Two Northern Health officials are coming to town soon. Chief operating officer Michael MacMillan and regional health administrator April Hughes are supposed to appear at a health forum organized by the Village of Burns Lake.

It’s about time. This community, and the health stakeholders who don’t work for Northern Health, have grown increasingly frustrated over the health authority’s policies, administration, and the cavalier way in which they feel they have been treated.

Just about every day that I am out around town, people who are involved with either the health auxiliary or the Lakes District Health Advisory Committee come up to me with a litany of complaints about the things Northern Health has or hasn’t done.

Even ordinary citizens who aren’t members of the local health community have expressed concern.

Part of the problem some locals say involves the regional health administrator working out of Vanderhoof.

Locals would like to see an administrator work out of Burns Lake.

There are local mutterings about ‘Vanderhoof is getting everything’, and the Lakes District is getting nothing.

Just last Thursday, the Stuart-Nechako Regional Hospital District (SNRHD) board of directors approved $720,000 for hospital outpatient service renovations, and $100,000 for an ultrasound unit, both for St. John’s Hospital in Vanderhoof.

Maybe Vanderhoof should be renamed ‘geographic centre of Northern Health’, with the way hospital funds from Northern Health are flowing its way.

Part of that funding includes our local tax money - collected on behalf of the SNRHD by the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako - going to hospital improvements in Vanderhoof.

Meanwhile, Lakes District Hospital continues on with a leaky roof and a wait list for special items such as the mattress for the Hospice room.

Another thing while McMillan and Hughes are here, perhaps they can put up a better explanation for the food regulations that have been imposed on bake sales, church suppers, and farmers markets.

Northern Health middle managers will parrot on about the regulations having been around for a decade, and that they’re not trying to change our way of life here in the Lakes District.

But, there is a difference between ‘regulations’ and ‘legislation’. Legislation is drawn up elected politicians in the B.C. legislature, and put into law with the assistance of bureaucrats.

Whereas, ‘regulations’ don’t go through parliamentary procedure in the legislature. They’re created by bureaucrats, and signed by cabinet ministers.

Nobody campaigned about food regulations.

Instead, some bureaucrats in Victoria, who have no idea about how integral and traditional bake sales, church suppers, and farmers markets are to our way of life, decided to create those food regulations, without any direction from elected politicians.

These are the kind of questions that you should be asking.

–Don Perdue