Doctor shortage rooted in the 1990s
In the 1990s, a medical economist associated with McMaster University published data to show that hospital costs were driven by physicians because they were the only individuals who could admit patients.
He reasoned that hospital costs could be reduced by limiting the number of physicians admitting patients. The politicians of the day eagerly adopted this suggestion. They forgot that it takes at least 12 years to train a physician for practice.
They ignored the demographics that show the population was aging and the doctors were aging. Medical-school funding was cut, and the number of training positions were cut severely in most provinces.
To a degree, this applied to nursing training as well. I recall pointing out these issues in staff meetings with little response from staff and administrators.
So the voters of the day are now reaping what they have sown in the 1990s.
The solution is to increase the number of training positions immediately, but the benefit will be years away.
On the matter of using foreign-trained doctors, the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons have a responsibility to ensure comparable training to Canadian training standards for safety and standard of care for Canadians.
Where the standards have been met, foreign physicians will be allowed to practise. Not all foreign training in medicine is equivalent to Canadian standards.
At the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons level, the requirement of verification of training received was often problematic because training hospitals and institutions often did not respond or were slow to respond with the required information. ln some cases records were lost due to moves, fires, etc.
Walter Burgess, MD, FRCPC
Adult Psychiatry (ret’d)
Victoria
What is being done about the MD shortage?
I have my own doctor. I just phoned for an appointment. Earliest office visit is at the end of this month. For a phone appointment it is Thursday next week.
At the end of June he is leaving my clinic (he is a long way from retirement). I will join the growing list of patients with no family GP.
Having a family GP is no guarantee that you will receive timely service. I am a senior, I have been at this clinic since 1974. I do not know what I will do if I become seriously ill.
It appears that our doctors are leaving en masse. The government needs to tell us why and what they are doing about it.
We have a good health-care system, but it is of little use if it cannot be accessed.
Richard Parsley
Nanaimo
Shipping raw material for processing elsewhere
Re: “B.C. defers cutting big swaths of old‑growth,” April 2.
Les Leyne reports that the Council of Forest Industries says that old-growth deferrals will result in the closure of “a dozen sawmills at a cost of up to 18,000 jobs.” If COFI is worried about mill closures, they should be pressing the NDP government to halt raw log exports and send these logs to B.C. mills.
In 2019, 5.1 million cubic metres of raw logs were exported. That’s enough wood to fill 125,000 highway logging trucks. Parked bumper to bumper, that’s a line of logging trucks that would stretch from Vancouver to Whitehorse.
COFI should also be pressing the government to stop exporting cants.
Cants are raw logs that have had three or four of the sides (the wane) removed. They are essentially square raw logs. I have contacted numerous people in the ministry to find out how many of these cants are exported each year, and no one has been able to give me any numbers because, as one wrote: “We don’t collect data on cants.”
From my perspective, this is one way to hide these logs as timber and not the raw logs that they are.
We are no better than a colony when we ship off our natural resources unprocessed.
Jim Pine
Victoria
Victoria has anarchists; Oak Bay has troglodytes
Re: “No amalgamation with Victoria, please,” letter, April 6.
Well, talk about taking the gloves off! The letter said: “Until Victoria voters show the ability to vote in responsible councillors and mayors, unlike the narcissistic lunatics, anarchists and activists that have dominated Victoria’s council for the past eight years, no practical citizen in any other municipality would touch amalgamation with a 10-foot bike lane.”
“Narcissistic lunatics, anarchists and activists” — gee, how you really feel? I would have thought the writer would save “narcissistic lunatic” for Donald Trump, that boy in a man suit who is leading the effort to destroy American democracy and fan subterranean tribal hatreds; and “anarchist” for that country’s Christian Right, which is tearing government to shreds.
Stop scissor-trimming your Uplands lawn long enough to look out at the world. Things are burning, my friend, and I’m not sure that Victoria’s urgent, corrective activism will be enough to steer a sane course now.
Given the wild thrashings in the letter, I’m sure the writer will have no objection if I suggest that troglodytes who make their home deep in the heart of Oak Bay, The Land That Time Forgot, should simply, silently count their blessings, as long as those last.
Gene Miller
Victoria
Federal budget misses climate targets
Another federal budget, and more massive subsidies for the oil and gas sector.
Burning and extracting fossil fuels is the number one cause of climate change. Yet our government buys a pipeline, and approves the Bay du Nord project.
The latest report of the IPCC makes it abundantly clear that we have very little time, perhaps less than a decade, to prevent global temperatures from rising to unlivable levels.
Despite the promises, Canada has never met its climate targets. And it is beginning to look like we never will.
Governments are supposed to represent public interest — not private profits. It’s time our governments put our taxpayer dollars toward sustainable, renewable energy options — like solar, geothermal, wind — and not into the unproven technology of carbon capture promoted by, and benefitting, the oil and gas industry.
The science is in. The solutions are before us. The obstacle is politics.
Karyn Woodland
Colwood
Government rewards more deficit budgets
Re: “Red-ink penalties scaled back for B.C. cabinet ministers, boosting their salaries,” April 7.
The NDP unfailingly show their disdain for taxpayers in this, the latest contemptible act of betrayal in throwing out the penalties for ministers for violating the balanced-budget law.
The ministers, overly compensated at $167,000 a year, are not compelled financially or morally to do what is best for taxpayers, which is to spend and waste less of our precious tax dollars.
Finance Minister Selina Robinson is not only abolishing the balanced-budget law penalty permanently, she’s making it retroactive to cover last year as well.
“It sends the wrong message,” she told the legislature, defending a move being made while at least three more deficit budgets are forecast. The wrong message, minister, is that incompetence is worth as much as competence. And you are guaranteeing and rewarding three more deficit budgets.
George Orwell always provides the best way to describe the working-class roots of the NDP. When joined by their unloved capitalist “brothers” in Animal Farm when all are gorging at the trough: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” And “Oink”!
Clay Atcheson
Saanich
Oil project approval and a radical approach
Re: “Federal environment minister approves Bay du Nord oil project off Newfoundland,” April 7.
It was just this past Monday that UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated: “Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”
Jack Hicks
Shawnigan Lake
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