I don’t like being threatened. I’m not keen on having my intelligence insulted either. Yet, that’s just what the Yukon Hospital Corporation is doing with its current advertising campaign in support of a massive spending spree.
Billed as information, the ads spout lines like, ‘Don’t you want your doctor to be well rested when he’s hovering over you with a sharp knife?’ Sure I do. And he or she could be, at half the cost. That’s a nice threat, though.
Another ad implies we should all be expecting to get knee-replacement surgery and similar operations in Whitehorse as a result of the spending program. Not me, thanks. I want to fly to a hospital where the doctor does a lot of knee operations, is an expert at it, and is operating in his/her familiar and supportive environment.
Does anybody think we’re going to lure that experienced surgeon here? No? Then you’re not as stupid as YHC and the government thinks you are.
Interestingly, these ads are focused on health care at the Whitehorse hospital, yet a lot of the spending is in the communities. The YHC seems to be reticent when it comes to ads explaining the proposed hospitals in Dawson City and Watson Lake. Maybe there isn’t a good explanation?
On the plus side, I find some consistency to be reassuring and this advertising campaign is just as poorly planned and wasteful of money as the infrastructure efforts seem to be.
Unfortunately, that’s only reassuring in a “there they go again” sort of way.
Charlie McLaren
Whitehorse