An alleged conflict of interest on Kamsack's town council has some residents of the community demanding the resignation of two councillors.
The controversy surrounds one of the most heated issues in any Saskatchewan rural community: healthcare.
Two of the town's councillors have close ties with one of the community's longtime doctors. Councilor Dot Davies is the wife of Dr. M. Davies, and Councilor Denise Wishnevetski-Grozik is an employee of Davies' clinic.
Kamsack resident Ken Fleet is the leader of a group of residents who argue that the two councillors - in particular Davies, who until recently also sat on the town's Medical Services Assessment Committee - have a pecuniary interest regarding votes on medical services issues which they have not been declaring.
"I'm just a taxpayer who's extremely fed up with what's happened over here in the last few years," Fleet told Yorkton This Week.
Fleet does not allege that the councilors have benefited from any of the decisions made during their time on council, but argues that the mere possibility of personal benefit or harm should be enough for them to declare a conflict of interest.
It's the boiling point for feelings that have been simmering in Kamsack for years. Fleet believes that local politics have been chasing medical professionals out of town since long before he even arrived in the community six years ago.
The incident that pushed Fleet and other residents into action was the resignation of Dr. J. Greyling earlier this summer. Fleet alleges that the conflict of interest on town council is what provoked the doctor's departure.
The truth of that claim is difficult to verify. Dr. Greyling declined to comment, instead referring YTW to Dr. Michael Bishop, the Sunrise Health Region's Vice President of Medical Services. Dr. Bishop would also not comment on specifics, but said that Dr. Greyling's resignation was not out of the ordinary.
"I did an exit interview with Dr. Greyling. There were many reasons [for his departure], and all of them were just normal reasons."
Furthermore, Dr. Bishop said that he doesn't consider Kamsack's rate of doctor turnover to be unusual for a rural community. He warned followers of the story to be aware that much of the information appearing in letters to the local newspaper is "incorrect."
The town's administrator, Rona Seidle, also recently submitted her resignation, which rumors around Kamsack attributed to the issues on council. Seidle, however, denies any connection."I'm just looking for something a little quieter," she says.
Mayor Betty Dix called a special meeting of council on August 9 to deal with the doctor shortage and the administrator's resignation. There, the debate came to a head. Ken Fleet and his supporters filled the town's council chambers to capacity and aired their frustrations-some of them loudly. A council member eventually called the police on one particularly angry older woman, who left voluntarily when officers arrived.
"Unfortunately, there's some people in town ... who are so frustrated that they just explode, and it really doesn't help the situation," says Fleet. "They were really angry, and they really tore a strip off a couple people in town council."
When council's next regular scheduled meeting arrived on August 16, Fleet returned-this time with an even bigger crowd and a 200-signature petition requesting a town meeting on the issue. He called for the resignation of Councilors Davies and Grozik, but order was maintained at this meeting.
The councilors did not resign, and by all indications have no plans of doing so. Later in the meeting, however, Councilor Davies stepped down from her seat on the Medical Services Assessment Committee.
"If my being on that committee is seen as a roadblock to bringing doctors into the community, I'll step back, because the most important thing is that we get doctors here," the councilor later told YTW in a telephone conversation.
She declined to comment any further on the situation without the presence of the other members of council.
"I sit on a council, and I don't think it's up to us as individual councilors to state our case. I think it's up to us as a group to discuss it."
As a result of the petition, the town will hold a public meeting on Wednesday, September 8. Voters will be free to voice their opinions to council that night.
Fleet says that if the resignations do not come voluntarily, he will file to have a judge review the case."You'd think we were in a third-world country, the way some people are acting. Instead of trying to solve the issue, they're trying to deflect it or put blame on other people. It's sickening, really."
He also wishes to bring in an independent source to examine the community's health services issues."We're seeking someone from outside to come up with answers and recommendations for what we need to do to bring doctors here and keep them."
In the meantime, Kamsack is a town battling with itself.
"It's not good for our community," says Rona Seidle. "The last thing we need is to be torn apart over doctor services."
