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The controversial physician-cum-MLA who sparked public outcry over emergency-room wait times last November has been crowned leader of the Alberta Liberal Party. Raj Sherman, MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark, won the election September 10 with 54.5 per cent of the weighted vote, beating out challengers Hugh MacDonald, Laurie Blakeman, Bill Harvey and Bruce Payne.
A former president of the Alberta Medical Association’s Section of Emergency Medicine, Sherman served as a flight physician with STARS (Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society) for eight years and as an emergency room physician for 15 years before being elected to the legislature in the 2008 provincial general election. He was immediately appointed parliamentary assistant to the minister of health and wellness, a position he held until his suspension from government caucus in November 2010. According to his campaign website, Sherman continues to practise medicine “on weekends in Edmonton to keep his skills sharp and to stay in touch with what really matters, the reason he got into politics in the first place, the needs of the people.”
In responding to the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s questions at the ATA Summer Conference in Banff for a YouTube video (www.youtube.com/albertateachers), Sherman described himself as a product of the public education system whose first career choice was to be a teacher. Because few school jurisdictions were hiring beginning teachers in the mid-1980s, Sherman decided to pursue medicine instead.
While identifying choice as one of the strengths of the public education system, Sherman also acknowledged its problems, including the high school completion rate, class size and a lack of coordination of services in schools.
“Teachers are actually doing the work of nurses and health care workers and social workers and counsellors. You’re surrogate parents to these young people,” he said. “Your job and your time should be invested in teaching.”
Alluding to the province’s five-year health action plan, Sherman emphasized the need for stable, predictable education funding,
“This is a time to be investing in teachers, hiring more teachers and getting them more staff, and that cannot happen when government doesn’t give adequate funding and sustainable funding,” he said.
When asked about the support he would extend the profession, he emphasized that teachers are the experts in education. While government should develop accountability and performance measures in conjunction with the profession, teachers themselves should be responsible for effecting transformation.
“I’m an expert in health care, but I’m not the expert in education. I don’t have all the answers,” he said. “My job as a legislator and a member of the government would be to give you the funding—stable and predictable funding—so you can plan your complex programs.”
He pointed out that, as the key to fixing the health care system, the social determinants of health are rooted in education. Emphasizing early childhood programs and wraparound services in schools and hiring additional teachers and support staff would go a long way toward creating a knowledge-based society.
“If you want to fix health care, I’ve always said, stop investing in hospitals. Invest in education of our children, invest in our teachers, invest in our future,” he said.
On September 12, Sherman, who has served as an independent MLA since his suspension from government caucus, was welcomed into the Liberal caucus. He succeeds David Swann, another physician, as leader of the official opposition.
Like the Alberta Liberal Party, the Alberta Party also sports a new leader. Glenn Taylor, a power engineer and three-term mayor of Hinton, coasted to victory at the party’s leadership convention in May with 55 per cent of the vote, trouncing challengers Randy Royer, Lee Easton and Tammy Maloney.
In his remarks to the convention, Taylor suggested that the Alberta Party would be defined by the left and the right and would ensure that the “politics of yesterday” were left behind. Attributing the need for the party to the province’s “democratic deficit” and “culture of fear,“ he described the organization as “a citizens’ movement for change.”
The Alberta Party must win without becoming that against which it struggles, he said. It must “do politics differently” by offering clearly articulated policy responses to Albertans’ concerns.
