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The following media excerpts do not necessarily reflect the views of the ATA.
MLA wage freeze has deeper connotations
MLA pay has become such a poisonous subject that the PCs recoil in terror whenever they hear its name. On Thursday [February 7, 2013], they made a huge deal of passing a modest motion to refuse any pay hike until March 31, 2014. This means, effectively, that they’re turning down a 1.1 per cent cost of living increase. And what group in our beloved Alberta is pressing for a cost of living raise? That would be Alberta’s doctors, via the Alberta Medical Association, which this week infuriated Premier Alison Redford by raising the MLA pay issue. The docs jabbed the PCs’ sorest wound, without anesthetic, by saying MLAs are overpaid. … On Thursday, PC MLAs staged a bizarre legislature show trial of MLA pay, with themselves as judge and jury. Their instant verdict? Not guilty. The larger meaning? No raise for the doctors, not even cost of living. … Beyond the docs, the freeze says that any labour group, including teachers and government workers, will be lucky to pry a discontinued penny out of the government.
—Don Braid, Calgary Herald, February 8, 2013
Don’t overdo school security
How can we forget the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December, in which innocent children were killed and terrible grief was inflicted on many families? It was one of those events that will haunt us for a long time, and so it should. But it should not determine policy. That should be determined by local conditions, such as the perceived threat that motivated Nanaimo [British Columbia] school district officials to post security guards at three schools and the district’s office this week. … security procedures in schools on Canada’s West Coast shouldn’t be linked to a shooting nearly 5,000 kilometres away on the U.S. East Coast. Policies should be determined by local needs and conditions, not by events elsewhere. … We don’t need to turn our schools into fortresses. When a threat is perceived, appropriate actions can be taken. That’s what happened in Nanaimo this week when school officials and police became concerned about the intentions of a former district employee and put the extra security into effect. It was a just-in-case measure, erring on the side of caution, but a reasonable move.
—Editorial, Times Colonist, February 8, 2013
Premier and AMA are fumble wage football
Doctors are supposed to be good at analyzing symptoms and making diagnoses. Politicians are supposed to be good at politics. But to judge by the “negotiations” between the Alberta Medical Association and Redford government, neither Alberta’s physicians nor its political leaders have a very firm grasp on such skills. If there’s been a strategic error to make in the past few months, the AMA seems to have made it. … And yet, as bad as the AMA’s bargaining tactics have been, the government’s strategy has been as bad, or worse. Alison Redford just can’t seem to shut up about health premiums, bringing them up again and again as a threat to counter the doctors’ salary demands. … The average Albertan doesn’t much care about all this political posturing. As patients, we want to be sure our doctors are fairly compensated, so that we can recruit and retain the physicians our booming province needs. But many Albertans are also keenly aware of the looming budget realities — and of the need to reform primary health care. It may not be fair for the premier to blame the province’s financial woes on the wage demands of doctors, teachers, and other public sector workers. Yet economic realities have conspired against the AMA, at a time when there’s little public sympathy for big wage demands. If physicians want a better deal, they’ll need a smarter strategy, one that inspires public support, not government resentment. If, conversely, Redford wants to look commanding, instead of petty and vindictive, she’ll have to stop rising to the bait every time the AMA sets out to goad her.
—Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal, February 7, 2013
