Dear Editor,
I just finished reading Judy Junor’s latest diatribe on health care and physician recruitment in southwest Saskatchewan, which appeared in your newspaper on August 5, 2010. If Ms. Junor had one ounce of credibility on this topic, I would take her concerns seriously.  However, actions speak louder than words. Let’s review Ms. Junor’s track record during the reign of the previous NDP administration.
Between 2001 and 2006, during and after Ms. Junor’s tenure as associate minister of health, Saskatchewan suffered the highest losses of health-care workers in the country. The province lost 455 registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses, 173 physicians, 155 pharmacists and 95 physiotherapists, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (Leader-Post, April 2010).
In 2000, the NDP commissioned the Fyke Report, which recommended the closure of close to 50 more rural Saskatchewan hospitals. As the chairperson of the Standing Committee on Health Care, Ms. Junor said the report was “not about saving money, nor about closing hospitals.” Not only are her comments contradictory, but it is also plausible to assume that if the NDP were ever returned to power, it would result in the further loss of health-care services for Saskatchewan families.
Ms. Junor will say anything that suits her purpose at any given time, including criticism of our government’s initiative to expand doctor training and recruitment, both of which were decimated by NDP policies in the previous two decades. Saskatchewan lost more doctors when she was part of the NDP government, than virtually any other time in our province’s history. Ms. Junor has no credibility when it comes to criticizing the actions taken by our government.
Those actions include:
• Addressing the nursing shortage the NDP said didn’t exist - we are 80 per cent of the way to achieving our goal of hiring 800 more registered nurses.
• Committing $3.5 million for a physician recruitment strategy and the establishment of the Physician Recruitment Agency, which will address the shortage of rural physicians.
• Adding more training and residency seats for medical school students. Plus, four medical residents are now receiving their training in family medicine at a brand new clinic in Swift Current – the latest step in our plan to expand medical education beyond Saskatoon.  
• $143 million for 13 new long-term care facilities to replace 13 outdated facilities throughout Saskatchewan, including a new health care facility in Maple Creek which will house 48 long-term care beds and 24 acute-care beds.
• Committed to reducing wait times for surgery to no more than three months – under the former NDP government, Saskatchewan’s surgical wait times were the worst in Canada.
If Ms. Junor was half as interested in delivering health-care solutions as she is in personal attacks and playing politics with this important issue, she might actually contribute something significant to the debate.  Unfortunately, she appears to be a pawn in the old-style politics that have reappeared with the arrival of the NDP’s current leader. Surely the people of Cypress Hills, and all of Saskatchewan, desire and deserve better than what’s being offered to them by the Opposition – a return to the bad old days of hospital closures and declining medical practitioners.
D. Wayne Elhard, MLA
Cypress Hills Constituency