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6 - North Shore News — Friday, November 12, 1999

HE ability of our community
hospital to serve those in need
continues to erode.

) And yet it’s no fault of the hard-
working staff at Lions Gate Hospital.

“” Rather the problem, as shown by
"statistics released in the North Shore
Health Region’s annual report and as
discussed. at a nursing forum in
October, is far reaching, and the
result of years of tinkering by politi-
cal decision-makers and those who
hold the purse strings for health sys-
tem funding. .

For example: the hospital conduct-
ed 600 less surgical procedures in the
1998-1999 budget year than the pre-
vious.year,  _- ;

The health region says the drop
was duce to a series of physician imple-
_ mented’ Reduced . Activity Days
- (RADs) and a shortage of operation

shurch should be
united in openness

hurch changes blasted article.”
at this one. Rev. Dr. Don Faris states in the arti-
he: motto ‘of the United Church: is “Christian

——VIEW POINT.

room staff.

Meanwhile the surgical wait list
grew 23% again, primarily due to
RADs and staff shortages.

There is also recognized to be a
growing level of severity of sickness
among people admitted to hospital.

But here’s the rub: even if there
was a fast infusion of fresh cash into
the system, there aren’t enough peo-
ple being attracted to nursing to sus-
tain a system that will only become
more stressed in future years as the
population ages.

Immediate action must be taken to
sweeten the pot for the province’s
older nurses who are nearing retire-
ment age so that some of them might
choose to stay on the job a bit longer.
This would buy educators and heaith

_ administrators some time to attract a
-new generation to the field.

for decades have exclud-
ed these sailors from:
“Lest We Forget.”
Instcad, Ottawa's unspo-
ken policy is: “Let's
Forget.”
Begrudgingly, inch
inch, Bras Hs been by
dragged into partial
recognition of the mer-
chant mariners’ indis-
ensable Second World
far service. But its grat-
itude is still short of the -

- post-war benefits and public praise x
accorded armed forces vetcrans, Why not?

” It’s a puzzle.

When it comes to Canada’s wartime
Merchant Marine, federal governments

acrivciés. that

ed-as “Christian 'unity”;-whichfinedencally
CPS vo. 9s ¢ and decrepit,'in inadequately protected
convoys, were teriifyingly easy targets for”.

United Church.
i under-50), i

“tend to. cause mt

t threat, not just to the existence of

, The Merchant Marine carried goods
and food, vital'to the fighe against Hider,
from Canada to Fortress Britain. The
tubs'they sailed, some of them old, slow

ip, . the Nazi U-boats that circled around out-

side of the range of shore defences. In

. proportion to their numbers, more died
in the Merchant Marine than in any of

Canada’s armed services.

most forms of organized.religion.

in_T have learned from the lead-
ithin. the United Church, it is: *.
Hla: it works better when it’s

bureaucrats confirmed that they had had ©
a different status than combatants, and.

vy * Pramotions and
.” 2, Human Resources Manager
So: CORR (210)

RESPECTED, UNTOUCHED
BY SCANDAL, HONOURABLE, RENOWNED

FOR MiG INTEGRITY....-AS FAR AG 1 CAN

SEG iT, UJJAL
MATOR STRIKE AG

ma
On

THE NEXT
ELECTED

PREMIER...

that Ottawa had a different and lesser
debr to them.

1 mention all of this because of the
disgusting irony that Ottawa recently
balked at coughing up $35 million to

extend benefits to some. .

Merchant Marine sur-
vivors — at the very:

time it was negotiating
‘+ big time, takes place will 16 betwee

away $3.6 billion of. .
taxpayers’ money ©
because of the inane...
and “politically correct” ”
1977 law, one of the

“ stupidest ever passed,
that institutionalized

. “equal pay for work of "
equal value” in the fed- -.

“3° eral civil service.-"That
weasel phrase — not to becom
equal pay for equal work, which. js:
fectly fair — was used to snatch’
determinations from the mark
it over to the army of bureaucrats; co
sultants, lawyers, academics afid union’;
committee members who happily flocked
in and waxed fat in the agreeaple emplo'
ment of debating ‘and evaluating what -

It’s rubbishy pscudo-science
letely ideological, totally subjective.

ased on small relevance to the real. world ©

~ and its real employment needs, and it’has
been patiently, shrewdly exploited by

- union leader Daryll Bean.

-. Surprise! In the trendy-chic atmos-

phere of the day, the “experts” decided:

~ that what had-been overwhelmingly:
“women’s work” had been underpai
More surprise! They didn’t accordingly:

: propose to adjust the salaries of the:

.. Managing Editor
985-2181, 1119)

PROVINCIALLY

“man Jack of us

—

pOSANTH HAS ONLY ONE
AINST HIM BECOMING

wi
Aw)

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tl
N

=]
WW

—

Mariners missed in equity

PUT aside the Remembrance
Day rhetoric for another year.

“overpaid” downward. They demande
that the salaries of the “underpaid”. be
retroactively adjusted upward.:2.
Furthermore, the state-sponsored
equalopaths — there’s a nice neologi
I've just coiried — redictably di "t
attain’ more equality anyway. They ne
do. They only create a new inequality.
That inequality, once Ottawa’s payoff,

one job was “worth” compared to‘anath- .
er of a very different kind woh

groups against the unfavored.
must inevitably controll
1d, of ¢ {
voman Jill =. sc