SaltWire E-Edition

Tories offer big bucks solutions for health care

System fix has eluded Nova Scotia governments for decades

JIM VIBERT jim.vibert@saltwire.com @Jimvibert

If you’re wondering what it will take to fix Nova Scotia’s health system, the provincial Tories think they have the answer. It’s about $425 million next year alone.

The don’t-forget-to-say-progressive Conservative platform landed this week, first as a stylish, user-friendly 10-pager that downloaded in the blink of an eye and with a sigh of relief, at least from here.

But for fans of Russian literature – and, alas, hapless political columnists – an unabridged version appeared that provides, shall we say, a more fulsome treatment. It is 130-plus-pages of plodding prose punctuated by promises and appended by seven pages of painstaking – and inflicting – financial statements.

Did I mention that PC leader Tim Houston is an accountant?

CREDIT FOR TRYING

The Tories actually calculated the financial implications of their platform – $553 million next year – for the next 10 years. Beyond year one, the numbers are notional – that’s my verdict, not theirs – but you gotta give them credit for trying.

All of that is to say that these Tories are serious about policy, although Houston would want to amend that to read: “serious about solutions.”

Indeed, the PCS are so enamoured of their solutions that they’ve adopted the noun “solutionist” and hung it on Houston, who seems to mind not at all.

Webster’s defines solutionist as “one who makes a practice or occupation of solving puzzles.”

Health care is a puzzle that’s vexed Nova Scotia governments for decades.

SAVAGE LEGACY

The Liberal government of Premier John Savage, in 1993-4, recognized that Nova Scotia could not afford the massive increases in the system’s costs which, at the time, were well over 10 per cent annually.

Savage and Co. – with more political courage than we’ve seen since – reined in those costs and became the least popular government in living memory, just as they knew they would.

For the record, it was the Savage government that pulled the province back from the brink of financial ruin – most every government since has claimed credit – and they couldn’t have done it without bringing health costs, which make up about 40 per cent of the total provincial budget, under control.

But, as usual, I digress.

INCONVENIENT TRUTH

At this point in the campaign, the Tories have donned the bigspenders’ mantle, although the New Democrats have yet to provide a costed platform.

The Liberals are in a bit of a bind because the Rankin government’s four-year fiscal plan requires a reduction in program spending next year. The added cost of Liberal election promises would make the cuts in existing government programs that much deeper should the Liberals be reelected and stick to the fiscal plan they released just four months ago.

The Grits will ignore that inconvenient truth, comfortable in the near certainty that the eyes of most Nova Scotians would glaze over just reading the preceding paragraph. I nearly nodded off myself while writing it.

By now Tories are wondering if I’ll ever get around to writing something about the content of their platform.

Since more than a third of the roughly 78,000 words in the unabridged version are devoted to health care, and since that’s where the Tories are hoping this election will be won and lost, it’s logical to start there.

To make a very long story shorter, the Tories hold the view that the Liberal government has made a bollocks of just about every part and parcel of the health-care system.

LOTS OF SOLUTIONS OFFERED

The PCS offer solutions for Nova Scotians without a family doc, to shorten wait times for surgery, and to treat and prevent chronic illness.

They don’t like the Nova Scotia Health Authority and want more decision-making decentralized to the regions and communities that know their health care priorities better than bureaucrats in Halifax. That does sound right.

Mental health and addictions get the attention they deserve from the PCS, who will increase the budget by more than $100 million-ayear, or by almost 30 per cent over what the Liberal budgeted for mental health this year.

While critical of the current government’s penchant creating new agencies and other bureaucratic entities, the PCS propose adding a new department of Addictions and Mental Health, they say, to increase the government’s focus on treatment and services.

NO ONE-TRICK PONY

But the Tories aren’t a one trick pony. They promise action on the economy, education and trades training, the environment, housing and a bunch of other issues, that together would add about $125 million in new spending.

Houston’s team seems intent on out-greening Nova Scotia’s self-proclaimed environmentalist premier.

For example, they’re proposing to protect 20 per cent of Nova Scotia for conservation by 2030.

While that falls short of the federal goal of 30 per cent by 2030, it’s more aggressive than Premier Iain Rankin’s commitment, which seems to top out at 14 per cent.

While their platform covers all, or most, of the required bases, the Tories clearly want to hang their electoral chances on health care, and Nova Scotians’ concerns therefore.

If the answer to the problems that beset the health system can be solved by throwing lots of money at them, the Tories have indeed hit on the solutions.

OPINION

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2021-07-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://saltwire.pressreader.com/article/281676847936886

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