OTTAWA - Rookie MP Leona Aglukkaq's dramatic leap from a rocky stint in Nunavut politics to federal health minister raised eyebrows and a few alarms Thursday.
"At first blush, it signifies to me the lack of importance that the federal government pays to health care," said Sid Ryan, general vice-president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
"There's a massive drive by the doctors' associations . . . to attack medicare and to attempt to privatize it. You put in somebody that's got no experience, and it just makes it all the more easy.
"And I don't really think the Tories have got much interest in defending the (Canada Health) Act to begin with."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has taken a pointedly hands-off approach to medicare, treating it as a largely provincial matter even as it transfers billions of dollars in yearly federal cash to help fund it.
Former minister Tony Clement, who was promoted to Industry as Harper shuffled his cabinet Thursday, barely registered on the political radar during his tenure in Health.
Medicare advocates are now asking whether the cabinet appointment of a federal neophyte speaks volumes about Conservative commitment.
"I think it may indicate that the federal government is actually getting ready to walk away from health care altogether," said Mike McBane of the Canadian Health Coalition, a non-partisan group that promotes the public system.
Aglukkaq was not immediately available for comment Thursday.
She is a scrappy Nunavut-born career public servant who served as assistant deputy minister of the territorial Human Resources Department and decentralization secretariat. She was elected to the territorial legislature in 2004.
Aglukkaq served briefly as finance minister before taking on health and social issues until she stepped down to run in the recent federal election.
"I think local and regional opinion on her tenure as health and social services minister would definitely be very mixed," said Jim Bell, editor of Nunatsiaq News in Iqaluit.
"I think she'd earn a lot of praise for simply being able to tough it out as head of the toughest department in the Nunavut government. There were a lot of things that happened within the department that were quite embarrassing, one of them being the loss of accreditation at the hospital here."
Iqaluit's only hospital, then called Baffin Regional Hospital, lost its voluntary accreditation from the assessment body Accreditation Canada under Aglukkaq's watch, said Bell.
The hospital was found to have too few nurses and housekeepers, along with outdated risk-management systems.
"There was also a debacle involving an attempt to hire a group of international nurses from India and the Philippines that blew up when she was health minister," Bell said.
Lack of orientation and training was blamed when the costly venture ended with many recruits failing their skills exams before leaving Nunavut, he recalled.
To be fair, Bell says Aglukkaq "inherited" much of the staffing headaches that are chronic in a remote territory where steep housing and living costs are major detractions.
Robert Ouellet, head of the Canadian Medical Association, insisted Aglukkaq's appointment is good news.
"She's an experienced person in health care issues . . . she knows the problem in a remote area. She knows the problem of the shortage of doctors and lack of resources.
"We have those problems in the rest of Canada too."
Ouellet, who has run several private radiology clinics in Quebec, advocates a mix of private and public health care to take stress off what he says is a woefully overtaxed system.
He says he looks forward to working with Aglukkaq on how private services can complement medicare.
"The CMA doesn't want to privatize the system," he said. "The CMA wants to improve the system."
