Don’t knock the few working to improve city, province
By Letter to the Editor on February 5, 2020.
In a recent letter to the editor, the ex-MLA from Lethbridge-East expressed “utter dismay,” “sadness” and “some anger” stating the current MLA (who thumped her soundly in the last election) wasn’t doing his job.
Across the river Shannon Phillips, who hung on to her cushion in Edmonton by less than 300 votes, reports fielding consistent constituent concerns that ask “what is all this pain for.” That Jan. 24 guest column launches into a tirade hacking and slashing at the prevailing party over efforts to get Alberta’s fiscal house in order.
I am saddened, feel the “utter dismay” and “anger,” too – anger that my representatives, former and current, refuse to acknowledge initiatives in play that’ll make Lethbridge a better community. Maybe cutting ribbons or dumb expenditures like hiring an outfit from Ontario to install light bulbs and showerheads for Albertans is an accomplishment. My “utter dismay” asks what the carbon footprint of that exercise looked like and why hundreds of thousands of dollars spent couldn’t have stayed here and the employment Alberta sourced!
But, today, Jan 29, reading the letter to the editor “SCS is staffed by health-care professionals” really heightened my sadness, my utter dismay and the anger. I feel for those signing that letter justifying their big salaries “saving lives,” extending hundreds of miseries at obscene cost.
Blaine Hyggen, our dedicated councillor, deserves better treatment. He’s attempting to make Lethbridge a better place for all residents, the poor, disadvantaged, those who’ve lost hope, those who’ve been ravaged by crime, those who sit on their hands hoping, those who contemplate relocating because Lethbridge has become their hellhole! Bravo, councillor Hyggen. Everyone’s being considered as you face the tragedies head on, as no other councillor has.
How anyone can subject our dedicated councillor, this family man, successful business owner and well-meaning individual to unearned vitriol and personal attacks is beyond me. I’ll cut to the chase. I am sick and tired of those ripping and tearing at the few working their tails off to turn this province and Lethbridge for the better. Enough is enough! Stop the hate and do something meaningful to make the people of Lethbridge proud of this place again!
Alvin W. Shier
Lethbridge
10-9
Nothing unhinged about this letter …
I would be very interested how the Indignant SCS health Care “professionals” defend the Hippocratic Oath of “Do no harm”? They supervise, an individual injecting a poison into their bodies so they can then “supervise the pending death” of the same individual! Then suddenly they expect that the taxpayer should marvel at their expertise of “saving them” from the effects of the very substance they supervised the individual take? Then Bourgue marvels at the amazing ability of the SCS to save lives? Does this not sound more and more like a Circus of Stupidity?
Tell me how this is any different from an individual walking into the SCS proclaiming he is going to shoot himself. You say okay, and then he shoots himself. You then rush to his aid and save him. The next day, the same individual walks into the SCS and proclaims, I am going to shoot myself, you say okay and the Circus of Stupidity continues day after day!!!
How Bourgue and Manning can justify this as providing a service to the community by providing a “professionally supervised Clubhouse” for the poison delivery system, is truly an amazing piece of “business marketing” !
There appears to be only one sane individual that has actually thought this through from beginning to end. We should be thanking Councillor Hyggens and dismissing the rant from the vested interest “professionals” in the SCS! This is nothing more then a low shot by SCS, attempting to garner public sympathy for a job they should not be doing under the hat of “medical professional”.
Very soon, an addict is going to die in the SCS, when he/she does how does the medical professional then justify watching the individual kill him/herself and did nothing to stop it? If they were in a Hospital and watched a patient grab a syringe and attempt to inject themselves and did nothing, they would lose their status as a medical professional, but it’s okay at the SCS? You now have to ask yourself, would there even be an investigation, or is this the cost of doing “business” ? It seems the SCS garners more and more immunity from the laws of the land as time marches on, by just maintaining its existence, that’s why it has to be shut down!
Mr. Bremner, do you think that if a person had technically died “in the SCS” ,that it would be publicly reported as such? Perhaps,that has happened already. To say instead that a person died of an overdose in the parking lot ,on the way to the hospital or was pronounced dead shortly after arriving to the hospital is far more likely a statement to see.
Recently ,Councilor Hyggen publicly expressed interest (as other councilors have) of looking into the structure of the running of the SCS from its current to under the Alberta Health umbrella. All the benefits of which,apparently yet to be fully determined or publicly expressed.. Could Alberta Health ever seriously consider such a scenario? Highly unlikely,I would think. But stranger things have happened. Would there be more transparency in the activity /incidence reports in the highly unlikely event it was ever under Alberta Health rule?
….”working their tails off to turn this province and Lethbridge off for the better?”
At this point, many of us believe now, that we will have to sit back and watch everything go to smithereens with this unwise, populist authoritarian (?dictatorial) government. Where’s the revenue and diversification we need? They’re not doing it. Austerity alone, is not going to cut the mustard.
Again, what would the response be if the Kenney UCP austerity program pushes Alberta into recession?
Blame it on the AB NDP and Justin Trudeau?
among the writer’s most thoughtless contributions to date. ndp bad/ucp good. “big” salaries of health care workers (you call those big, do you?) bad/giant salaries of ucp employed cronies, mlas in general, and the big corp ceo and others of the big corp in-crowd, plus the billions of public dollars gifted to these parasites…good. well said alvin! your priorities are about as straight as your premier! hear! hear!
biff said : among the writer’s most thoughtless contributions to date. ndp bad/ucp good.
Tris continually refers to the opposite ndp good/ucp bad but I don’t remember you calling her thoughtless?
I wait till at least 3rd year into the mandate to criticize any party. Parties spend there first year expunging the previous parties existence as a “revenge thing”. The second year they spend implementing their policies and the 3rd year you see some of the results. Most of it is grandstanding and self congratulations. Its why I was critical of the NDP in year 3. They never raised a peep on pipelines in Year 1 and 2 and realized they were in Alberta in year 3 and better come up with a better plan. They implemented the carbon tax on the basis of a tit for tat pipeline. In the end we had no pipelines and the Carbon Tax was not shown to be anything but the latter…. a tax. It was not my or your responsibility to produce numbers showing the Carbon Tax was effective, it was Phillips responsibility…what happened ? Absolutely Nothing.
So I await year 3 start to even begin to criticize the UCP. The UCP say we have more health professionals, more money being spent and far less service for our buck compared to other provinces. To the tune of $2 billion in excess government spending every year. So where is the money going? If it was going to effective health care why are our wait times longer and why are we spending more money to get less service? Yet, the NDP thought this was just fine and instead of trying to find out what was wrong, hired more people and spent more money supporting a system that is by all other provinces standards, not as effective. So before people start criticizing the UCP they should wait till the grandstanding is over and policies in place. Upsetting the apple cart is a way of getting peoples attention that its no longer business as usual. I am not happy with some of the things the UCP are doing either nor the displayed attitude of dictatorship but at this point I dismiss it as grandstanding verbose ranting as if “look at me” I am a leader among men.
If it carries on, we do have another option and that is re-elect the NDP to once again study nothing, spend everything, and hire people in Unions, so they once again have a backlog of obligated NDP to re-elect them even if they are useless at what they do. Phillips will get another chance to do the lightbulb bit and tell Albertans how bad we are and how her ideas (even though she offers no proof of results) are amazing, and….the cycle continues.