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LETTER: Hiking taxes won't help fix health-care crisis

Nurses need 'workplace respect, honesty, a positive environment and a decent wage,' says letter writer
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OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a letter regarding raising taxes to address issues in the health-care sector, published May 16.

Canada currently ranks 25th in the world for its tax burden. (This is direct and overall taxes imposed by the government as a percentage of gross domestic product.)

As a reference point, the U.S.A. ranks 53rd in the world and the countries that rank first to 24th include most of the countries that have many more effective social services than we have in Canada.

What we do have is overpaid politicians, non-accountable government employees and wheels spinning out of control with little or no desired outcomes. When was the last time anyone found doctors in this country living on rental properties? So, even though their education burden may be real, they can afford to manage it.

Nurses, in particular, need to feel valued. Increasing their pay by increasing their taxes is not the answer. Workplace respect, honesty, a positive environment and a decent wage are all that is required to keep the angels at their stations.

As an aside, I just read that AI is coming to corporate offices, so I can only hope that this leads to a decrease in overhead, which is an increase in efficiency and a savings in the corporate salaries that are so inflated.

J. Archibald
Severn Bridge