Readers express their opinions on an election campaign claim about Saskatchewan hospital closures decades ago and the rising debt in the province.
After the Grant Devine Progressive Conservatives were voted out of office in 1991, Saskatchewan’s per-capita deficit and per-capita debt were the highest of any province. The province was on the brink of bankruptcy.
Newly elected premier Roy Romanow called the federal government and secured a loan that staved off bankruptcy.
As a result, to get the province’s finances back on track, the Romanow and Lorne Calvert NDP governments had to try to fix the mess by prudent and careful taxation and cuts to public services, dropping the debt by over $10 billion and still balancing the budget some years.
One of the areas cut was acute care in health centres in 52 small towns with populations less than 1,300, 28 of which had populations under 500. All of the health centres in these towns, except one, are still open. They never closed. Only acute care closed.
Many communities had acute care running 24 hours, were rarely used, and sat empty most of the time.
The old adage that if you repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth seems apt here.
Vern Pura, Saskatoon
Can Sask. survive more Moe?
Debt servicing charges are a jaw-dropping $911.5 million in 2024-25. That would pave a lot of roads, or hire a lot of nurses and teachers.
Moe spent much of the debate complaining about the federal government. He neglected to mention 2024-25 federal transfer payments to Saskatchewan will be $3.7 billion or 19 per cent of total revenue. Without this, Saskatchewan’s debt quagmire would be even deeper.
Moe highlighted capital spending on education. He didn’t speak to bloated student-teacher ratios, teacher burnout, violence in the classroom and classroom complexity. He also neglected to mention his cherished gender pronoun legislation and the havoc it’s causing.
Moe bragged about the nurses and doctors recruited during his tenure. He neglected to mention the number who have left — gone to private facilities where the hours are less demanding, left the province or left the profession altogether.
He forgot to mention staff in Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital treating heart attack patients in the waiting room because they have nowhere else to put them. He neglected to mention other patients parked in hallways waiting for a room to free up.
Moe didn’t mention we are exporting our most valuable resource — people. In the second quarter of 2024, 6,178 more people left Saskatchewan for other provinces than came. Only net international in-migration and natural increase keeps our population stable.
Moe contends the Saskatchewan Party can do more for our province. Their record begs the question whether we would survive it.
Roy Schneider, Regina
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