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Editorial: How about a real study?
Commentary by Jeff Burgar
for South Peace News
Closing the City Centre Airport in Edmonton is a secret, Edmonton plot.
The idea is, when enough people in Northern Alberta cry loud enough, our provincial government will “encourage’’ the City of Edmonton to backtrack on their closure plans, and keep the airport open.
And that will be done with Northern Alberta money, of course.
Edmonton will trot out their story of the hundreds of millions, heck, maybe billions of dollars the land is worth for condos, retail shops, skyscrapers and homes.
If you are going to make us use the land for an airport, they will say, then you have to compensate us.
Dare I say, that’s compensation money that could be used for hospital services?
Spend it on keeping an airport open?
“If we can save just one life, it’s worth it.’’ is the common refrain.
Of course, when asked why Death Highway 63 to Fort McMurray isn’t twinned, why there aren’t tougher laws against drunk drivers, why cigarettes aren’t banned, why more research isn’t done into cancer, or even why there isn’t a “fat’’ tax on doughnuts, perhaps those lives just aren’t worth saving.
Come on!
If we are in the business of saving lives, isn’t it better to worry more about providing health care as close to the scene as possible?
It seems logical that, “if we can save just one life,’’ that really means first class ground ambulance, and first class medical treatment right here in our local hospitals. That should be Job One, right?
Air ambulance is a great service. So is STARS.
But why worry about making those services better and better, while at the same time we watch our local hospitals decline?
The direction this issue is headed, you personally will be responsible for “stabilizing’’ an injured person, perhaps your mother or father, or child, or husband or wife. Then you wait until a helicopter shows up to whisk them away to Edmonton or Calgary hospitals.
Nobody would bother with a local ground ambulance taking the injured to a local hospital that has no services.
If this is the grand plan, would somebody please stand up and tell us so.
Every month it seems, we have a new “advisory’’ board, citizen committee, consultancy or bafflegab coming along to study health services.
If we are going to drown in studies, let’s study how many lives are really being saved by the City Centre airport.
How many lives it’s costing as we close down hospital services?
What’s the price of our present air ambulance compared to STARS?
What’s the cost of removing professionals of all kinds from our local communities?
Well?
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