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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

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—

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