Editor:
As an editor of the healthier news publication in the Bow Valley, I expect more balance.
I’m not sure how to do this, because I’m a professional engineer, not a journalist.
As an engineer, I am driven by science, facts and formulae. Pulling at heartstrings is not my forte.
One thing I have learned in 40-plus years as a professional, is that society expects more of professionals, ethically and morally.
In recent years, all professions have suffered from the allure of group action to serve personal needs ahead of our oaths as professionals.
In all of my career I did what was necessary to do my job. I did not desert my office when work was to be done. On many occasions I responded in the middle of the night to do what had to be done.
All through that, I received a salary which was substantial to my personal needs, but not anything above “upper middle class”.
The recent article about the Bow Valley doctor town hall struck a wrong chord with me.
Doctors used to be professionals. Why would they seek to use “union” tactics to address their grievances in public forums like steelworkers?
Believe me, the article is similar to many I have read over the years.
Just replace “doctor” with “labourer.”
Apparently both punch clocks. They just don’t live in the same neighbourhoods or drive the same vehicles.
Let’s examine this more closely.
Health care in this valley is the envy of all of Alberta. People come to our emergency centres because of the service and wait times. I should be concerned about that situation.
Upon review of the government position on the “so called” cuts, I discovered that the health care system was not being gutted.
All of the proposals in the recent budget reduce GP compensation marginally (in a time clock system already in existence) but still provides a level of compensation equal or better than practitioners in the rest of Canada.
Nothing says the doctors can’t work unpaid hours to perform their ethical duties (and most do).
What’s the downside? Doctors will have to chose to keep their luxury vehicles a couple of years longer or maybe move to Calgary?
This is now clearly a union quibbling with a government using us as hostages.
Let’s not take sides and allow them work it out. Nobody is going anywhere soon, despite the rhetoric.
Think of them as oil workers. They are certainly not the professionals they once were.
David Austin,
Canmore
