“Today the Minister of health has announced the first part of her healthcare reform: changes to primary care. Finding ways to deliver primary care to patients without a family doctor is essential, but this should not slow the process of ensuring every single New Brunswickers has a regular primary care provider. It’s interesting that the original health care reform release date and the Minister’s promise that every New Brunswicker would have a family doctor within six months would have been culminated around the same time – was this initiative what the Minister was referring to when she made the original promise?

What was announced today in no way reduces our concern about the upcoming reform of the healthcare system. Releasing information little bit at a time has been a strategy of the Higgs Government for years. By parceling out their changes, they hope the general population won’t connect the dots and see their hidden agenda, but New Brunswickers are wise to their games. People know the Higgs Government is not trustworthy, they manipulate numbers and twist words to fit their narrative.

The Higgs government has done nothing to address the healthcare shortage over the last few years. Recruitment and retention effort should have continued while they were working on their reform, instead their inaction contributed to the growing crisis in our healthcare system.

We will wait to see what is announced on Wednesday, but we don’t have high hopes considering the number of messes the Higgs government has created over the last few years.”

Jean-Claude D’Amours

Official Opposition critic for Health