New Brunswick election focusing attention on province's health-care woes
CBC
One week into New Brunswick's provincial election campaign, the state of health care in the province has emerged as a central issue — with parties differing sharply on how serious problems in the system have become and whether spending more money is needed to fix them.
Jamie Gillies, a political scientist at St. Thomas University, told Information Morning Fredericton on Thursday that after this week's leaders' debate, it is clear troubles in health care will be front and centre for voters this year
"I think that's where Susan Holt especially wants to push the narrative of this election," said Gillies. "Look at things like a health-care system in crisis."
During Wednesday's debate, Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs was under attack from both Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon for steering money into debt reduction over six years, which they argued should have been used to improve basic health services.
"One of the reasons why it's taking so long to advance primary care in this province is because we have a government unwilling to act and invest in health care and very inflexible about the approach they take," said Holt.
Higgs disputes that claim and in the election is sticking to his long-held conviction that health-care problems can be fixed without spending heavily to do it.
"No one ever says that government is running things as well as it could be," said Higgs during the debate.
"No one ever says that we couldn't find better results in innovative solutions."
That is a similar argument Higgs made in the 2018 election when he pledged to cut wait times for knee and hip replacements in New Brunswick in half, through innovations like better scheduling of surgical suites and redirecting existing hospital budgets "to focus on wait-list reduction."
It was a prescription that appears not to have worked. Five years later, waits for those procedures have grown longer.
In 2018, according to the Canadian Institute of Health Information, 55 per cent of hip replacement surgeries and 43 per cent of knee replacements in New Brunswick were happening within the national benchmark recommendations of six months.
In 2023, those numbers had slipped to 42 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively.
Other health services have also deteriorated
This year, between January and June, provincial data shows between 11 and 19 per cent of cancer patients who were ready for radiation therapy had to wait more than four weeks for treatment — depending on the month.
