City of Powell River Council is prepared to carry a resolution to the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) calling for September to be proclaimed Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.
The matter arose at the Thursday, July 2, council meeting when Mayor Dave Formosa said Donald McInnes, founder of Plutonic Power Corporation, who he’d met years ago, contacted him. McInnes, the past chair of Prostate Cancer Canada, contacted Formosa indicating that his organization would like to get a resolution before UBCM.
Formosa said he was prepared to make that recommendation from the floor at the UBCM convention in September because the deadline for submitting resolutions for the convention would pass before council was able to discuss it.
He said, however, that Mac Fraser, the city’s chief administrative officer, “used one of his chips” to get the resolution on the UBCM convention agenda.
Fraser took the opportunity to deal with UBCM staff directly to see if the resolution could be placed on the agenda at the last minute and the response was: “this is a motherhood issue.”
In anticipation of council’s support for advancing the resolution at UBCM, Fraser put forward a request for a resolution to the UBCM staff ahead of the deadline and it would be advanced if council provided sanction for it at the July 2 council meeting.
Reading from his report, Fraser said prostate cancer is a major health issue in Canada as the national demographic ages and the male population becomes more vulnerable to prostate cancer.
Fraser said his wife is a geriatric specialty nurse and he was told the odds of becoming afflicted with prostate cancer are quite high if men live long enough. What people need to be aware of, he said, is that early detection has an “incredibly high rate of success,” in the realm of 90 per cent. Awareness and diagnosis are the first steps in mitigating the effect of prostate cancer.
Councillor Jim Palm said there is widespread awareness about the great men’s health initiative that happens every November called Movember, where moustaches are grown for the cause and funds are collected.
“I’m just wondering why September and not targeting the same month [November],” he said.
Fraser said two other provinces have already proclaimed September as Prostate Awareness Month so the precedent has been set for a national month.
Councillor Maggie Hathaway said while cancer screening for women is covered under the provincial health care plan, she did not think that the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test was, so she wondered if a letter should also be sent to the province suggesting that testing would increase detection rates.
Councillor Rob Southcott, who is unit chief of BC Ambulance Service in Powell River, said PSA testing is not accepted unanimously by the medical community as a definitive indicator for prostate cancer. He said he understands that is the reason why the test is not funded by the government.
Hathaway said that since this will be Powell River’s motion at the UBCM, the local representatives might have an opportunity to speak to the specifics of the motion at the convention.
“Maybe some of the things we gather together in speaking to the motion provides that kind of input,” she said.
Council unanimously carried the motion to present the resolution at this year’s UBCM convention.
