Last week end I was casually reading the booklet "YOUR ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES AS A BOARD MEMBER(1)" and I became dismayed at what Dr. John Carver and his wife Miriam Carver were saying. Specifically, I am going to quote a passage of this booklet so that we can have a feeling of outrage at their Policy Governance®(2)(3) model, a model which has been adopted by many of our health agencies, school boards and non profit organizations. This is the passage:

"Hands Off!! Examples of What the Board Should Keep Hands Off -Establish services, programs, curricula, or budgets -Approve the CEO's personnel, program, and budgetary plans -Render any judgments -or assessment of staff activity where no previous board expectations have been stated -Determine staff development needs, terminations, or promotions (except for the CEO) -Design staff jobs or instruct any staff member subordinate to the CEO (except when the CEO has assigned a staff member to some board function) -Decide on the table of organization and staffing requirements"

The above passage is very troublesome and it is reflective of an elitist and bureaucratic leadership void of any creativity, beyond the interest to hold power at the expense of everybody else. Now, we must know that many health district boards have adopted the Policy Governance® model preached by the Carvers. Can you believe that in accordance to the Policy Governance® model our health boards cannot establish services, cannot establish health programs, cannot establish curricula, cannot establish budgets, cannot approve the CEO's personnel, cannot approve program, cannot approve budgetary plans... health boards cannot decide on the table of organization and staffing requirements!

The communities own the health districts, yet the communities have no say whatsoever in the running of their own health organizations; as usual, our specialists take care of the health services: our CEOs, our health economists, Saskatchewan Health, and the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO). This is another magic of our reductionist Premier Roy Romanow.

 In our past articles we have been dealing with no-fault Tort reform and we have emphasized the need to restore our individual rights taken away from our governments; and now I find out that the Policy Governance® of our health districts tell their CEOs that they are above the law, that they are above the Health Districts Act and that they are above their own districts' bylaws. No wonder that our health districts are puppets of this government and no wonder that health care is a gambling casino. And this is not what Timothy Shire has described in his article "Chaos Theory(4)", this is utter predetermined confusion caused by our corrupted leadership in their attempt to maintain the status quo and exercise their greedy power.

We must restore due diligence and good faith to our governments, to our public agencies, to our schools, and to our health districts. We cannot continue to have no-fault governments along with their adopted Policy Governance® model. We don't need models anymore, we need examples of good leadership, we need examples on how to be more creative and socially responsible, we need examples on how to learn more and express ourselves, we need to have back our own individual rights taken away from this government.

References/Endnotes

General Reference: economic and political articles written by Mario deSantis

1. YOUR ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES AS A BOARD MEMBER, Guide #2, page 13, by John Carver and Miriam Mayhew Carver, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996

2. Dr. John Carver has been called the new guru of the Nonprofits. The wording Policy Governance® is a copyright of Dr. John Carver http://www.health.state.nd.us/gov/hotnews/leader/carvrbio.htm

3. Policy Governance® Defined: "John Carver's Policy Governance® model is the world's only complete, universal theory of governance... The model enables boards to ensure that organizations achieve board-stated goals and conduct themselves with probity..." http://www.carvergovernance.com/model.htm

4. Chaos Theory, by Timothy Shire, September 16, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/reality/chaostheory/chaostheory.html