Re: Whiteford letter, “What’s the matter with all of our elected officials? Obviously, health care is not your top priority.”
What is the matter with our elected officials, Ms. Whiteford? You, and the majority of other citizens, along with reporters, pundits, the media and opposition politicians.
Where do you suggest the government get the funds to build more hospitals or pay more medical staff?
Billions of dollars in demands for new infrastructure and services that everybody demands and refuses to pay for.
People demand to keep under-utilized schools open, build new schools, smaller class sizes, more hospitals and hospital beds, more medical staff, more expensive medical treatments and drugs, they want to spend billions more to build and staff prisons to lock more people up for longer periods of time, they want, they want, they want...
They want everything now and they want it for free – or at least they don’t want it to cost them any money or to raise their taxes.
You want more schools and hospital beds? Then that is what you should have been demanding the government spend its money on rather than spending billions on the two-week blowout that was the Winter Olympics. The money being spent on replacing the stadium roof in Vancouver would pay for St. Paul’s hospital to be renovated.
And as happens in the real world our spendthrift ways are catching up to us. The cost of the services government provides are climbing – medical costs are increasing exponentially. Without an increase in revenue to offset these spiking costs we are going to be getting fewer services across the board – forget about more.
Will we have a discussion about our priorities, about the costs of programs, about what we can afford and what we cannot, about what is – rather than what we believe or want to be? Will we acknowledge we cannot have everything we want and discuss what we are willing to pay and what services the dollars we are willing to pay will purchase?
No, people will support the party that tells them what they want to hear – that there is no problem and to party on. Then people will complain that the politicians lied to them, ignoring the fact that lying to them is what voters reward politicians for doing.
Could the government be run in a more cost effective manner – yes; could the money be spent more wisely – yes; could the future financial health of the province be much improved – yes. Will it? Well...
If people want to see the root cause – and where the solution lies – to our current and increasing political, social and economic woes they need only look in a mirror.
James W. Breckenridge
Abbotsford