In re: Premier waffles on judicial inquiry into Alberta health-care allegations

RG: It didn't take her long to completely about-face with respect to this critical campaign promise. You can add her to the list of provincial Tories who are nearing zero credibility.

Premier waffles on judicial inquiry into Alberta health-care allegations

B: Competing unstated assumptions: Those closer to the badness have more knowledge to ask better questions of their peers, but are less trusted by outsiders. Those independent of the badness would have to learn quite a bit from their suspects to engage in the same depth of inquiry, but would be more trusted by outsiders.

No one is asking: How would we fund a multi-year independent inquiry at 7-8 figures per year (to do it correctly)?

RG: @B: I agree with the assumptions, but I'm not sure of their relevance. The problem with a health quality council review is that it has no teeth and would be seen as (and perhaps be in actuality) a half-hearted and insincere attempt to get to the bottom of things. A judicial inquiry would be independent and separate from any partisan politics (which is good, because some of the people suspected of inappropriate behaviour are in the PC party and likely to be whitewashed in any government proceeding).

As to the cost issue (which I have heard raised before), I understand your point. How, during times of fiscal belt-tightening, do we justify the cost of this inquiry when there's no guarantee it will have any "tangible" results (i.e., findings of wrongdoing, recommendations to prevent same in the future)? I guess my position is that it would be worth the money to know that people have been behaving in a responsible, accountable manner (or, conversely, that they haven't). If the money isn't felt to be "worth it", then why investigate any allegations of unethical/illegal activity--ever--be it at a government level or individual? Should we all be exempt from investigation and prosecution because of the cost to the legal system? As to the money itself, it's fascinating how the government can justify spending taxpayer money on astronomical oil company subsidies ($1 billion in 2008), redundant levels of bureaucracy, pay raises for MLAs...but when it comes to ponying up some meager lucre to ensure the people in power are behaving properly, there's no cash to be had.

At any rate, my initial premise was that Redford made a key campaign promise that many people (myself included) bought into (or at least WANTED to believe), on which she is now reneging. Either have a judicial inquiry, or don't; compelling reasons exist on both sides, and I can live with the decision (which is for people much smarter than me to determine). But when you promise something, make it a large electoral issue, then completely change your mind and sweep it under the carpet, I get frustrated and annoyed.

B: ‎+RG: One could determine what to investigate through the usual cost/benefit analysis.

Assume an independent inquiry. Also assume that it finds that all of the allegations of misconduct are true. What would be the benefits and costs to society to systematically address some or all modes of misconduct found?

Now assume the opposite, that the independent inquiry finds no misconduct and makes the commendation about better documentation and communication of policies. Do you honestly believe that critics will back off, and not simply allege that the independent inquiry was tainted, that witnesses refused to cooperate on government orders, or that it was not sufficiently independent? What would be the costs to society of this outcome?

No inquiry would come to either of those extreme conclusions. Given that we are talking about error prone processes performed by humans, we can expect some variance from the ideal some of the time. In manufacturing, a human might acceptably perform a standard task incorrectly one time out of 500. In data entry, that error might be as high as one time out of 10 (acceptable at the phone company, not acceptable at cheque clearing). In some tasks or professions requiring a high degree of judgement on incomplete information, humans acceptably make mistakes half or two-thirds of the time. Think baseball hitters. While there are policies that could reduce such errors (at varying costs), no procedural or physical policy can eliminate all errors.

Given that AHS conducts at least millions of standard and judgemental transactions a year, many involving ambiguous information, I would personally not be surprised at a finding of mis-queing (intentional or otherwise) in up to one-quarter of all cases. A quality or process expert would be able to more closely determine the expected error in the system as is.

If we want to do this through the quality council, or an independent inquiry, all parties should first agree to some well-defined basic things *before* it begins: a) the tests to be used to evaluate whatever they're examining; b) the thresholds for concluding that the system performed appropriately, inappropriately, needs improvement, etc. Otherwise, either process could cherry-pick or ignore the naturally occurring errors and conclude whatever the charismatic committee member wants to conclude.

I don't see parties on either side eager to do the kind of work needed to head toward an objective finding here.