Alberta’s largest union up in arms over NDP move to fund private beds
Posted Sep 9, 2016 9:12 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees is calling out Alberta’s NDP government after it awarded Age Care $10.56 million to publicly fund more than 350 beds at the Sky Pointe Facility in Calgary.
“This is a huge concern for us that we’re witnessing towards the same avenue that the Progressive Conservatives did with their privatization agenda, it’s a huge concern for us when we see public dollars going to private entities,” said Vice-President Karen Weiers.
“I’m probably not as surprised as I’m disappointed,” she said. “They ran on a platform of creating public long-term care beds and that doesn’t seem to be happening yet.”
Weiers says she’s waiting for them to live up to their campaign promise of creating 2,000 public long-term care beds, she doesn’t even see them in their scenarios anymore.
“We’re definitely going to be in conversations with the government. It should be a concern for all Albertans as well, we’ll keep pursuing what we feel should be long-term care beds and voicing our concern to this government.”
It’s the second announcement of its kind in a few short weeks. On August 24th, the government awarded Park Place Seniors Living $6.3 million to build a facility with 99 long-term care beds in Edmonton.
“Handing taxpayer dollars to private seniors care corporations places operational focus more on profits than on care. The NDP knows this, they’ve said it themselves,” said Weiers.
