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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-12-18, Page 4Photo by Janice Becker Letters THE EDITOR, Taking my cue from the District Health Council's Task Force, I've decided to restructure the way transportation services are managed within my family. To save money, improve access, and improve quality, I will sell lily wife's car (she can hitch-hike to work) and sell my children's bicycles (they can walk to school - it's less than 30 minutes). With the money saved, I will be able to buy myself a larger, more expensive car with options we do not currently have, such as air conditioning and power windows. I do not want to force my decision on my family so I will provide them with three options as a basis for discussion. Option 1: I get a luxury car. My wife gets rollerblades. My children can walk. Option 2: I get a luxury car. My wife can walk. My children get rollerblades. Option 3: I get a luxury car. My wife gets one rollerblade. My children get the other rollerblade. If there is an emergency, I will consider having a skateboard in the house for up to 24 hours per day. Now that I have worked out the details for our transportation budget, perhaps I should study our family's food and clothing budget as well. I wouldn't mind a few more steakes and a few new suits. Conrad Kuiper, Clinton. THE EDITOR, The following is a letter sent to Fraser Bell, the Executive Director of the Huron-Perth District Health Council. Dear Mr. Bell: The Huron Federation of Agriculture would like to respond to the recent report by the Hospital Restructuring Committee. Firstly, agriculture is, according to a study done this year by Professor Harry Cummings of the University of Guelph, directly responsible for at least one in every three jobs in Huron County. this makes agriculture the largest economic activity in Huron County. The Huron Federation of Agriculture is most concerned that the specific, and possibly even general health care needs of the agricultural community may not have been given the proper weighing, or even considered at all, in the analysis and evaluation leading up to the Task Force report. We, wonder, for example, how the health care needs of the rapidly expanding Amish community in the study area could ever possibly have been determined in a telephone survey, since the Amish do not use telephones? This is only one of a number of very fundamental and very obvious structural flaws we see in the entire process. We now realize that we should have been more forceful and more strident in presenting the position of the agricultural community, but as a volunteer organization, we have a limited ability to deal with a great range of issues concerning our members. The Huron Federation of Agriculture is completely opposed to any process which pits community against community. The bitterness and resentment will be felt and remembered in each disenfranchised community long after the real or imagined financial gains have been forgotten. The agricultural community has a long standing concern with health care. It was the farmers of Saskatchewan and their leaders who, 60 years ago during the Great Depression, first developed the basis of our Canadian health care system. If, 60 years ago, we in agriculture had been swayed by people who said that we couldn't afford to have universal health care, our Canadian health care system would never have gotten off the ground. The agricultural community has been besieged for 60 years, from all sides, about the high costs of providing health care to its members. Our response for all that time has been, and continues to be, that we can't afford not to be providing the best possible care available. What we can afford has never been the relevant issue. What we can't afford to be without has always been, and continues to be, the only issue of relevance to us. The agricultural community requires a full range of medical services from pediatrics to Continued on page 6 PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1996 C O The North Huron cn itizen eA P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, Ont. NOM 1H0 Phone 523-4792 FAX 523-9140 P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, Ont. NOG 1H0 Phone 887-9114 FAX 887.9021 Publisher, Keith Roulston Editor, Bonnie Gropp Advertising Manager, Jeannette McNeil VERIFIED CIRCULATION PAID The Citizen Is published weekly In Brussels, Ontario by North Huron Publishing Company Inc. Subscriptions are payable In advance at a rate of $27.00/year ($25.24 + $1.76 G.S.T.) in Canada; $62.00/year In U.S.A. and $75.00/year In other foreign countries. Advertising Is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, only that portion of the advertisement will be credited. Advertising Deadlines: Monday, 2 p.m. - Brussels; Monday, 4 p.m. - Blyth. We are not responsible for unsolicited newscripts or photographs. Contents of The Citizen are CO Copyright. Publications Mail Registration No. 6968 Community needs come first It's easy to have sympathy for members of the Huron Perth District Health Council and the Task Force on Hospital Restructuring who have been taking a lot of heat lately for their recommendations on reshaping hospitals in the two counties. These are, after all, just volunteers dong a dirty job and being detested by their neighbours for doing it. There are probably various reasons these volunteers took the job. Some perhaps believed in the government's goal of cutting hospital costs. Some perhaps though it was a dirty job that was going to be done like it or not, so they might be able to influence the decision to be as generous as possible. Many are just being "good soldiers", just following orders and standing up and taking the flack for the government which is ultimately calling the shots because of its demands for cutting the hospital budget a minimum of 18 per cent. The problem for these good soldiers is that we have come to accept that "just following orders" is no excuse for not using your own moral judgement. Society expects people to stand up against what is wrong whether it means disobeying leaders or not. It's pretty obvious by now, as the task force nears the announcement of its "preferred option" later this week, that none of the options presented is very satisfactory to the vast majority of people in Huron and Perth. Sure people are satisfied in Stratford and Goderich but virtually every other community is up in arms, as the turnout at workshops and public meetings shows. Most people are convinced that, given the nature of our snowbelt winter, people will die if local hospitals are closed or scaled back so severely they can't function properly. There will be serious economic consequences for several communities if their hospitals are diminished to the point of ineffectiveness. The difficulty in attracting doctors to small towns will increase as doctors settle around the Stratford and Goderich hospitals and ignore the other towns and villages. In short, the government-enforced cuts will be a crime against the community. Those who have done the government's dirty work, unfortunately, will share the guilt. There is one thing that members of the task force and the DHC can do for their communities: they can resign enmass, telling the government that they will not be a party to this travesty. This may not stop the government but at least it would embarrass it into taking another look, and delay the process of implementing a stupid plan. It is also the one way that these volunteers can emerge from this process with clean hands. — KR Choking Canada's voice The axe fell on hundreds of CBC employees last week and with a further 800 to be fired come spring, one wonders if the Chrotien government sees any role at all for this institution in helping maintain a Canadian face in a country that's being globalized into oblivion. It's fashionable to hate CBC and call for its demise, so probably more Canadians are cheering these cuts than are unhappy with them. It's also true that CBC, like most bureaucracies, probably had substantial fat to trim, at least early in the blood-letting process. But no matter how bloated CBC might have been at one point, it's hard to figure that there can be much fat to trim anymore. The latest cuts, for instance, mean the loss of local CBC TV coverage in many communities. While this won't matter in Toronto, where there are plenty of alternatives, it might mean much more for small communities. Still, CBC's main function is to provide a national service that helps pull the country together and makes us understand more about this huge country. Communication, we are told, is going to be more and more important. But in an age of the Internet and satellite TV, will there be a Canadian voice to be heard or will we be drowned out by voices from elsewhere in the world, particularly the giant to the south? For all its failures, CBC has helped hold Canada together with everything from Hockey Night in Canada to Don Messer to Anne of Green Gables and Road to Avonlea. It will be important to our future as an independent country to have more stories like these told. Mr. Chrdtien, you've made your cuts. It's time to stop the bleeding and let CBC heal and get on with its work.— KR E ditorial