Editorial

Time to consider sunset

It was only fitting that last week, the week after Mothers’ Day, should be dedicated to the nurses of our world.
One need only spend a few hours in the local health complex to realize that Slave Lake and area residents are truly blessed with some of the finest, most dedicated and caring nurses in the province.
Day after day, week after week, grueling 12.5-hour shift after 12.5-hour shift, they wear their commitment. Whether they’re administering medications, wiping derrieres, or recording the vitals, these women and men do the job with a smile of quiet professionalism. These Florence Nightingales’ dedication is not unlike that of the most caring mother, where every patient is treated as the most important person on the floor, as if each was a favourite child. No requests are ever ignored, no concern trivialized.
That’s why it’s so difficult to understand why Premier Ralph Klein and his Tory MLAs – through their Wellness department – are picking on the front line workers who are the very anchor of health care.
Of course the ‘greedy’-nursing banners were quietly unfurled as the nurses’ union prepared to negotiate a new contract. And after seeing how the province painted Alberta’s teachers as the bad guys when they threatened strike action to punctuate demands for both better classroom conditions and more cash, we should not have been surprised. (Neither should we have been shocked when Klein ‘got even’ by shortchanging school boards’ ability to pay those teachers’ salaries.)
It’s become increasingly clear that Klein is ready to slip into his ‘we-good-guy-you-bad-guy’ posture any time any group takes a counter position – ‘counter’ as in ‘employee looking for a raise’. Or ‘counter’ as in anyone who questions or criticizes virtually any of this government’s decisions.
Ignore them; maybe they’ll go away.
That’s been the Tories’ response when oilfield contractors asked MLA Pearl Calahasen, Klein and his band of merry men to set some rules on who has the right to work on Crown lands in this province. Just ask Emil’s Right of Way Clearing spokesman Kelly Persson. He’ll tell you many oilfield development businesses in the Slave Lake area have been forced to close their doors because of the government’s unwillingness to get involved.
And those who’ve managed to hang on, continue to lose millions of dollars annually when some First Nations groups claim first dibs on any oilfield development work – sometimes setting up blockades to make the point.
Persson says members of his group don’t expect to take home all the marbles. They just want the province to lay out some ground rules so businesses everywhere in the province know where they stand. And if they’ll have to move elsewhere to make a living.
But there’s been nothing but a deafening silence emanating from under the Dome in recent months.
Of course Klein agreed to apply $6 million of lotion – allegedly to cool the sores left by burrs under contractors’ saddles. And Calahasen says she hopes to have some concrete suggestions from the various departments involved sometime this summer.
We’re not holding our breath.
We are, however, taking bets on what Klein will decide when he ponders his future over a fishing rod this week.
In short, the premier and his bevy of thinkers are running out of creative ideas – besides throwing money at problems, that is. Knee-jerk and election mode reactions have become the norm. But those only work when petroleum prices soar, and one of these days Klein could be caught in election mode with no financial rabbits to pull from the hat.