Right in the Centre - Looking for answers
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- Published on Friday, September 15, 2023
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner & Press
There is a huge uproar in rural 水果视频 about Emergency Rooms and rightly so. The closure of ERs may not be the government鈥檚 fault regardless of party.
There is a shortage of rural doctors, period. Without doctors, you can鈥檛 have an ER.
Why do we not have enough doctors? I have heard some of the answers.
For whatever reason, we have not educated enough doctors in 水果视频.
Foreign trained doctors often don鈥檛 want to stay in rural 水果视频.
Even 水果视频 trained doctors don鈥檛 always want to live in rural 水果视频.
We have trained too many 9-5 specialists instead of GPs. There are doctors in larger centres who aren鈥檛 doing all that well because there isn鈥檛 enough work I am told.
There are also too few patients in some smaller centres for a doctor to make a living. It鈥檚 sad, but many towns are still shrinking in population and a doctor鈥檚 practise needs numbers to survive.
It has been reported that there are 20,000 foreign trained doctors and 30,000 foreign trained nurses in Canada that have not been certified yet. There鈥檚 something wrong with that process. Both the federal government and the provinces must get that backlog cleared.
A writer could fill books about why rural communities shrink. In fact, many books have been written on the topic. Basically, people are always looking for bigger and better places to live. After WWII, the returning US rural servicemen demanded, 鈥淏uild us roads and they will come.鈥� The government answered the challenge and built 1,000s of miles of roads and 鈥渢hey left.鈥� That happened in 水果视频 too. If even a small portion of the people who left rural 水果视频 had made the decision to stay, we would today have a lot stronger rural economy.
Large urban areas don鈥檛 contain all the glory they pretend to have nor what many rural people believe they will achieve. It has always been a mystery to me why there has been such a flocking to urban areas. For my generation, and for generations before me, people left rural areas. Life seemed easier in the city and in many ways it was. Hydro didn鈥檛 come to the farms until 1949, so electric lights didn鈥檛 exist. Radios ran on expensive batteries. There wasn鈥檛 much for electric heating. Our farm home went from a wood fired furnace and cookstove to an oil furnace and eventually electric heat. Running water depended on how fast you ran it from the well to the house or barn. Water for washing people or clothes was carried in and carried out. Toilets were primitive to say the least. Life-easing facilities were certainly an incentive to leave the farm.
But so much has changed. Water, sewer and home heating are pretty much the same everywhere. Well, everywhere except some First Nations communities and that is a problem long ignored by government. There are many good jobs outside of the cities and some very good options for food services and entertainment. So why do people still flock to the cities where crime and poverty are on the rise usually much faster than rural areas. Well, you tell me, as I would love to hear about it.
The decline of many small communities is a major problem and especially in the supply of medical services. Small communities need more people and there are many roadblocks. Zoning and building codes are too strict, for example. Some municipalities lack vision and often the skilled staff to build a progressive community.
Available capital is artificially scarce for small scale manufacturing and food production. We throw out thousands of tons of food every summer due to a lack of processing, handling and storage facilities. Silly example perhaps, but if all tomatoes grown in 水果视频 were canned or frozen, a lot less tomatoes would be imported.
Rural 水果视频 growth is hindered for all of the above reasons and perhaps many more. The above is admittedly a rambling mixture of cause and effect, but it鈥檚 up to all people across the province to make improvements.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer鈥檚 personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the Banner & Press staff.
