I was disappointed with the editorial in the Oct. 5 Gazette. Your premise that the NDP are fearmongering is incorrect and insulting in my view. Many of us in Alberta lived through the Klein era of cuts and budgets to "balance the budget and erase the debt that successive Progressive Conservative governments had accumulated. They too brought in experts from outside Alberta to advise them. We saw:
• Salaries cut five per cent across the board. My teacher pension still reflects that cut.
• Nurses let go. Nursing programs cut, a hospital blown up and then a shortage of nurses and recruitment of nurses from the USA and other countries.
• Private health clinics set up to do hip and knee surgeries that opened and could not make enough profit and closed.
• Education budgets cuts, school building and repairs put on hold. Class sizes grew and special needs children did not get the services they needed. No new schools.
We remember those cuts and we do fear a repeat of the mistakes of the past and the empty promises. We had to live through the consequences of Progressive Conservative government mistakes and do not want to repeat those mistakes.
These are real concerns as we remember the history and we do fear the same type of cuts especially to Education and Health.
Lynne Duigou, St. Albert
