The eminently quotable B.C. health minister Kevin Falcon, known for his partisan and often abrasive rhetoric, was captured yesterday in a rare moment, sounding as soft as a marshmallow.
He is cooing over his first child, baby Josephine, who was born Friday morning.
"She is just a little peanut," he said.
The health minister arrived at Surrey Memorial Hospital on a busy Thursday night, with his wife Jessica Falcon in labour.
He knows the hospital well. In fact, he was there just last summer to announce expansion plans that include a centre of excellence in care for children's and women's maternal health.
That campus is still in the works, and the Falcons waited 45 minutes before they were moved into the labour-delivery unit. A health authority official said the health minister was granted no special treatment.
After almost nine hours of labour, Josephine was delivered, a healthy 7 lbs 3 ozs, but something was wrong. "When she first came out, it was a scary moment, she wasn't breathing," Mr. Falcon recounted. Within seconds, however, a doctor was able to get her breathing on her own. "Everything is great," the grateful Mr. Falcon said during a telephone interview from home on Tuesday.
The new-baby charm even wore off a bit on Mr. Falcon's equally uncompromising opponent, New Democratic Party health critic Adrian Dix. "A new baby? Really? If I had known that, I wouldn't have condemned him at the rally today," he said. "I wish them well."
Surrey Memorial Hospital, in Mr. Falcon's riding, has one of the busiest baby units in the province. Only BC Women's Hospital delivers more babies. Thanks to Mr. Falcon's announcement last summer, it will offer an additional 48 beds for intensive neonatal care when the hospital expansion is complete in 2014.
It wasn't long before the conversation with Mr. Falcon drifted to the $14-billion health care system that he runs.
This new parent business,"it's got me thinking about the bigger issues," he said. His job is often driven by the need to respond to calamity - emergency room overcrowding, instances where treatment goes wrong.
"We can't judge a system on individual cases." The system overall is both comprehensive, he said, and great. (That's not just his personal response. He cited a new survey of roughly 16,000 patients which found more than 90 per cent had a "good experience" with B.C.'s health care system.) Mr. Falcon is now studying his ministry's services with a new eye. The Baby's Best Chance booklet - a pregnancy and baby care guide now in its sixth edition - is handed out to all new mothers-to-be. Mr. Falcon has been pouring over it and is delighted to pronounce it a terrific resource.
Meanwhile, Mr. Falcon the politician is still at work - a little. His Facebook and Twitter pages have been updated with the news and baby pictures.