Mayor Peter Brown went live to address a recent article published by the Investigative Journalism Foundation, accusing Brown of providing "extensive behind the scenes help" in planning the OneHealth Associate Medical Centre.
In the Facebook livestream, Brown began by highlighting his responsibilities as mayor, like advocating for things that are "relevant to our community," whether that included recreation facilities, water lines, school sites, and healthcare.
Brown then explained how the former Airdrie MLA Rob Anderson suggested he get involved with the Airdrie Health Foundation. At that time, Brown said, Airdrie didn't have a 24 hour healthcare facility. Brown stayed with that organization "for years" before joining another group, the Airdrie Health Benefits Cooperative.
Brown continued to discuss the various health initiatives he had supported during his 15-year career as mayor. Showing print outs of previous articles covering the new healthcare facility, he said that the found it "interesting" that none of the article headlines mentioned the "private health centre" that the author of Investigative Journalism Foundation piece, Brett McKay, wrote about.
"I wonder why that is?" Brown asked rhetorically. "I'm going to go through this document piece by piece and try and share what we've determined based on this reporter's emails."
Among concerns that Brown stated, he outlines that McKay was an "outsider" who combined the 257 pages of provided email correspondence from Brown to create the article.
"He made a FOIP request, I think we furnished him with 257 pages," he says. "And through that information [McKay] pulled out pieces, because we've actually seen pieces of emails that are strung together to make parts of this story. Which is really, something I've never seen before."
Brown says that he was originally notified about the article coming out in February, while the provincial budget was being announced. The article, which was published June 11, came "out of nowhere" Brown said.
Brown asked watchers of the livestream how many text messages, emails and other correspondences they sent within a day, citing that he also sent many. Another issue he had with the article is the questions he was sent by the reporter. These questions were formulated around his integrity, Brown said.
"That really upset me," he said. "So, I provided a statement rather than answering these questions based on pieces of an email."
Brown then addressed that staff had supported the initiative, something that he was "very proud" to support as well, before outlining some of the additional initiatives he had supported throughout his time in the Mayor's office. He focused on his success on getting two schools built for the Airdrie community with help from trustee Sylvia Edgar and Don Thomas.
The Airdrie Health Foundation, Brown said, was born out of that same community support.
"I didn't get any letters," Brown said. "There was no articles written about subversive behaviour by the mayor's office or people who work here."
Brown then went onto discuss what steps he was willing to take to ensure services were provided to the community, including calling the minister of Municipal Affairs, the Premier's Office, as well as Rob Anderson, former Airdrie MLA.
"If you don't think I'm going to call him up to ask his advice on how to best approach a minister, what's the best way to provide documents to a minister?" he said. "Absolutely I'm going to do that. Every single other mayor that I've ever met ...There's nothing untoward about what we're trying to do."
Brown supplied another article headline that discussed the pause on the "multi-million dollar revamp" on the Airdrie Community Health Centre.
"If I had the power to tell Alberta Health what they do with their money and how they should spend it or organize everything, do you think that I would?" he said. "I'm not a health expert."
Brown then touched on his relationship with Dr. Julian Kyne, a local physician championing the OneHealth facility, whom the mayor said he has had a relationship with for 20 years. Brown said that Kyne had delivered "hundreds of babies" and supported "thousands of families" and was intent on providing better patient outcomes during his 30 years of working as a physician.
"We have an urgent care right now that's made from an existing building," Brown said. "Sometimes you're waiting in a hallway next to a bucket and a mop. It was never designed as a health centre."
Brown also had a significant issue with how the OneHealth facility itself was portrayed within the article.
"This is not private health care," he said. "It's not a private business and the urgent care, at the suggestion of this article [headline], is that the urgent care is private."
Brown said the proposed facility would run like "any other hospital," before commenting on how McKay took the 257 pages before "plotting" a story about Brown's staff. Brown tearfully stated that his staff "bleed blue" for Airdrie, before commenting on the City's involvement.
"The City was not involved in any meetings whatsoever when it came to the development of this proposal, other than we got to review it when it was completed," he said. "And the only reason we looked at it was because we speak government ... We understand how that bureaucracy works. So why wouldn't we support it?"
Brown then outlined the boundaries of what he could share with the public before
"You don't have to like it," he said. "In fact, you don't have to go to it, but don't take one article that pulls together 257 emails and tries to have some sort of undercover agenda. There isn't one."
"This has made me mad," Brown stated. "Fifteen years I've been here; I've never had to deal with this before. Especially with someone who doesn't know me. Someone who lives in Edmonton, or wherever he is up north ... He's never even talked to me."
Brown thanked his fellow city councillors towards the end of the livestream. He said that while he didn't always agree with his councillors, they all tried to do what was "best" for Airdrie. Brown apologized for getting emotional before ending the livestream.
"I'm proud to live here," he said. "I'm not going to please everybody, I know that. But I'm going to continue to advocate; so is our staff."
The Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) is a non-profit newsroom focused on public interest journalism, and is not associated with Great West Media or the Airdrie City View. The Airdrie City View has not seen the emails reported in the Brett McKay story and cannot independently verify their contents.
See the IJF story here.
