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One very pleasant surprise in former premier Brad Wall’s 2012 “Saskatchewan Plan for Growth: Vision 2020 and Beyond” was its commitment “to eliminate wait times in emergency rooms by 2017 and improve access to primary health care.”

The economic plan of eight years ago also vowed to reduce surgical wait times “so that by 2014, no one waits more than three months for surgery” and “Improve access to primary care” — an admission that it’s meaningless to strive for a healthy economy if we aren’t actually healthy ourselves.

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Sadly, these goals haven’t been met, perhaps leaving some to think they should be abandoned because they were unachievable. This would be absolutely wrong. Recent events underscore why it’s more important than ever to recommit to these goals:

— In Saskatoon, we learned critical details in the death of 27-year-old Steven Rigby on Dec. 22, 2018 in a police officer-involved shooting.