John Collison raised a good point on the Battle For Alberta Facebook group recently. He and Anne Jordan were discussing Premier Smith's recent decision to let go Deana Hinshaw, Alberta's now former-Chief Medical Officer. After my encouragement that Premier Smith keep on "trimming the fat" at the AHS, Anne Jordan cautioned that Danielle should "listen to the nurses" and that the "frontline has a lot to say.".This is no doubt true and very wise counsel. Nevertheless Collison challenged Anne for misusing the term "frontline" and pointed to the plethora of TikTok videos of nurses — theoretically at work — dancing up a storm..I have to agree with John. The term 'frontline' is often used by unions for nurses and teachers. This is a serious miscarriage of terminology. The 'front line' began as a military term for the first soldiers in battle who meet the enemy..The term now summons up deep respect for the soldiers who were on the 'front line' and yes, they were almost always men or older boys, and were very likely about to die..Unions have now cleverly hijacked this term to mean the nurses who are actually in direct contact with patients on a regular basis, or teachers who actually teach. By doing this, the deep respect accorded to the millions of men who experienced painful deaths to essentially protect their parents, their wives, their children from similar fates, is unworthily transferred to these modern nurses and teachers..Let's be clear. However dedicated and hardworking these individuals may be, the mortality rate of modern nurses and teachers is nowhere even close to the rate of death for these young heroes on the real front lines..Nor, I might add, is the rate of pay. Starting pay in the Canadian military is $17.50 an hour. According to the United Nurses of Alberta website, the hourly pay of a nurse in Alberta has been negotiated to now begin at $37.96..So the historic 'front line' worker had a low rate of pay and a high likelihood of dying. The NDP and the unions want you to think this similarly applies to Alberta's nurses, when actually neither is true. But since when did the NDP ever care about truth?.So I ask common-sense Albertans to no longer buy in to socialist word twisting. Refuse to misuse the term 'front line' any more. Let's continue to honor the men who died for our freedoms by leaving that term entirely reserved for those prepared to make that kind of ultimate sacrifice..And if we must, then let's use a more accurate word for the nurses and teachers who deal most often with the public during their day. In a traditional business setting the term for employees who spend most of the day serving customers is 'retail.' So if we had to keep distinguishing between nurses and teachers who spend most of their day serving patients or students directly and those who don't, I suppose we could start using the term 'retail nurse' or 'retail teacher' for those who do. I personally would prefer instead to just call all of them what they are: Nurses and teachers. Both, after all, are very honorable occupations in their own right..Instead, let's focus our attention on those jobs that the unions don't consider 'front-line,' the positions who don't spend most of their day in direct contact with either patients or students..These are the occupations of great mystery to me and to a great many other hardworking taxpayers throughout Alberta. If these people are being paid to not service patients or students directly then what exactly are they doing all day? This is where I would like our new premier to shine a light for the average taxpayer to see — a very bright light..Because there's one thing all real nurses and real teachers share with the men and women slugging it out in non-union jobs all over this province: We all have to pay taxes, and we all want our taxpayer dollars to be used as effectively as possible..The per capita provincial debt now stands at $33,000. This means a baby girl born in Alberta today will instantly be saddled with $33,000 in debt before she even draws her first breath. This is due to our generation's financial irresponsibility, not hers. She's stuck with fixing our financial mess..And before you say that getting rid of the debt is impossible I point you to our neighbor Saskatchewan, whose per capita debt is less than half of Alberta's — $14,500. Alaska and Norway by the way, with economies and populations very similar to ours, have essentially no debt at all, huge surpluses and money in the bank..So let's change that picture. For that baby girl Albertan born today let's get that provincial debt down to zero and keep it there. Better yet, let's leave her a big beautiful surplus for a legacy..Who's with me?
