We had to laugh, here in the RMO office…
But not in a good way. Not in a “that’s hilarious” way, with a deep belly laugh and loud guffaws. More in the sense of a laugh because it’s just too ridiculous.
Seriously, $600,000 is going to be poured into the ground in Canmore’s Three Sisters neighbourhood to – fill a sinkhole?
Lucky for everyone that the provincial government managed to clean out some cobwebs and find more than a half million bucks required to fill a critically important hole in the ground.
Laughingly, $600,000 is the same amount that Banff’s Mineral Springs Hospital has had slashed from its Covenant Health budget – money that was to go to the St. Martha’s Place continuing care facility for seniors.
Show of hands, now… where would you rather see $600,000 go? Into a hole in the ground, or to caring for Banff seniors, many of them long-time residents who paid their fair share of taxes over the years?
Now that’s caring for our seniors.
But then, Alberta Health Services (AHS) recently axed 24 of 50 palliative care nursing positions in Calgary while claiming patients will continue to receive the same level of care.
Really? We doubt any business of any kind would be likely to continue operating with no loss of efficiency if half its labour force was chopped. Unless, of course, that business was massively mismanaged to begin with.
Likely the dollars from these slashes are needed to pay out bonuses to AHS executives for their stellar work. Not to worry, though, as AHS Chairman Stephen Lockwood has assured that the bonuses in question are for work already done, and therefore earned.
If the money was promised for the hard-working execs, we guess it’s fair to pay it out.
But then, where does the line begin for Albertans to get a bonus because they more or less did their job last year? Reports we’ve read have shown that AHS missed virtually every service target set.
We believe those bonuses are to be paid out in June; that should be interesting reading. Last year, $2.4 million was paid out in bonuses for 100 senior staff.
Could the AHS board be more out of touch with the average Albertan? And when even Health Minister Fred Horne is angered by bonuses in a lean time, it makes you wonder whose hand is on the tiller.
No doubt all this is the result of the bitumen bubble that’s caused a $6 billion provincial revenue shortfall here in Alberta and thrown everything into chaos.
Items like this do make us think a re-think is needed on priorities.
Maybe RMO staffers can collect a bonus next week for getting this week’s issue out – after all, it’s work now done with.
All this being said, the AHS board has said it will cut exec bonuses for 2013-14. We’ll see where that goes.
In the meantime, maybe the Mineral Springs Hospital could generate one of the special events that now seem so beloved in the national park to raise funds? Gurney races on Bow Valley Parkway? Speed stitching by surgeons in Central Park? A Guinness World Records broken leg setting challenge?
Hey, The Banff Centre is already taking the initiative in donating some funds from a Michael Kaeshammer concert to the hospital. Maybe future special events should be tied to kicking in a percentage of profits to keep social infrastructure chopped by the government afloat.
