World-renowned consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader will be the keynote speaker at “Beyond Acute Care: Covering Seniors and the Disabled with the Medicare Umbrella” at 7 p.m., Friday, Feb. 24.

Maude Barlow, National Chair of the Council of Canadians and a tireless defender of our country’s national system of public health care, will close the conference with her remarks at __ p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 25.

Numerous other experts and advocates will speak during panel discussions throughout the day Saturday. Biographies of all speakers will be posted on this page as they are confirmed and their schedules become available.

Ralph Nader

Named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th Century by Time Magazine, consumer advocate and former Green Party U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader has devoted himself to giving ordinary people the tools they need to defend themselves against corporate negligence and government indifference.

Nader entered public life in 1965 when he took on the auto industry with the book Unsafe at Any Speed, an expose of the disregard in which auto makers held the safety of their own customers. As a result, the U.S. government passed motor-vehicle safety legislation that has saved tens of thousands of lives.

Since then, Nader has become an icon of the consumer rights movement, writing numerous best-selling books, fighting for fair election financing legislation in the United States and, in 1996 and 2000, running for U.S. president on the Green Party ticket. Despite minuscule financing, his 2000 campaign received 2.8 million votes.

Nader will deliver the keynote speech for Beyond Acute Care: Covering Seniors and the Disabled with the Medicare Umbrella.

Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch. She is an officer or member of many other international bodies that strive to protect the earth and the rights of its citizens.

Barlow is the recipient of 11 honorary doctorates and numerous awards including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”), a Citation of Lifetime Achievement received at the 2008 Canadian Environment Awards, the 2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award, the 2009 Planet in Focus Achievement Award and the 2011 EarthCare Award, the highest honour of the Sierra Club (U.S.)

In 2008-2009, Barlow served as senior advisor on water to the president of the United Nations General Assembly and was a leader in the campaign to have access to water recognized as a human right. She is the author of 16 books, including the international bestseller Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

Barlow will deliver the closing speech of Beyond Acute Care: Covering Seniors and the Disabled with the Medicare Umbrella.

Wendy Armstrong

Wendy Armstrong is an Edmonton-based policy analyst and consumer advocate whose work spans many different sectors.  She is also the author of a number of ground-breaking investigative reports on the changing landscape of healthcare and health policy, including a 2000 report on private clinics and cataract surgery in Alberta which helped turn the tide of public opinion during the Bill 11 debate and a 2002 report on the changing landscape of eldercare. In 2006, she undertook a study on the transformation of a Nursing Home in Hinton Alberta to a Designated Assisted Living Program and a review of Long Term Care Insurance policies sold in Canada.  She is founding member of PharmaWatch and Citizens’ Watch on Continuing Care and a member of the board of the Consumers’ Association of Alberta. In a 2005 international best-seller by Cassels and Moynihan, Selling Sickness: How the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies are turning us all into patients, she is described as “one of a number of Canadians, little known by the wider public, but near celebrities in the arcane world of health research, who are actively opposing the corporate sponsored selling of sickness.”

Violet Boni

Violet Boni is the president of CUPE Local 1031 and has been working in long term care in Edmonton for more than 36 years – 16 years as a nursing assistant, 8 years in the purchasing department, and 12 years in recreation therapy. She has also chaired the occupational health and safety committee. She has volunteered many hours and years working with seniors in the community.   In recent years Violet has been very involved in the care and  support of two close family members living in long term care facilities. She is also an active member of CUPE Alberta’s Health Employees Committee.

Marcy Cohen

Marcy Cohen is an adjunct faculty member and teaches a health policy course in Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. As a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, she has co-authored a number of research and policy studies looking at public solutions to the current challenges in our health care system, community health and long term care restructuring, and the service quality and cost implications of health care privatization. Cohen recently retired after working for 15 years as the director of research and policy at the Hospital Employees union. She is current the CCPA’s seniors care issues director.

Tamara Daly

Dr. Tamara Daly is an Assistant Professor at the School of Health Policy & Management at the Faculty of Health at York University. She is a health services researcher and a political economist who studies health care work, aging and long-term care policy, and gender and health policy. She was recently awarded the 19th annual Labelle Lectureship in health economics and policy research.

Toby Edelman

Toby S. Edelman has been representing older people in long-term care facilities since 1977. As a Senior Policy Attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy since January 2000, Ms. Edelman provides training, research, policy analysis, consultation, and litigation support relating to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Since September 1999, she has written a monthly newsletter on nursing home enforcement issues. She co-wrote Policy Principles for Assisted Living (April 2003) and serves as Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the Assisted Living Consumer Alliance. Edelman was the lead attorney for a statewide class of nursing facility residents who successfully challenged the state of California’s refusal to implement the federal Nursing Home Reform Law.

David Eggen

David Eggen was educated at the University of Alberta where he received a Bachelor of Education degree in 1984. Eggen then went to Zimbabwe where he taught for three years. Upon his return to Edmonton David taught at a number of local schools from 1990 to 2004. Dave served as the MLA for Edmonton-Calder from 2004-2008 acting as the NDP Opposition critic for a number of ministries. Since 2008 Dave has acted as the Executive Director for Friends of Medicare, a non-profit organization that advocates for public healthcare in Alberta and Canada. He lives in Edmonton with his wife and their two daughters.

Ryan Geake

Ryan holds a Master’s degree in social work from the University of Calgary and is Executive Director of Calgary Scope Society. He also teaches community development at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University. Ryan had the good fortune of stumbling into some work with the Disability community over two decades ago and has remained. In that time he has had the opportunity to learn and think about what community means, what being part of a marginalized group looks and feels like, what a social movement is, how all kinds of actions can help bring about change, why the struggle for citizenship and pride is so hard but so important and how to act like an ally. Ryan continues to try to be helpful in the struggle for equality and justice for all citizens, including those with disabilities.

Diana Gibson

Diana Gibson is the Research Director for the Parkland Institute. She has an extensive background in social and fiscal policy research and has engaged nationally and internationally on topics ranging from health care and energy, to the environment and international trade agreements.

Michael McBane

Michael McBane has been National Co-ordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition in Ottawa since 1995. His work at the health coalition is inspired by a guardian ethic that seeks to protect the sick and the frail elderly from profit-seeking strangers. He is author of Ill-Health Canada: Putting Food and Drug Company Profits Ahead of Safety, 2005.

Gil McGowan

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, is a longtime political and labour movement activist. He was elected President of the AFL in 2005, following 10 years as the organization’s communications director. Before joining the AFL, McGowan was a journalist for Canadian Press and the Edmonton Journal. He has a B.A. in History from the University of Alberta and a Master in Journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa.

Margaret McGregor

Margaret McGregor is a family physician at the Mid Main Community Health Centre in Vancouver, B.C. and engages in part-time research. Dr. McGregor has an MHSc from the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology at UBC and is a member of the Centre for Clinical and Evaluative Epidemiology at the Vancouver General Hospital. Her recent health services research has included studies on of staffing levels, hospitalization rates and site of death at B.C’s long-term care facilities by facility characteristics. She has also studied the impact of socio-economic status on hospital utilization and changes over time for patients hospitalized with pneumonia. A secondary area of research interest is the epidemiology of sexual assault and the evaluation of medical-legal outcomes in sexual assault.

Eleanor Smith

Eleanor Smith, a nurse from Birmingham, is president of UNISON, the UK’s largest public sector union. She began her nurse training at the age of 19 at the city’s George Elliott Hospital, and now works at Birmingham Women’s Hospital. In 2004 she was elected onto UNISON’s governing body, to represent the West Midlands. In 2011, she was elected President of UNISON.

Noel Somerville

Noel Somerville is Chair of Public Interest Alberta’s Seniors Task Force. After a 33-year second career in education, Noel retired as Executive Secretary of the Edmonton Public Teachers Local 37 of the ATA in 1997. Since retirement, Noel has been active in the Seniors’ Action Liaison Team (SALT), an organization for which he has written numerous pamphlets on issues related to healthcare, deregulation, education and social justice. Noel has also served on the City of Edmonton Subdivision and Development Appeal Board and the PIA Board of Directors from October 2004 until June 2010.