ANGELIC HOLIDAY TREATS Meringue Angels can be decorative or dessert B1
HAPPY TO BE BACK
Dumba reflects on national team experience B4
CENTRAL ALBERTA’S DAILY NEWSPAPER
BREAKING NEWS ONLINE AT WWW.REDDEERADVOCATE.COM
MISSING WOMEN INQUIRY
TUESDAY, DEC. 18, 2012
Songs to end hunger
Bias, years of mistakes blamed BY JAMES KELLER THE CANADIAN PRESS VANCOUVER — Bias against the poor, drug-addicted sex workers in Vancouver’s troubled Downtown Eastside led to a series of failures that allowed serial killer Robert Pickton to spend years hunting his victims unimpeded by police, a public inquiry has found. Commissioner Wally Oppal’s 1,448-page final report, released Monday, chronicles years of mistakes that allowed Pickton to lure dozens of women to his farm in Port Coquitlam, B.C., with little interference from police and even less concern from the public. He noted that even referring to Pickton’s victims as missing women is a misnomer. “The women didn’t go missing. They aren’t just absent, they didn’t just go away. They were taken.” In a news conference interrupted by applause, jeers, drumming and aboriginal singing, Oppal appealed to the general public, asking people to imagine what life was like for Pickton’s victims and other women like them, even before they crossed paths with Pickton. He said they were treated — in life and in death — as nobodies. “I ask you to imagine how you would feel, put yourself in the shoes of one of the missing and murdered women and think how it would feel if you were dismissed, considered unworthy of attention by the majority of the people in your city. “What if you were made to feel invisible, unworthy?” Oppal’s report found the problems with the investigation included structural ones — poor co-operation between Vancouver police and the RCMP, for example. But many were a result of something far more insidious and difficult to cure.
Please see INQUIRY on Page A5
Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff
Susan Aglukark performs during a performance of the Huron Carole Monday evening. Aglukark was joined by Tom Jackson, Sarah Slean, Matt Dusk and Del Barber. The Huron Carole is a project of the Christmas and Winter Relief Association, which has a mandate is to support organizations doing hands-on work with the homeless and hungry in Canada. The Red Deer Food bank was accepting donations of money and non-perishable food at the door.
Hospital missing care targets BY SUSAN ZIELINSKI ADVOCATE STAFF
PERFORMANCE REPORT
Only 39 per cent of patients at the Red Deer hospital emergency department waiting for admission got an acute care bed within eight hours of coming to emergency between April and September. The target for Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre is to admit 75 per cent of those patients within eight hours by March 2013, the end of the fiscal year. For the most part, patients waited in emergency beds. The hospital did much better when it came to treating and discharging emergency patients. Seventy per cent of patients were discharged within four hours and the target is 80 per cent. The data on emergency room care was released last week in Alberta Health Services’ latest performance report. Dr. Evan Lundall, Central Zone
medical director for AHS in Red Deer, said summer does pose special challenges with its increase in trauma patients and less hospital staff due to vacation time. But Red Deer did open four new intensive care unit beds recently to help move patients through the hospital system, he said. “That’s going to be a tremendous help and part of the solution,” Lundall said on Monday. AHS is continuing to work on increasing the number of continuing care beds to open up more acute care beds, and moving patients to hospitals in their home communities when appropriate, he said. In September, 47 people in the Central Zone were waiting in acute or subacute beds for continuing care beds. The target is 48. A total of 120 people were waiting in the community for continuing care
beds. The target is 105. Lundall said a lot has been going on in the background and work to improve admission and discharge systems will continue. “We need all the pieces of the puzzle to come together.” Wait times for surgery is considered on target in Red Deer for hip and knee replacement surgeries and cataract surgery. “The elements and ingredients for good measures in this regard have fallen into place a lot more easily than emergency department wait times,” Lundall said. Ninety per cent of people waited less than 22.3 weeks for hip replacement surgery so the target of 22 weeks was almost met. Ninety per cent of people waited less than 24.6 weeks for knee replacement surgery. The target is 28 weeks. Ninety per cent of people waited less than 20 weeks for cataract surgery. The target is 25 weeks. szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
Officials have a plan to deal with disasters Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on emergency preparedness in Central Alberta. BY MURRAY CRAWFORD ADVOCATE STAFF Though the statistical odds of an ice storm or blizzard shutting down Red Deer for days on end are fairly slim, it never hurts to have a plan just in case it does happen. Recently, ice fog and hoar frost on power lines and trees played a role in disrupting power for 3,000 customers in the Red Deer, Lacombe, Bowden and Olds area. But what if Red Deer was frozen solid under a record ice storm, or snowed in as never before in a blizzard for the ages? That’s where municipal emergency management departments come in. Karen Mann, City of Red Deer Emergency Management co-odinator, and Ric Henderson, Red Deer County Emergency Management co-ordinator, are both charged in their municipalities with keeping an up-to-date plan
PLEASE RECYCLE
and making sure they are ready to respond to any danger. Within the first 24 hours of an ice storm, electricity is likely to become the most affected. “If the power were to go out, obviously the electrical utility is going to be out there on the front line,” said Mann. “Their No. 1 concern is always public safety, just like every department. They would be assessing the damage, assessing the impacts and determining a course of action for restoring power in a logical manner.” Meanwhile, the city has an emergency operations centre where the team that runs it would assemble and look at any impacts the situation presented, starting with public safety, then property and city businesses. “They support the front line operations on the sites,” said Mann. “They’re not the ones up the power pole or the firefighter on the front lines; they’re supporting that through planning, logistics, operational and financial support and overall governance, as well as public information.”
Please see PLAN on Page A2
WEATHER
INDEX
Snow. High -12. Low -23.
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File photo by RANDY FIEDLER/Advocate staff
Carla and Neil Fischer are stunned by the broken windows and damaged vinyl siding of their duplex after a fierce hail storm battered the hamlet of Springbrook. ALBERTA
CANADA
CLEMENCY REQUESTED ROBOCALLS CASE FOR RONALD SMITH IN JUDGE’S HANDS The Canadian government has sent a letter to Montana’s governor requesting that he spare the life of death row inmate Ronald Smith. A3
The electoral fates of six Conservatives MPs landed in the hands of a judge Monday as lawyers on both sides of the so-called robocalls case wrapped up their arguments. A5