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Letter to the editor ...

Ireceived a glossy halfpage (both sides) advertisement brochure regarding Alberta’s new approach to health care. Government advertising can be problematic. There is a legitimate reason for governments to inform us about new programs that we may wish to take advantage of. But, this is not the purpose of this advertising campaign.

Any advertising is spin. We should approach any piece of advertising by asking ourselves what is being spun, because the most important aspect of any advertising is unspoken. So, the unspoken message of this advertising is this: We have screwed up the medical services in our province and now we are going to fix it.

There is an implicit admission of how the government messed up the medical system in the list of things they intend to fix.

BUT – there is no plan to fix the mess they have created. If there was, there would be an announcement of there resources that are being committed to solving the problem. It is easy to say that we will cut emergency room wait times. But it ain’t happenin’ if we don’t pour more money in to hire more doctors, nurses, and other staff to work in emergency rooms.

Each of the issues in the brochure faces the same problem. The implication is that “We’ll just say we are addressing this problem, but we won’t commit the resources to actually fix it. If we say we are fixing it, people will never figure out that nothing has changed. And we don’t have to do anything.”

There is no reason for this kind of advertising anyway, other than paying for an election ad with public dollars. There is no new program that we can use. If this government were serious about solving the problem, they would expend the money wasted on this advertising by hiring some people to put into the system where some of the issues could be addressed. It’s so much easier to say you are doing something then it is to actually do it.

Sincerely.

Bernie Huedepohl, Vermilion