BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following is in response to 'LETTER: Raising taxes only way to address health-care crisis.'
Mr. Brenner suggests that the only way to preserve our one-tier health care is to increase taxes and apply those funds directly to increasing medical staff.
Let's suppose we accept a tax increase on that basis. What guarantee do we have from the Ford government that the money would be used that way — really?
Even the federal government wanted assurances from the provinces that the medical transfer payments, if increased, would be applied to that specific need.
It's a matter of trust in both of these cases, isn't it?
Ford's track record of keeping promises doesn't exactly instill any confidence that an additional provincial tax would actually be applied to increasing medical staff and improving single-tier health care. In fact, his actions seem to suggest exactly the opposite. A smiling face and a silver tongue don't do it for me.
A nice idea, Mr. Brenner, but are we really that naive? Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice... you know the rest.
Allan Baker
Oro-Medonte Township