The future of current BC United Cariboo North MLA Coralee Oakes is still in limbo, but she says she expects to make a decision this week.
“First I want to say thank you to all of the people that have reached out and offered support. It has been absolutely the best way to describe it, a sucker punch what has happened and it’s taken a bit of time to get up and catch my breathe and figure out what those next steps are, and they’re complicated, they’re very very complicated, you know to figure out what those next steps are.”
Oakes says another reason for the delay is that she is still doing her job as an MLA.
“You know what is happening with our healthcare system, I think we all do and I just have some constituent files that, those are the pieces that are keeping me up at night and I just have to figure out a way to advance those files to a state where I can reasonably have confidence that they’re going to be taken care of, and at this point I just don’t have that confidence and so I continue to do absolutely everything I possibly can to help the constituents.”
Oakes says some of these issues are life and death.
“Some of the files that we have ongoing, I worry that something is dramatically going to happen in their health between the transition period and the time when a new government gets set up and a new MLA gets installed in an office. That’s what keeps me up at night, and my focus right now is maintained entirely on trying to close those files.”
Oakes says that transition can take months.
She says she has permission to share one particular file she’s working on
“I met with her on Saturday. Penny, a local resident, was in a car accident, very complex healthcare issues and her appointments keep getting delayed three months at a time. The challenge is that our office has been working on her file because somebody with a brain injury, the hoops and the regulations and bureaucracy to try and get a next appointment and to navigate that system is very, very complex. And it absolutely was heartbreaking and we all had a cry, where now she’s talking about her funeral. So she’s gone from how she gets access to healthcare to now she’s actually talking to me about how she sets up her funeral, and I just don’t think that’s acceptable.”
Oakes says another person came into their office with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and they were given the wrong dosage and told to go to the Northern Health virtual clinic.
“The doctor there on the virtual clinic said you need to go to your urgent primary care to confirm the dosage. The constituent called the primary care clinic and they were told that it could take up to a month to get approval and she needed her medication immediately.”
Getting back to her own personal situation, Oakes says she has been going back and fourth on it but will make it soon.
Two candidates have come forward to run in the new Prince George-North Cariboo riding so far, Sheldon Clare representing the BC Conservatives and Randy Thompson representing the Green Party.
