EDMONTON - Deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk was unsure how to handle the unusual case of a young child who had been beaten up and brought to his constituency office by her mother, a temporary foreign worker facing deportation.
So he called Conservative colleague Dr. Raj Sherman, an emergency doctor, for advice — not with the intent to seek preferential treatment as alleged by Sherman, Lukaszuk told the provincial inquiry into preferential access Wednesday in Calgary.
It was a late fall afternoon in 2009 when the mother brought the bruised 10- to 12- year- old girl to his Castle Downs constituency office. Lukaszuk was a backbencher at the time and Sherman, now Liberal leader, was parliamentary secretary for health in the Conservative government.
The mother was too afraid to take the child for medical care because her work visa had expired and she was awaiting voluntary deportation proceedings, Lukaszuk told the inquiry.
“The daughter was in trauma, she had been beaten up after school, and mother was not going to go the hospital” for fear she would be deported immediately and have to leave her family behind, Lukaszuk told the inquiry.
The woman’s adult son had faced sudden deportation when he was picked up on a routine traffic stop by police and sent back to his home country, he added.
“So the mother asked me for help,” said Lukaszuk, who has done a lot of work on immigration and with temporary foreign workers in difficult situations.
“Since it is not my child and not my constituent,” Lukaszuk said he decided to call Sherman for advice.
Sherman advised him to go to the Royal Alexandra Hospital and agreed to meet him there, Lukaszuk said. They met in the lobby. Sherman took the girl into the emergency ward and returned a few minutes later.
“When he returned, he said: “she is in good hands,” said Lukaszuk, adding the mother arranged to have the child picked up from the hospital. The family was voluntarily deported later. Lukaszuk said he did not follow up on the hospital visit.
Lukaszuk said he would handle this “strange” situation the same way if it happened again and call for advice.
“Yes, I could have done it without Sherman, but it is not unnatural to call a colleague who is an MLA with expertise in emergency care” in a situation like that, Lukaszuk said.
“I know Raj Sherman as a kind and friendly individual who would help,” he said.
Sherman told a different version. He told the inquiry he was reluctant to come to the hospital partly for family reasons and also he did not want to be seen at the hospital as that might give the perception of preferential treatment. He said he would not take his own children to the emergency ward for that reason.
If Sherman was uncomfortable about coming to the hospital, he never mentioned it, Lukaszuk said.
“My recollection is much different, he volunteered to do so” and was also concerned about the girl, said Lukaszuk
Lukaszuk also said that as a backbencher at the time, when constituents brought complaints about health care to his office, he would direct the complaints to the minister of health.
In 2011, Sherman also complained about Lukaszuk to the ethics commissioner in letter alleging Lukaszuk helped a constituent jump the queue.
But Lukaszuk said he never received notice of the complaint from the ethics commission, so he assumed the letter had not been sent.
In previous media interviews, Sherman claimed to have personal knowledge of queue-jumping. But in his December testimony, Sherman admitted he did not have direct evidence of queue jumping, just information from anecdotal conversations.
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