N.B. election: Party leaders focus on collaborative health care as campaign enters final weekend

N.B. parties final push before Monday election New Brunswick parties made a final push Friday with polls showing a tight race ahead of Monday's provincial election.

With polls showing a tight race ahead of next week’s New Brunswick election, party leaders were putting their final campaign pushes front and centre on Friday.

In Moncton, Progressive Conservative leader Blaine Higgs made a campaign stop on a downtown rooftop patio.

“In order to keep our focus and to keep moving forward we need a PC majority,” said Higgs. “We need our province to be on the right path, we need to continue to build and face our challenges head on. We've proven we're a government that can do that, we've proven we're a government that can make decisions that matter.”

Higgs said the Liberals have promised PC ideas that are already underway, particularly on collaborative health care.

“I consider it flattery that Susan Holt and the Liberals have copied so much of what we're already doing to shape their platform,” said Higgs.

Collaborative health care has been a common thread across party lines this campaign, with similar promises also from the Green Party and NDP.

The PCs say they’ve delivered 51 collaborative health care centres across the province so far, with another six in development. The PCs say those centres include nurse practitioner clinics, family medicine practices, and “Health Link” clinics providing primary care access to patients waiting for a permanent physician.

"We know there's more work to be done, especially on health care,” said Higgs. “But we have the financial strength to keep investing and make real transformational change. We have funded health care at a higher level than any government in the past."

The Liberals have disagreed with the PCs definition of what a collaborative health care model should be.

Liberal leader Susan Holt, also in Moncton on Friday, restated the party’s promise to establish 30 community care clinics at a cost of $115.2 million over a four years.

The Liberals are promising another $111 million over four years for nurse retention payment. The Liberals argue their community care clinics would put doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychologists, physiotherapists, and pharmacists all together within the same setting.

Holt said municipalities are lining up to be included within the plan and are helping with the recruitment of health-care professionals.

“We need to care for the people who are caring for us,” said Holt. “We have to retain our health-care professionals, and then they’re going to be the ones to help us attract more health-care professionals. That’s why we’ve put in place a healthcare human resource strategy that we need to have across between multiple health-care professions.”

In Hampton, Green leader David Coon said his party’s promise to open 70 collaborative care clinics was supported by the funds needed to make it happen. Coon took aim at the PC and Liberal collaborative health care plans.

“Just as was the case when their parties were in government, neither are willing to commit the necessary funds to create this,” said Coon. “They won’t spend the money.”

Coon said the Green’s promise to spend $100 million annually on 70 collaborative care clinics was in tandem with another pledge to spend $170 million annually to increase compensation for nurses.

Coon said there were four doctors in Hampton who wanted to create a team-based collaborative care clinic but couldn’t hire nursing staff because there wasn’t a funding model available to do so.

Final weekend of the campaign

PC leader Blaine Higgs is scheduled to spend Saturday “visiting ridings from Bathurst to Carleton County.”

Liberal leader Susan Holt is scheduled to make appearances between Saturday and Sunday in Kingston, Rothesay, Saint John, Fredericton, Moncton, Riverview, Kouchibouguac, Miramichi, and Neguac,

Green leader David Coon is scheduled to campaign this weekend around the Fredericton area.

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