Way to keep wasting taxpayers' money, Alberta!

After staying up till 2 am writing my crazy, long-winded rant last night (sorry if you couldn't make it through guys, I barely did myself.), I woke up to find this headline on the front page of my newspaper. A 25% raise on a $40,000 PART-TIME job?! Are you kidding me? If this were an *actual* job, they would need a performance evaluation before they even got the teeniest raise, and I'm sure if you've asked anyone who's been in the Alberta health care system they would give this team an F.

What's even more ridiculous is the way they're pushing the blame back and forth - Superboard chairman Ken Hughes says Health Minister Ron Liepert determined the honoraria, while an Alberta Health spokesman says Hughes proposed the raise, and Liepert approved it. Either way, there are so many levels at which someone could've said, "Hey look, wait times in hospitals in our two major urban centres are ridiculous! Maybe we should put the money back into the system instead of in our pockets!" Especially if, according to Hughes, "Most of us are not serving for the honoraria. We're serving because we think we can make a big difference."

Some of the comments say that having a part-time superboard is more efficient than having nine full-time regional health boards. Fine, but how come the public is not seeing this money we've supposedly freed up?

Sorry for these angry posts - will get to the fun one I had actually intended to write right now...