Party leaders joust over health care in televised debate

Nova Scotia’s Opposition leaders criticized Premier Tim Houston’s handling of health care during Thursday night’s election debate.

“There’s been a lot of money spent on flashy things like phone apps, Google search engines, while people don’t have a family doctor,” said Liberal Leader Zach Churchill.

“Health care can’t just be about expensive Band-Aids for the system. It has to be about improving your health.”

NDP Leader Claudia Chender also took the premier to task.

“Tim likes to talk about the work he’s done. What we (NDP) look at is the impact on people’s lives. And what we know is that there are 145,000 Nova Scotians without access to primary care in this province,” said Chender.

The testy debate was hosted by CBC Nova Scotia.

The party leaders answered questions from moderators Amy Smith and Tom Murphy and Nova Scotia citizens on the province’s hardest problems.

The tone was largely respectful, but the leaders occasionally interrupted each other.

Tim Houston

The hot topic of the night, much like in the 2021 election, was health care. Chender and Churchill said Houston only delivered on broken promises to Nova Scotians.

“Mr. Houston promised to fix it (health care). He said he had the solutions,” said Churchill.

Houston said that under his leadership, health care in the province has gotten much better and the province is on a better path. 

He said there are 250 more doctors and almost 2,000 more nurses in the province than when his government took office. He said they also created one million new primary care appointment opportunities every year.

Houston said since he has been in government, the Progressive Conservative party has opened 2,200 new additional long-term care beds. He also said they’ve attached almost 100,000 patients to doctors while the waitlist for family doctors went up by 90,000. 

But in September, Houston said they took about 20,000 off the list, and in October they took another big portion off as well. 

“Why could we do that? Because we built capacity in the system. We negotiated a new contract with Doctors Nova Scotia … all of these things are pointing together, that now we’re attaching people and we’re growing,” said Houston.

He said the health-care system is a work in progress. He said the PC Party ‘inherited a mess’. But he is committed to seeing it through.

“There’s work to be done for sure. There are more doctors, more nurses, more appointment opportunities. The metrics of the system are improving. We’ve delivered on a number of promises,” said Houston. 

Houston said there is good news for Nova Scotians. There are more doctors on the way because of The International Medical Graduate Assessment Clinic. He said the province can expect at least 45 new doctors a year through it.

Zach Churchill

Churchill said there need to be changes in health care. He said there isn’t enough early diagnosis, attaching enough patients to doctors, and not enough is being done for women’s health and research on women’s health. 

He also said if the province continues on this track, there would be half a million people in the province without a family doctor. 

“Go talk to the doctors at the VG where there’s more mice than staff in that building,” said Churchill.

Churchill said the Liberal Party is committed to tackling these serious issues. Churchill said that if elected, his party would build and expand 40 collaborative care clinics, which would bring doctors back to family medicine, and attach patients to family doctors.

When asked by a reporter after the debate about Houston’s statement on the Liberal Party leaving the province in a mess in health care and education, Churchill said he remembers when Houston was in opposition and used to say, ‘It might not be my fault, but it’s my responsibility.’

“Now that he has the responsibility, all of a sudden it’s everybody else’s fault,” said Churchill.

Claudia Chender

Chender said Nova Scotians are frustrated and can’t understand why a government that promised to fix health care hasn’t done it.

She said that when Churchill was the health minister, the waitlist for a family doctor was only 70,000. Now, it is 145,000. 

She said there is no access to surgical abortions or birth control in some parts of the province and said the province must address the list of Nova Scotians waiting for a doctor. 

Chender said that access to appointments isn’t an attachment to primary care.

She said her party would open 15 new collaborative family doctor clinics in the first year and an additional 15 over the next two years. She also said the NDP would re-open collaborative emergency centres, which she said the Liberals abandoned. 

“NDP pioneered care in this province … this is what Nova Scotians want, this is our focus,” said Chender. 

The debate also covered issues of housing, education and schools, power bills, mental health, growth and infrastructure, and climate change. 

Election day is Nov. 26.