AG unscathed by limp Liberals

Nova Scotia Liberals made a rather undignified dismount from their high horse this week, feebly questioning the auditor general on his health-care report, before beating a hasty retreat.

Last week, Premier Stephen Mcneil challenged the legitimacy of parts of auditor general Michael Pickup’s report on physician recruitment, mental health and home care services, and suggested the auditor general ought to stick to crunching numbers.

The premier set up this week’s meeting of the legislature’s public accounts committee as the auditor general’s comeuppance, where Liberals MLAS would catechize Pickup as to his rightful place and chastise him for straying into territory reserved for those elevated by election.

But the auditor general left the meeting unscathed, behind the cloud of dust kicked up by a couple of fast-fleeing Liberal backbenchers.

If it was a prize fight, the patrons would demand their money back. The advertised heavyweight combatants were no shows, and the flyweights weren’t worth the price of admission.

Liberals committee members were left holding a limp talking point about how “public servants” need to be accountable, apparently referring to the auditor general, but no one had suggested it should be otherwise.

If the Liberals’ questions in the committee were intended to hold the auditor general to account, it wasn’t clear for what.

The auditor general’s report generated more heat than it otherwise would have, because the premier was offended that Pickup was critical of the government for not communicating well its changes to primary care, from a system completely dependent on family doctors to a collaborative care model. If you’re not sure what that model looks like, you made Pickup’s point.

The auditor general’s seemingly innocuous statements were acknowledged as true by the Nova Scotia Health Authority.

Between last week’s first-ministerial outburst, and this week’s meeting of public accounts, cooler heads may have prevailed, or the government members on the committee got their instructions wrong, because they didn’t lay a glove on the guy.

Chester St. Margaret’s Liberal MLA Hugh Mackay swung and missed by a South Shore mile when he cited a plethora of com- munications — from 88 news releases to heavy Facebook traffic — from the NSHA and the health department as proof of something.

Mr. Mackay did not dally even for a moment’s explanation following the meeting, leaving his backbench colleague Ben Jessome from Beaverbank- Hammonds Plains to try to clean up the debris but by then the effort was futile.

Tory finance critic Tim Houston, who hails from Pictou East and has the only hat in the ring to succeed departing leader Jamie Baillie, resisted the invitation to take a partisan shot at the Liberals, but said the credibility of the auditor general shouldn’t be jeopardized by unfair criticism.

Sackville-cobequid New Democrat Dave Wilson finally brought down the curtain on the political theatre. He said the premier managed only to divert attention away from critical issues that continue to plague health care.

Indeed, Wilson said, that may have been the premier’s purpose from the outset. When the focus shifted to the premier’s criticism of the auditor general, the problems the report identified were largely ignored.

If the Liberal government has indeed adopted misdirection as a political tactic, it needs work on execution. They can, but shouldn’t divert attention from real weaknesses in public ser- vices at the expense of the premier’s stature, and surely didn’t intend to this time.

The premier’s censure of the auditor general was honest emotion, not feigned tactical anger.

The politics of health care are taking a toll on the government and on the premier personally. He put his faith in, and staked his government on, a transition for the better when nine district health authorities were merged into one.

Almost three years later there is little to show Nova Scotians by way of success, and widespread apprehension, even alarm, among health-care providers and people left without access to needed services, especially family doctors.

One health delivery administration for a province the size of Nova Scotia seems like good policy, but it has been marred by infighting between the department and the authority, confusion and secrecy at the NSHA, and a loss of confidence among doctors and other health-care providers.

The premier needs to direct his pique, not at the auditor general, but at the people he and his province are counting on to deliver a better health system.