So why does Minister Adriana La Grange stay?

I cannot help having a little sympathy for our current Minister of Education, Adriana La Grange. Her situation reminded me of one of the all-time great movies “Judgment at Nuremburg”. The movie reveals the dilemma of a world renowned German jurist – known for his honesty, integrity, humanity and devotion to democracy- who must make a very hard choice after Hitler takes power. He can resign from the bench to protest the anti-Semitic laws just passed, or he can stay on the bench, enforce the laws, but use what little power he retains to rescue as many Jews as he can. He makes the latter choice, and ends up charged with war crimes at Nuremburg after the war. I see a parallel between the German jurist and Ms. La Grange. As a school Trustee in Red Deer, she fought to help develop what a former British PM — David Cameron — called “the best education system in the English speaking world”, the Alberta Public Education System.

Now she is the Minister of Education in a government that spends billions on giving money to oil companies but cares nothing about our children or our future. Why does she stay? As a former trustee myself, I know her well enough to believe she hangs on to this job in the hopes of preserving as much as she can of this once “bright light” Alberta Education system. So my sympathies are with her, even as I condemn many of the choices she has had to make.

I cannot say the same for our current Minister of Health, Tyler Shandro. Like the “Grim Reaper”, he has taken a giant scythe to our public health system. As a consequence of this action of transferring services to private clinics in which his wife has invested, she may have a potential profit. Surely Ministers in the Alberta Government have to sign ‘pecuniary interest’ declarations. Front line Family Doctors and General Practitioners in the public system are being forced to close their doors because of the highly questionable actions of this Minister. We can only wonder how many of these dedicated, highly qualified medical practitioners will still be here - especially in our small cities and towns and rural municipalities- after this predation. I can inform this Minister that it may be easy to attract new doctors to the big cities — thought I think after his destructive policies it may not be as easy as he thinks. But even at the best of times attracting skilled doctors to the more remote parts of Alberta has been a difficult challenge.

I was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta for over 40 years. I served most of this time on the executive of the local party association, and had the honour of working with seven premiers and dozens of ministers to build the “Alberta Advantage” so that our citizens could have world class services. My disappointment runs deep with the current government’s practices of plowing ahead with their ideological agenda rather than trying to work with the professionals in the field to solve the desperate problems facing Alberta.

Terry Riley

Medicine Hat