Re: ‘New ER won’t fix wait times, says doctor,’ and ‘Don’t bank on quick ER cure,’ Oct.30 Gazette:
These two articles are well received. The big question is why did Albertans allow this to happen in the first place? We likely had the best health care system in Canada until the Klein government began dismantling it without a plan. What did Albertans think would happen when the government took away three hospitals from Calgarians, closed spaces in the nursing schools, closed hospital beds, drove out doctors and nurses and put people’s lives at risk?
It’s a known fact some 19,000 Canadian doctors work in the U.S. who might have remained in Canada had our governments treated them properly. I knew nine doctors who couldn’t take it any more and dozens of nurses who left, or changed careers, including a relative, thanks to the Klein government. My friends and I are sick and tired of being labelled lefties, or left-wing nuts by narrow-minded people who see nothing wrong with what the Klein and Stelmach governments have done to us. We consider ourselves true-blue Conservatives, and supported the Alberta Conservative party for nearly 30 years, but refused to support the Klein and Stelmach governments with their arrogant attitudes and huge democratic deficits. We see nothing Conservative about either government.
Now it’s been proven we are right, and what the Klein government did to us in the early 1990s has reached a critical point, just as we knew it would. It will only get worse as our young graduates, refusing to work in this mess, go elsewhere to work, can you blame them? In addition we have been warned that 5,000 nurses and 2,000 doctors are quickly reaching retirement age.
Name withheld by request, St. Albert
