The Alberta Legislature will be back in session on February 25 and MLA for Drumheller-Stettler, Nate Horner, says one main focus is going to be healthcare.
    Earlier this month the results of a review on Alberta’s healthcare completed by Ernst and Young was released. It spelled out a number of recommendations on healthcare, some of which are already causing concerns by Albertans and professionals in the healthcare field. Horner says this will be the main focus of the upcoming sitting.
    “If you have seen our campaign platform, probably it is going to be a big session on Health,” Horner tells the Mail.
    “The AHS review is complete and it is in the hands of the minister, so I think it is going to be a health-related session. It will be tough I’m sure but at 43 per cent of the budget, it can’t be ignored. We can do better.”
    He says in many cases there are different issues facing urban and rural health care.
    “Even with the doctor’s negotiations, what the ministry is trying to fix, I would call urban problems. We are definitely keeping communications up, us rural MLAs, saying ‘don’t paint this with all one brush, these are urban problems,’ and he has been pretty responsive to that.”
    One area of concern for rural health he is hearing has to do with ambulance services.
    “You hear the same story everywhere, trying to find a way to move people around in non-emergency situations,” he said. “If we could use these NAT (non-emergency transport) vans for non-emergency calls. These have been done in a few other areas quite well,”
    Horner adds they are working on this in the region, and they have the research to back up that using NAT vans would improve the services and bring savings.
    Horner says Alberta simply needs to get its debt under control.
    “This will be our worst year with $8.7  billion added to the debt, it is going to get better, but we are needing to draw the line in the sand right now,” said Horner.
    He is optimistic, however.
    “The Premier calls this the turnaround year. Last year we saw very modest growth in the economy and we are expecting better than last year but maybe just slightly.  But most economists agree if we can get one year out, things are looking better for Alberta,” said Horner.

    Christ the Redeemer School Division saw some small changes to its current budget in light of the changes made to funding programs by the provincial government.
    Associate superintendent, corporate services for Christ the Redeemer Michael Kilcommons, explains that typically the provincial government sets the budget around March, and the division has to submit its preliminary budget in May. This year was a little different.
    “This year they said to wait until June of 2019, but even with that, they said ‘we don’t have the budget, tell us what assumptions you will make,’” he said. “So we made some assumptions and came up with our budget. They announced the budget on October 24, it was a little bit steeper than we imagined,”said Kilcommons.
    He said they were aware the government was looking for savings and while they were able to predict some of the changes, there were some they were not able to gauge.
    There were three grants affected. The Classroom Improvement Fund cost about $1.26 million. The Classroom Size Initiative was also taken out, which cost the division about $4 million. The School Fee Reduction Program also cost the division about $630,000. The government, however, returned about $4.5 million as a transitional grant.
    “We ended up with less money. We had to scramble a little bit, but we had a little bit of time,” he said. “We cut the budget as thinly as we could and it didn’t affect any staffing. We maintained the teaching staff and the support staff we had, so we are very happy about that, and class sizes. But it did hurt a little bit we had to cut into anything that was discretionary.”
    The division reported a deficit budget of $500,000, which they were able to make up with reserves.
    “That’s a lot of money, but in the big picture it is about a half of a per cent of our annual budget,” he said.
    He said looking toward the next school year the government has been doing a funding review. He said in March Alberta Education will be releasing their funding program for next year.
    “They are giving us advanced notice so we can adapt if necessary, and it is really hard to predict how this is going to look,” said Kilcommons. “We are preparing for a bigger deficit. But we can’t really predict that and around the province, depending who you are talking to, it could be a steady budget, it could be way worse or it could be a pleasant surprise.”
    “We are planning for a further reduction, but we are hoping we’re wrong.”
    He said the division is committed in the coming year to not charging school fees for registration or classroom activities.