The Alberta Advantage

I have been musing lately on how interesting things are with our move to Saskatchewan. Although we are here there are still things that tie us to Alberta. The one and only good thing is our friends there. The others, well...

Take for instance my old job. I have emailed them asking for my T4 slip to be mailed to me and they returned a very professional, "No problem.", email. Since I know the people behind the "No problem", I can guess that they will wait until the very last day of tax season before they drop it in the mail to send to me. Who knows, they may even keep it for a day or two extra as this is what they did with my final pay - waited until a few days past the legal limit before mailing it to me. They also failed to pay me my holiday pay but I figured that at least I got the majority of the money from them and would never have to see/talk/email/deal with them again. Sadly, the T4 remains one of the bad links to Alberta and the garbage of that old company. I will not name the company...yet. Who knows, maybe by the time I actually get to naming it they will have gone bankrupt or the bosses put in jail.

The second thing is our Health insurance - AB Health to be exact. When we were moved in here and all was well we contacted AB Health to see how long we had coverage before we needed to switch. Sadly, we should have contacted Sask. Health. AB Health said we had to go an extra month past our 3 month timeline. This meant they got an extra month out of us in terms of money. They also told us that, get ready for it, THEY would complete all the necessary details to get us switched over to Sask. Health. I remember asking my wife, "WOW! That's kind of wild that they would do that, eh?" So, this last week I was thinking that we hadn't heard anything about our health stuff AT ALL. I mentioned this to my wife when I got home from work and low and behold she had been thinking the same thing that day. So, she called to find out what's up and discovered that we have NO health insurance at all. AB Health DIDN'T complete the necessary details to get us switched. So, my wife had to do a bunch of running around to get the Sask Health benefits application and then complete it. It made me wonder, "If anything happened where we were required to use AB Health what would they have done?" Would they have taken care of us? Or, would they have left us twisting in the wind? Why, I wonder, would they say one thing and then not do it? This again is the other thing that keeps us tied, somewhat, to Alberta.

I can hardly wait for the day when I can say, "I am a full Saskatchewanian again. Hear me ROAR!!!". Until that day comes, I'll have a VICO and keep the bunny-hug done up.