Daphne Bramham: B.C. health professions bill hands new weapon to David Eby haters seeking his recall

When Salvatore Vetro launched the campaign to recall Premier David Eby, a good number of people scoffed at it, saying it had little chance of success.

And, at first blush, it doesn’t. Vetro is a former HandyDart driver and actor who ran unsuccessfully in the 2020 provincial election as an independent in Vancouver Kensington.

His address isn’t listed on the recall petition. Instead, mail goes to Rick Dignard in Maple Ridge.

Both Vetro and Dignard are anti-vaxxers and self-described freedom fighters, who are using their social networks to attract an army of the disaffected to canvass in Eby’s Vancouver-Point Grey riding — one of the wealthiest in the province.

At a Jan. 18 rally outside Eby’s constituency office, speakers included a couple of doctors cited by the College of Physicians and Surgeons for spreading misinformation about COVID vaccines and ivermectin as a treatment, truck convoy supporters, climate change deniers and an assortment of others who want to defund the CBC, stop drag queen story hours at libraries and oppose sex education teaching in schools.

But recall organizers may have landed on a wedge issue that gets them the necessary 16,449 signatures by March 20 to force a byelection.

That wedge issue? A 278-page, 645-clause behemoth titled the Health Professions and Occupations Act that was supported unanimously by the B.C. Liberals and the Greens.

But all hell broke loose in November when the New Democrats invoked closure, abruptly ending the clause-by-clause debate in the legislature. Suddenly, the Opposition found much to dislike even though nothing in the bill had changed.

Passed by the NDP majority, the bill has yet to be enacted. But the furor surrounding is potent.

Recall supporters along with Doctors of B.C., the B.C. Nurses’ Union and others describe it as unwanted political interference that threatens the privacy of professionals because all complaints will be public before they are substantiated and allows government-appointed disciplinary committees access to patient records.

Lots of professionals live in Eby’s riding, a wealthy enclave that has been represented by three of the last four premiers — two of them B.C. Liberals — and by Conservative prime minister Kim Campbell.

They might agree that the New Democrats are meddling too much.

They might agree with the recall organizer’s statement that “not one profession is immune from the overreach of government regarding our own personal health” even if they might disagree with the characterization of Eby as a “dictator”.

If enacted, 15 colleges of health will be amalgamated into six with the government appointing all of the board members. The majority of the board and disciplinary committee members must be qualified in the professions. The remainder will be public representatives.

Overseeing the colleges, there will be a discipline tribunal appointed by the government. That tribunal will have access to patient records, if needed.

What recall petitioners, Opposition parties and some professional groups are saying that’s not entirely true is that this bill has been rushed through with little debate.

It’s true that no meetings to discuss it were held in Eby’s riding. But it’s somewhat disingenuous for Doctors of B.C. president Josh Greggain to suggest that physicians were blindsided by the bill and for the Green leader and Liberal health critic Shirley Bond to say there was no chance for debate.

The legislation flows from the high-profile, 2018 inquiry into dysfunction at the B.C. College of Dental Surgeons. Author Harry Cayton’s report made recommendations specific to it and went on to recommend a massive overhaul of how all health-care professionals should be regulated, governed and disciplined to better serve the public interest.

While the board of the College of Dentists was supposedly elected, Cayton noted that few dentists voted and sometimes members were acclaimed. In their disciplinary decisions, he concluded that it and other colleges were often more concerned with protecting its members than protecting the public.

The report describes how after a “collegial discussion” following a complaint about a naturopath who prescribed a homeopathic remedy containing rabid dog saliva to an autistic child, the College of Naturopathic Physicians allowed the registrant to quietly resign. Why? Because the naturopaths themselves couldn’t agree on their own standards.

Self-regulated colleges also control the supply of medical professionals.

“Professional regulation has as its public intention the maintenance of quality; in practice it may create a cartel or monopoly,” the report said.

Following its release in 2019, the government sought written input from the public, health-care professionals and regulators. After the draft legislation was unanimously approved by the committee, it went to the legislature for third reading.

Complicated, lengthy and arcane, the Opposition parties appear to have only realized after social media lit up with criticism of Bill 36 that the devil is in some of the bill’s uncomfortable details.

Most troubling are the government’s control of appointments to the colleges’ boards and the colleges’ oversight by a government-appointed supervisor.

Bill 36 alone almost certainly is not enough for Point Grey voters to join hands with a motley crew of activists from outside the riding and force a byelection.

But with an imploding health-care system, inflation, high housing costs, random attacks on the rise and myriad other issues, this is the best shot at recall that anyone has had since the legislation was enacted in 1995 by NDP premier Mike Harcourt.

dbramham@postmedia.com

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