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Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse

Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse.

How the Healthcare Industry is Addressing the Fast-growing Medical Waste Problem

Some health systems are making progress in recovering medical devices and equipment.

About 85 percent of hospital waste is noninfectious, according to the World Health Organization, and a bulk of that is recyclable, yet most of these materials are either landfilled or burned.

The waste is stockpiling because balancing patient safety, cost and sustainability is not easy, say hospitals. Further, haulers and recyclers often shy away from what’s considered medical waste. And China’s crackdown on imported plastics has created a new barrier—25 percent of hospital waste is plastic, amounting to 1 million tons a year, reports Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council.

Read more at waste360.com

Wynne is offering solutions to health care problems her government created

I graduated from medical school the same week that Kathleen Wynne was elected premier in 2014. So it has been under her tenure that I have spent the last four years as a frontline physician trainee, witnessing firsthand the dysfunction with which health care delivery operates in this province.

The majority of our challenges are due to a combination of government inaction and a willful go-it-alone philosophy. The growing need for mental health services has been addressed at a glacial pace, for example, while Bill 41, the Patients First Act — the most significant alteration to health care delivery in recent memory — was passed despite significant opposition from health care leaders across the province. This could not have been worse for patient care.

 

Read more at CBC

Local small business taking federal government to court

A1 Irrigation, a small business with nine employees in Brooks, is taking the federal government to court.
The company owners are upset over a new requirement to agree to something that is fundamentally in conflict with their religious beliefs and interpretation of the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
Bill and Rhea Lynne Anderson’s application for one summer student under a federal program was deemed incomplete by Service Canada as of Feb. 10, 2018 because the “I attest” box was not checked.

 

Read more at Brooks Bulletin.

Ghosts in Google Maps a risk to banks and national security, ‘internet police’ claim

On Google Maps, Inna Bogdanov is standing in front of a plaza in Richmond Hill, Ont., a few steps away from a Scotiabank branch. Click on the pin marking her apparent position, and you get a website that belongs to the bank.

“Hello, Inna speaking,” said a woman who answered a call to the listed phone number and confirmed her identity to CTVNews.ca. “I’m a mortgage broker. I used to be a mortgage specialist with Scotiabank.”

According to Richard Trus and Sydney Eatz, “internet police” who investigate questionable content on Google Maps, Bogdanov is “ghosting.” It’s essentially gaming Google Maps to deceive users who rely on the widely-used platform to find the businesses they are looking for.

Read more at CTV News

Intelligence agency withheld information from statement about MP’s phone hack

Five months after a Radio-Canada/CBC investigation revealed that the country’s major mobile networks are vulnerable to hacking and fraud, documents obtained through Access to Information show that the agency responsible for the security of the federal government’s networks withheld some information from the public at the time.

Using only the cellphone number of MP Matthew Dubé — and with the New Democrat’s consent as part of the Radio-Canada/CBC investigation​ — cybersecurity experts in Germany proved they were able to intercept his communications and track his movements.

Read more at CBC News

The Problem with Pain: A Look at Canada’s Opioid Epidemic

One of the greatest health threats in North America is the opioid crisis. Since 2015 it has caused about five thousand deaths in Canada alone. Indigenous communities have been ravaged by the epidemic. National and provincial governments are being forced to take the matter in hand.

The fight has manifested itself in changes to healthcare policy, and class action lawsuits against Purdue Pharma, the drug company that allegedly pushed OxyContin™ and OxyNEO™ via marketing tactics that minimized the risks associated with the drug. In the US authorities have launched criminal investigations into Purdue’s marketing tactics and many Canadians are demanding that our leaders follow suit.

Read more at Forget The Box

How Big Pharma deceives you about drug safety

The recent decision of a Saskatchewan judge to reject the proposed settlement between the provinces and Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, should raise serious questions.

Purdue introduced the prescription drug OxyContin in 1996 and marketed it as safer and less addictive than other opioids. This is now seen by many as the beginning of the opioid crisis in Canada. The settlement in question was meant to compensate patients who were victims of the opioid epidemic and the provinces for some of their additional health-care costs in dealing with the epidemic.

Read more at The Conversation

“Canada’s Taxpayer-Funded Medical Liability Protection Agency” – a Six-Part Series

The Monitor Telegram has been sent and been given permission to publish a six article series entitled “Canada’s Taxpayer-Funded Medical Liability Protection Agency – Profiteering, Legal Bullying and Deception in an Entrenched “Medical Protectionism” System Out of Control.”

I think you will find these articles spellbinding while at the same time, as a Canadian, outraged by the subject matter. Apparently, we are the only country on the planet that has a system like this, according to sources who have fought this system.

The series looks at the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA), a private yet publicly-funded protectionist organization for the nation’s doctors and how the CMPA’s cold-blooded and ruthless tactics have made it next to impossible for those injured by negligent and incompetent doctors to get justice.

The series includes:

1. A Most Uneven Playing Field, The Case of Baby Morgan details the heartless approach the CMPA used to try to escape paying compensation to a baby that continues to suffer irreparable and life-long damage.

2. The CMPA’s Rise to Power highlights how the medical establishment’s enforcers started and how they came to dominate the country’s courts in opposition to patients seeking redress for perceived wrongs.

3. The Growing Potential for Malpractice Law Suits documents the likelihood of falling victim to medical neglect, malpractice and downright malfeasance and the unlikelihood of getting compensated.

4. Down the Rabbit Hole is a look at some cases the CMPA has defended and their strategy of attacking the victim.

5. Show Them the Money, And Plenty of It details the burgeoning public cost of injustice at the hands of the CMPA.

6. Your Doctor Probably Isn’t Insured goes over what needs to be done about that.

The Monitor Telegram will be publishing these articles one each week for the next six weeks and sending out our e-newsletter once a week starting next Tuesday.

As always, we look forward to your comments.

Change.org petition

Stop the Canadian Medical Protective Association Subsidy

Karen Coates started this petition to MPP, Minister of Health Christine Elliot

Mahatma Gandhi once said “a nation`s greatness is measured by how it treats it weakest members.” By this standard Canadians must hang their heads in shame with the knowledge that we subsidize our doctor`s Canadian Medical Protective Association fees so they can wage war against our weakest members, the disabled, who dare to speak out against doctors who are negligent in their care. As such we demand our provincial governments stop the subsidy so that all Canadians can have access to healthcare without fear, intimidation, or reprisals for speaking out against those who do them harm.

To sign the petition click here.

Read the Six Part Series Here

Privacy watchdog wants rules for how political parties use Canadians’ personal data

OTTAWA–Canada’s privacy commissioner is calling on the government finally to bring in concrete rules over how political parties collect and use Canadians’ personal information.

“If there was ever a time for action, I think, frankly, this is it,” Daniel Therrien told the House of Commons’ ethics committee Tuesday as the first witness at its study of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal

And after years of inaction, the major parties might finally be listening.

Read more at Toronto Star

A Most Uneven Playing Field, The Case of Baby Morgan

The is the first in a series of six stories on the Canadian Medical Protective Association provided to the Monitor Telegram.

In Canada, the system of publicly-funded universal health care, despite being incomplete in that it does not cover prescription drugs, dental, vision care or other supplementary services, is regarded as being one of the best in the world.  Countless Canadians have received first-rate life-enhancing and life-saving treatment from competent and caring doctors.

And some haven’t.

Just ask Wylie Bystedt whose infant daughter, Morgan, was irreparably harmed by a physician who correctly diagnosed the newborn’s ailment but failed to treat it.  As a result, Morgan is now a spastic quadriplegic with severe neurological, visual and auditory impairment and requires constant specialized care.  Wylie, a single mother struggling to support Morgan and her sister, battled for years to get the financial compensation she so desperately needed.

After a lengthy court battle, Morgan was awarded around $1.8 million for her ongoing care but Morgan was ten years old before she saw a dime, thanks to the efforts of the defendant doctor’s lawyers who were bought and paid for the by Canadian Medical Protective Association, a private organization who uses their multi-billion dollar war chest in the defense of doctors with a no-holds-barred approach.

These lawyers, acting in accordance with what has been called the CMPA’s “scorched earth defense strategy”, denied the doctor did anything wrong and blamed the mother saying that the baby’s ailment was contracted in the womb.  And the CMPA brought in a whole host of rented “experts” to say so.

But the judge didn’t buy it, saying:

“In short, the defendant’s theory of causation is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.  Some of the corners fit if positioned correctly but the whole peg just won’t go in.”

The judge also had this to say about what that little baby had to endure:

  1. I have no doubt that she suffered considerably from the disease. 
  2. She had numerous SEM outbreaks [serious respiratory disease] in the first 14 months of her life which remained untreated. 
  3. During the first six months of her life, she experienced the onset and progression of encephalitic episodes [swelling of the brain] that caused profound damage to her central nervous system and destroyed her brain tissue. 
  4. She cried inconsolably as if in pain and only fell asleep when exhausted. 
  5. She went through adductor surgery to loosen the tendons and muscles of her hips and was on painkillers for some time after the surgery. 
  6. She had further surgery for the insertion of a G-tube so she could obtain the necessary nutrition to live. 
  7. The evidence supports a finding that Morgan has suffered considerably in her short life.

Wylie Bystedt asked the Court for the sum of $286,000 for baby Morgan’s pain and suffering.  The CMPA lawyers had the unspeakable effrontery to counter with the sum of $50,000 because the baby was too damaged to appreciate more than that.  They said:

Morgan’s ability to cognitively appreciate her position in relation to others or to appreciate any money spent to improve her condition is unfortunately negligible at best, thereby diminishing her claim under this head of damage.

 But, wait.  There’s more.

Morgan’s mother also asked for costs for the ongoing care that the child is certainly going to need.  The CMPA lawyers opined that Morgan’s life expectancy was 20-23 years and that the award should be based on that and not the 45 years that the plaintiff put forth.  In other words, “she’s not going to live that long anyway so we shouldn’t have to pay as much”.

 And you thought the story of the man murdering his parents and then pleading for leniency because he’s an orphan was just an old joke.

When all was said and done, the Judge awarded baby Morgan $1.8 million in damages and cost of past and future care.

Wylie’s lawyer, Thomas Harding, describes the CMPA defense strategy like this:  “If my dog bit you, it wasn’t my dog … you weren’t bitten … it wasn’t you … the dog was drunk … you goaded the dog … you bit the dog”.

Interestingly, one of the CMPA lawyers, in that case, says that he is now “acting exclusively in plaintiffs’ medical negligence and infant injury litigation cases”.  Perhaps he lost his stomach for the egregious defense tactics of the CMPA.

And guess what – Morgan’s mother paid for the CMPA lawyers.  So did I.  So did you.