Elise Stolte: Mystery surrounding Edmonton's medical superlab just gets deeper

ELISE STOLTE

Updated: May 27, 2019

Here’s a mystery: If space at the downtown Dynalife lab is so tight, how did officials carve out offices and labs for five new medical startups?

Because that’s what they’re announcing Monday.

One of these startups is creating a less intrusive urine test for colon cancer. Another is using artificial intelligence to improve prostate cancer screening, reducing the need for a biopsy. Between the five of them, the independent tech startups now have 5,000 square feet in the centre of a facility the public has been told is so crowded, it really can’t continue.

And those are not the only new colleagues the downtown lab is welcoming, said Jason Pincock, chief executive for Dynalife, a private company that holds a public contract for lab services. The Alberta Health Services (AHS) team for immunohistochemistry is moving here from the University of Alberta lab in June, putting public sector employees under a private roof.

Dynalife’s announcement Monday obviously has political undertones.

The Edmonton-based company is in a fight for its life, buoyed by the United Conservative promise to tear up the NDP’s $50-million buyout deal. It’s part of the move to scuttle Edmonton’s proposed Superlab, which had been under construction since March when newly-elected Premier Jason Kenney’s government hit pause.

As an Edmonton resident, it’s hard to know whether to cheer or grieve that decision. Edmonton needs investment in its medical labs — 76 per cent of equipment at the public AHS-run labs is past its useful life. The superlab included that equipment cost.

Because of that, pulling the plug on the superlab will not save $590 million, as Kenney boasted during the election.

But at the same time, I don’t think recent narratives about Dynalife have been accurate.

Late last month, I asked former health minister Sarah Hoffman about the situation. She again pointed to Dynalife as the “biggest pressure point,” because it works out of leased space with old equipment.

But the NDP fail to mention Dynalife is leasing space from AIMCo, the investment arm of the provincial government. What can be more secure than that? If the Dynalife contract is serving the public interest, a premier can make that lease continue.

Plus, Dynalife’s equipment is not old, especially not when compared to the government’s own equipment. That’s where the real issue lies. According to the 2017 Health Quality Council report, Dynalife was investing between 25 and 29 cents per test annually in capital upgrades since 2012/13.

For AHS, that number was never higher than 9 cents. That’s why three quarters of the public equipment is ready to age out while, at the private site, Dynalife has made itself a demonstration site for next-generation technologies.

I toured the Dynalife facility Friday morning, watched robotic arms and scanners check the chemical content of blood. I saw where one staff member handles all the diabetes tests for northern Alberta, where all provincial pap smears go for analysis. It certainly felt calm, structured and well ordered.

Pincock says they still have space to expand in the current building, a two-storey structure that fills almost a half-block between the University of Alberta’s Enterprise Square and the Don Wheaton Family YMCA. Plus, he says, they could easily find more space in nearby office towers, if equipped with proper ventilation. Most of their equipment is no larger than a deep freeze.

Dynalife Medical Labs CEO Jason Pincock poses for a photo in front of an image of red blood cells at their downtown headquarters Friday May 24, 2019. DAVID BLOOM / POSTMEDIA

I also asked AHS for a tour of its medical labs. It turned me down. For more than a week I’ve been asking Alberta Health how much of the $590 million Superlab budget was for medical equipment upgrades versus building construction. No response.

Health Minister Tyler Shandro says he’s still seeking legal opinions to determine exactly how much cancelling the construction contract for the Superlab would cost in penalties. The project is on ice now.

We’re doing “due diligence,” he says, “taking a fresh look at this, trying to get all the information.” He would not give a timeline for that review.

Going back to the 2017 Alberta Health Quality Council report, it did not specifically call for buying out Dynalife. That was an NDP decision. The quality council simply said any private contract should be undertaken in the public interest. It recommended the current contract with Dynalife (a geographic approach, clear customer service targets and rewards for innovation) should be taken as a model for any new independent oversight board. Dynalife does not get paid per test.

Andrew Neuner, chief executive of the quality council, said its research stressed the importance of consolidation so the same type of test can be done in batches, increasing efficiency and quality control.

The current approach is like a school system, he says, “where they’ve got English on one side of town and math on the other.”

It’s frustrating because there are still too many unanswered questions to know who’s right and who’s wrong. Dynalife appears to be professional and efficient, but the government data suggest the public labs have been starved for investment for years. It’s time the government stop treating this issue like a political frisbee.

estolte@postmedia.com

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Elise Stolte: Recycling as we know it failed. Edmonton seeks new approach before reinvesting

We believed a fairy tale for decades, virtuously filling blue bags and setting them by the curb.

ELISE STOLTE

Updated: June 5, 2019

Workers sort recycling at Edmonton Waste Management Centre in December 2017. IAN KUCERAK / POSTMEDIA

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The financial impact of China’s recycling crackdown hit Edmonton much harder than predicted.

In 2018, China cracked down on Western countries shipping bales of poorly sorted recyclables — junk plastic that was melted down and sometimes burned or thrown in waterways from family-run, poorly-regulated recycling shops.

Their crack-down spread to other Asian countries. It changed the global market. Now low-quality plastics and dirty, poorly-sorted paper are nearly impossible to off-load.

It was good news for the Earth; bad news for Edmonton’s budget.

Last year, officials estimated the recycling budget would take a $1 million hit. That was actually $3.5 million, and despite the increased cost, Edmonton recycled less material. It sent 15,640 tonnes of blue bag material to the landfill last year, 4,140 tonnes more than the year before.

It’s time we realize what a failed experiment this version of recycling has been. We believed a fairy tale for decades, virtuously filling blue bags and setting them by the curb. We thought simply collecting the plastic, paper, glass and tin, doing a basic sort and selling it overseas made it just disappear.

Now the pigeons are coming home to roost. Unwanted Canadian trash in the Philippines spun into a major diplomatic row — to the point where the Philippine president threatened to declare war. Across North America, municipalities are burning and landfilling recyclables. Last week, Lacombe cancelled its curb side recycling program all together over the rising costs.

But it’s not all hopeless.

Calgary’s predicament sounded crazy when residents learned their city was spending $300,000 a year just to stockpile 100 shipping containers of hard-to recycle clear clamshell plastics. It refused to give in and landfill the material, now that the clamshell had already been collected and sorted.

That was last month. But Calgary’s dedication is paying off. They’re now sending this clear plastic to the Lower Mainland to get a second, more rigorous sort. Then the plastic gets shipped back to Calgary to be soaked in a caustic solution to remove adhesive and labels.

Clean and uncontaminated, it’s finally shredded, melted and turned into easy-to-process pellets locally. A responsible, albeit expensive and resource-intensive process.

We need a better solution, one that recognizes how much work recycling really is.

Look back up the line. Who is creating all this junk? Yes, blame goes to all of us consumers who get and discard single-use containers with nearly every food purchase.

But the responsibility doesn’t stop there. The companies deciding how to wrap products need to step up. And because it would be foolish to think they’ll reform just to be green, governments need to charge for waste created.

But that’s not just my idea. Every other province either has or is working on a system of “extended producer responsibility” — a program to charge companies based on the amount and type of packaging they create.

The money can add up. Officials told city councillors a system similar to B.C.’s would mean an extra $13 million a year to off-set recycling costs in Edmonton.

The cost of more responsible packaging likely gets passed down to the consumer, but the fees pay for processing waste at the other end. Hopefully, the system also reduces the amount of plastic created in the first place.

Unsurprisingly, all major municipalities are now behind this lobby effort. They’re starting consultation with industry, researching the best approach and trying to secure a joint meeting with Minister of Environment Jason Nixon.

But even that won’t solve all of Edmonton’s problems. Here, the situation is compounded by the fact local equipment is just so old. The recycling facility was built in 1998 and still uses hand sorting, people pulling different types of recyclables off conveyor belts at each station.

What plastic they recover is now going to companies in Ontario, along with the tin. But most paper is still going overseas, now to South Korea instead of China. Only the paper picked from Edmonton’s community bin program with the large boxes in shopping centre parking lots is clean enough to use locally

Officials says sorting equipment needs to be completely replaced at a cost $37 million. But, with council’s blessing, they decided to hold off. The future for recycling is just too uncertain.

“We don’t want to go through any significant changes now,” says Michael Robertson, who’s responsible for Edmonton’s recycling facility. “It’s not the best, but we’re doing the best we can with the situation.”

Funny. If you step back, that comment is actually refreshing, no? For decades, we were sold a bill of goods on how great Edmonton recycling was. Now the city is at least being honest: there is no silver bullet. Recycling is not easy. We need new solutions.

estolte@postmedia.com

twitter.com/estolte

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Michael Robertson. 

 Bill 8: GSAs, school fees, power of boards to be tweaked under Education Amendment Act

JANET FRENCH

Updated: June 5, 2019

There will be no time limit for school principals to grant a student’s request to start a gay-straight alliance club, according to a new bill introduced in the Alberta legislature Wednesday.

And, if passed, students would no longer be guaranteed permission to use words like “gay” or “queer” in any school club names. Although public, private and charter schools would still have to write policies promising to create a safe and respectful environment for students and staff, the government would no longer tell schools what those policies must say, and schools could keep the policies secret if they want.

The same provincial privacy legislation would still prevent school employees from disclosing whether a student is in a school club, save for exceptional circumstances, such as someone threatening members of a gay-straight alliance (GSA), government officials said.

However, replacing the School Act with the Education Act would eliminate a clause that says school principals may only tell parents if the school has a GSA, and no other information about the club.

The rolling back of protections for LGBTQ students introduced by the former NDP government prompted those now-opposition MLAs on Wednesday to dub the government’s bill, “An Act to Destroy Gay-Straight Alliances.”

The proposed legal changes are part of an exhaustive list of overhauls to Alberta’s central piece of school legislation as the new government moves to replace the 31-year-old School Act with an amended version of the Education Act.

On Wednesday, Education Minister Adriana LaGrange introduced Bill 8, which seeks to tweak the Education Act passed under the former Progressive Conservative government in 2012, but never proclaimed.

“Today’s bill will help us to deliver a modern education system so all children in Alberta can reach their full potential,” LaGrange said Wednesday.

Still to come later this summer are 21 sets of education regulations that may further change the rules for Alberta schools, including limits on school fees, parameters for charter schools and transportation requirements.

A prohibition on charging parents for basic school supplies will likely remain in place, but the future of free school bus rides and reduced cost school bus passes for students is unknown.

More powers for school boards

If amended as proposed, the Education Act would allow boards to provide alternative programs outside their geographic boundaries if the local school board doesn’t want to offer them.

School boards could fire a trustee who breaches their code of conduct and will be able to draw their own ward boundaries without government approval.

Catholics would be eligible to vote and run for either public or Catholic school boards, but non-Catholics could only vote and run for public school boards.

Boards and charter schools must also appoint an audit committee with at least one member of the business community and one member of the adult education community who are not school trustees.

Dropout age to stay at 16

The government has opted to toss out some changes in the original Education Act, such as allowing students to attend school free up until they were 20 years old. The dropout age would remain at 16, not rise to 17. The province can’t afford these changes right now, and fewer students are dropping out early to work in the oil patch, LaGrange said.

Also removed was a proposed switch to define a student’s residency by where the student lives, not by where her parents or guardian lives.

The government also intends to keep a plan introduced by the NDP for a provincial age requirement to start kindergarten. As of fall 2020, all children starting kindergarten must turn five by Dec. 31 of that school year.

New teacher quality standards and new certification requirements for superintendents and principals will still take effect Sept. 1, 2019, as scheduled.

The amended Education Act would also do away with a cap on Alberta’s charter schools, which is currently set at 15. Bill 8 would change the requirements for charter schools and make them subject to the same fee limits as school boards. There are currently 13 charters in Alberta.

School boards would also have to introduce policies to guide schools on stickhandling disputes between parents and school staff.

Many school boards will also need to print up some new letterhead. There will no longer be distinctions between school districts, divisions and regional divisions, and division numbers will be removed from their names.

Clash over LGBTQ rights

Under the amended act, all schools would be required to have a publicly posted student code of conduct to prevent bullying.

“I care about every single student, regardless of the label that they have,” LaGrange said.

School principals must still “permit” GSAs, but if they delay or refuse a student’s request, a student would have to appeal to the school board or raise the issue with the education minister.

Opposition NDP education critic Sarah Hoffman said the former government introduced stronger language in 2017 because students said some school leaders were stalling their club requests.

After the UCP was elected in April, students across Alberta held walkout protests to express their concerns about changes to GSA rules and LGBTQ-friendly policy requirements.

During Wednesday’s question period, Opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley said the proposed changes would discourage students from asking for GSAs and scare kids away from attending for fear of being outed to their families. She also said reverting to old GSA rules puts kids’ lives at risk, given the high rate of suicide among LGBTQ youth.

“Minister, be honest, you know as many as half of (school) boards will abandon GSAs and you’re OK with it, because your values are more important than the safety of those kids,” Notley said.

LaGrange said LGBTQ students she’d spoken with wanted a more “balanced approach” to privacy rules, that would allow students in GSAs to go on field trips with parental permission.

The government will have “good oversight” of schools to ensure student GSA requests go smoothly, she said.

Last year, the then-NDP government said 28 Alberta private schools were at risk of losing their public funding over safe school policies that didn’t meet the current law. Funding to those schools had never stopped, LaGrange’s press secretary said.

One of the school’s policies says, “Men and women are to dress and behave in accordance with their biological sex,” and, “God’s institution of marriage, a covenant relationship between one man and one woman, is the sole environment within which sexual activity is permitted, and is the context in which children are to be raised.”

LaGrange did not answer a question about whether such policies are acceptable by her or the proposed Education Act.

“Every school authority will have to adhere to the law,” she said.

jfrench@postmedia.com

Conversion therapy group answers by Friday

A working group that was examining how to ban the practice of conversion therapy expects to hear from Health Minister Tyler Shandro by the end of the week on whether the new government will support its efforts.

Several members of the group were in the legislature’s public gallery during question period Tuesday when NDP MLA Nicole Goehring, who co-chairs the effort, used her question to publicly challenge Shandro to meet with the group.

Shandro agreed, and a 30-minute meeting was held a short time later.

“He sat down with us, we expressed again the importance of this work going forward,” Goehring said.

Goehring said her group wanted some clarity on its next steps. It didn’t get one, but Shandro promised it would by the end of the week.

Conversion therapy is a discredited and harmful practice in which pseudo-psychological and spiritual interventions are used to try to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Some in the UCP, including Shandro, continue to suggest the group was created as a political move by the NDP hoping to expose socially conservative views in UCP in the lead-up to the election.

But Glynnis Lieb, from the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the University of Alberta, rejected that characterization.

“We are dealing with people dying constantly over this feeling there is something about them that is broken, and unless the government actively stands up and says this is wrong … we are going to continue to have a base of Albertans who believe that these folks are broken,” she said.

egraney@postmedia.com

            MY NDP MLA JANIS IRWIN, EDMONTON HIGHLANDS 

'A little bit of a red flag': Valley Line West LRT shortlist includes SNC-Lavalin

PAIGE PARSONS

Updated: June 5, 2019

An elevated guideway for the west leg of the Valley Line LRT would look similar to this, covering a span from 146 Street to 154 Street in order to avoid traffic at 149 Street along Stony Plain Road. SUPPLIED: CITY OF EDMONTON / EDMWP

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Embattled Quebec engineering firm SNC-Lavalin is one of three contenders vying to build the west leg of the Valley Line LRT.

The shortlist for the 14-kilometre extension from downtown to Lewis Farms includes three teams made up of a consortium of companies and guarantors, all seeking to design, build and partially finance the project.

The three groups selected to proceed to the request for proposal stage include:

• Flatiron/AECON/Dragados Valley Line West Joint Venture

• Urban Mobility Partners

• WestLINK Group

The company behind the WestLINK team is SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal-based engineering and construction giant firm facing fraud and corruption charges.

“Obviously, that name has got a little bit of a red flag attached to it,” said Ward 9 Coun. Tim Cartmell Wednesday after the list was released. “It’s been in the news, but SNC does infrastructure works all over the world and I’m sure that our administration has done our due diligence to ensure that this is a proponent that is going to be able to deliver the project, at least until we see the final proposals.”

SNC-Lavalin is accused of paying $47.7 million in bribes to public officials in Libya between 2001 and 2011. The company, its construction division and a subsidiary also face one charge each of fraud and corruption for allegedly defrauding various Libyan organizations of $129.8 million.

If convicted, the company could be banned from bidding on federal government projects for up to 10 years.

Ward 1 Coun. Andrew Knack said it was “interesting” to learn that SNC-Lavalin made the shortlist as council members aren’t involved in the bidding process, but he said he’s confident the city’s fairness monitor and other contract measures will get the city the best contract and protect it from any situations that could arise as a consequence of SNC-Lavalin’s legal situation.

“The fact that we have two other very well-qualified groups that are bidding on this gives me comfort that we’re not going to be put in a situation where we’re not suddenly going to get value for what is a really critical project,” he said.

The city expects to announce the chosen bid in 2020. Construction will follow, and it is anticipated the line will be up and running in 2026 or 2027.

TransEd, the group of companies developing the Valley Line southeast extension, did not make a bid for the west extension, spokeswoman Sue Heuman said in an email Wednesday. Bruce Ferguson, the city’s LRT expansion and renewal manager, said each of the companies that comprise TransEd were given an opportunity to bid, but many opted not to. Bombardier, which is doing trains for the southeast extension, has indicated it would like to bid on trains for the west extension, but that part of the procurement won’t come until later, Ferguson said.

Unlike the southeast extension, which is being developed as a P3 project (a public-private partnership), the west line will be built as a “design, build, finance”, which means the chosen developer will partially finance the work, and will be incentivized to progress the project by payments being released only upon reaching certain milestones.

Through its P3 with the city, TransEd designed, is building, and will operate the southeast extension for 30 years. The 13-kilometre line will run between Mill Woods and downtown, and is supposed to be in operation by 2020.

Ferguson said decisions about the best way to operate the two extensions as a “seamless” line will be figured out in a few years once the southeast leg is up and running.

“It will be a single line end to end,” he said.

— With files from the Canadian Press