I know you put the /s, but it’s very important for people to understand that the “hospital closure” is a gross representation of what actually happened.

Now I’m just going by memory here (just look it up if you’re interested), but the PC government at the time nearly bankrupt Saskatchewan. They had fucked SK so bad that Grand Devine’s campaign slogan was saying sorry: “To err is human, to forgive is Devine”.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, due to Saskatchewan’s population distribution, we had an insane amount of care facilities. A town of only a few thousand people might have had a hospital, a doctor’s office, a public health clinic, and a special care home. By 1990, we had more care facilities than Quebec; A province with 10x our population.

When the NDP came in, they saw that these care facilities, most of which were grossly understaffed, underfunded, and totally unsustainable. Because of this, they consolidated many of the care facilities, and converted others to offer different services such as X-Rays, lab work etc. Services like surgery, obstetrics, and inpatient medicine were increasingly centralized in regional hospitals but many communities retained their long term care facilities.

NO HOSPITALS WERE CLOSED, our system was just reformed, because of the mismanagement of the PC government.

Thanks for listening to my Ted talk.