I totally agree with Brenda Corney’s (Friends of Medicare) comments regarding the manner in which staff transferring to Extendicare, from the Red Deer Nursing Home and Valley Park Manor, have been forced into significant pay cuts, loss of seniority and loss of pensions.
This is what happens when Alberta Health Services is allowed to create a “private sector” monopoly. No wonder Extendicare is grossly understaffed.
What Corney failed to specifically mention, although it is implied, is that this understaffing must be creating major hardship for the seniors who have already been transferred to the new facility.
These seniors have become pawns in the government’s “private is better than public” game.
Where is Seniors Minister Mary Anne Jablonski? Why is she not being an advocate for the best possible treatment of seniors? It is outrageous when her ministry, and the government in general, allows the most vulnerable of Alberta’s citizens to suffer in this ideological battle.
Michael O’Hanlon
Red Deer