort you, I’ll take your part”-S and G
Draft 1, 2003/10/03; Draft 2, 2003/10/05; Draft 3, 2003/10/09, Draft 4, 2003/10/12; Draft 5, 2003/10/27; Draft 6, 2004/02/06; Draft 7, 2004/02/11, Draft 8, 2004/09/09; Draft 9, 2004/09/17; Draft 10, 2004/10/17; Draft 11, 2004/12/16, Draft 12, 2005/03/04, Draft 13, 2005/04/02, Draft 14, 2005/09/05; Draft 15, 2006/01/08

Summary for Convenience: This paper states that there are at least nineteen Government of Alberta Departments involved in seniors’ matters. A senior in distress who phones for help is often necessarily referred to other Departments. Seniors seeking such help, while in distress are also short on energy, hearing impaired and sometimes have trouble being understood on the phone because English is not their first language. Not infrequently, they are frustrated to the point of tears with the process. A search for resources available to distressed seniors has found that there is no province-wide, provincial, interdepartmental service with intergovernmental linkages and home-based investigative capabilities to help seniors in distress. This paper proposes the establishment of an Independent Seniors’ Advocate (ISA) and an Office of the Independent Seniors’ Advocate (OISA). The ISA is intended to compliment rather than replace the role of a Minister for Seniors. The ISA would be an officer of the Legislative Assembly such as, for example, the Auditor General or Ombudsman, who cannot act as an advocate. She or he would have a small permanent staff. In addition to the ISA, there would be one professional responsible for collecting and continually updating the considerable and impressive resources already available Provincially, Federally, and locally to assist seniors in distress. A second professional would be responsible for recruiting, training, and deploying a corps of seniors, called ISA Elders, the Elders would be paid honouraria and expenses to be the field officers of the ISA. They would be able to visit seniors in distress, listen to their stories and shepherd them in seeking the existing resources to relieve their distress. The corps of Elders would be more economical that a permanent staff, and can easily be expanded or contracted. In addition to this individual advocacy work, the ISA would have two other critical roles. A second function would be to refer cases of administrative unfairness to the Ombudsman, or where evidence of irregularities warrants, to the Police, Human Rights, Privacy Commissioner, etc.. The third role would be to identify evidence grounded deficiencies or gaps in service to assist seniors in distress and advocate for the elimination of those deficiencies, whatever the level of government. The budget is $1,840,00, Appendix. B.
Paper’s Intention: That the Government of Alberta establish an Independent Seniors’ Advocate and an Office of the Independent Seniors’ Advocate with the characteristics and capabilities outlined in this paper. The Circle of Chairpersons wishes to be consulted in the development of this initiative.

Jerry Pitts, Chair, Coalition of Seniors’ Advocates (COSA); Irl Miller, Chair, Seniors’ One Voice; Wanda Cree, Chair, Seniors’ Health Council; Peter Stewart, Chair, Edmonton Branch, Canadian Association for Retired Persons (CARP); Lynda Jonson, Chair, Seniors I Care; Bill Moore-Kilgannon, Executive Director, Public Interest Alberta, Ron Ellis, Executive Director, Seniors United Now (SUN); Jack Fulwiler, Chair, Alberta Retired Teachers’ Association (ARTA); Brian Staples, Chair, Seniors Action and Liaison Team (SALT). This paper is endorsed in principle by the Alberta: Liberals, New Democrats, Alliance, Green and Social Credit Parties.