The holiday period has spawned a number of concerns over health care across the Northwest, much of it coming as many emergency departments in the region suspended services over lack of staffing, the hardest hit of those being Kitimat, Hazelton and Haida Gwaii.
Prince Rupert was fortunate not to see those measures required, but the dialogue on health care has made for concerns in other areas, voiced partially through the Northern Health Social media page and through other online portals for discussion in the community.
For Councillor Teri Forster, who is also a nurse in the region, the concerns have come through social occasions and she raised some of those as a note for Council on Monday night.
The councillor suggesting that Council issue an invitation for Northern Health officials to come to Council to provide an update and answer questions related to the current status of health care in Prince Rupert.
"It's no secret that I'm a nurse, but as a nurse I can't speak for Northern Health.
And so I'm wondering if we could maybe invite Julia the Health Services Administrator to come and talk to us about some of the Services that Northern Health does, wait times and maybe where the future of Health care in our town is going.
Just so that then I think that would be very helpful for our community"
Mayor Pond noting of the consensus of Council, that an invitation to Julia. Pemberton at Northern Health should be issued.
Council may want to put a cc to that invitation for the Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Health,
MLA Jennifer Rice who currently holds that post with the BC NDP government hasn't had a lot to say through her social media stream over the last few months as those issues ebbed and flowed.
But as her constituency office is but a few metres from City Hall, inviting her to speak towards the topic may help bring a provincial perspective to the issues.
The job of issuing invitations likely falls to Corporate Administrator Ross Miller and she might be busy churning out those missives over the next few days.
In addition to the Northern Health request, Monday's session saw Councillor Niesh suggest that Council should have some discussion on vandalism themes downtown with the RCMP officer in charge, a conversation that in the spirit of transparency might best be done in the public forum of council, rather than outside of the chamber.
Prior to the Holiday Break, Councillor Nick Adey had also put in some requests for presentations, asking that council host CityWest for a session on the city owned communication company's plans for the year ahead.
As well, at that same meeting he had noted that Council should receive an update on the city's Snow removal policies for the roads, that after some concerns from residents on slippery streets in December.
So, if followed through on, the booking calendar may be filling up fast for guest appearances at upcoming Council sessions.
The discussion on Northern health can be reviewed from the City's video archive at the 18 minute mark.
More notes from the Monday session can be reviewed here.
Cross posted from the North Coast Review.
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