The cost of doing business
Geoff Maclellan touts provincial success at Truro chamber luncheon
TRURO, N. S. – After nine years in the political arena, Nova Scotia’s Business Minister says he can accept there will be times people disagree with his take on things. But not when they make it personal.
“Friday at my office was a flashpoint of really, really angry people,” Glace Bay MLA Geoff Maclellan said. “One person even said I was ugly. I can take a lot of heat, I got no time for that stuff.”
Half in jest, all in earnest? Maclellan’s comments came during a recent presentation he made in Truro during a Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the NSCC campus.
“It’s a pleasure to be here,” he said, at the start of his presentation on the state of the province. “That I’m not met outside by a mob like last week in Glace Bay is a good feeling.”
The comments were in reference to a group of more than 100 angry Cape Bretoners who swarmed and tried to occupy Maclellan’s constituency office the previous week in protest of the government’s plan to close community hospitals in New Waterford and North Sydney.
During his presentation, Maclellan reiterated his approval of the Macneil Government’s position to replace those facilities with long-term care homes and clinical services, while expanding emergency rooms at the Glace Bay hospital and the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Sydney.
“What we’re doing with the QE (II) program and with the Cape Breton hospitals is the right thing, I stand by it 100 per cent,” he told the Truro audience. “It’s billions of dollars in new infrastructure, it’s a great way to recruit new docs, new health professionals to the area. It’s all good things,” Maclellan continued. “We’ve got to modernize and we’ve got to get there in a hurry.”
While acknowledging there are challenges in trying to improve the province’s health-care system, which consumes about half of the province’s $11 billion annual budget, and with recruiting more family physicians, Maclellan also admitted the province can’t hide behind the fact the doctor shortage problem is wide spread across both Canada and beyond its borders.
“What are we going to do right now is our biggest challenge and these are the conversations I have with Stephen (Premier Mcneil) and (Health Minister) Randy Delorey about. We need an influx and we’ve got to figure it out,” he said.
“It’s not an excuse to say every province is going through this, the U. S. is short a staggering amount of doctors. So that’s not an excuse. But it’s the reality of the competition of getting new docs here.”
Maclellan also touched on areas of success the province has experienced in recent years, including three consecutive balanced budgets, a commitment to improve the broadband Internet access in rural areas, an influx in population of about 27,000 people, an improved provincial credit rating, a reduction in red tape regulations that he said has provided savings for non-profit organizations and businesses, and the retention of youth.
“We’ve turned the tides on youth leaving,” he said. “More stay than leave now.”
In terms of business initiatives, Maclellan said while Nova Scotia is not large enough to compete directly in many areas with other larger provinces, there is still lots that can be accomplished.
“We can’t compete with Ontario with direct things but we can pick our battles and have those niche opportunities, the core competencies, the comparative advantages,” he said. “That’s when we win. And I certainly believe that in many ways we’ve narrowed in on those.
“Have we knocked it out of the park yet? I wouldn’t say that. There’s more work to do, we’ve got a couple of years left of this mandate.”
“We’ve turned the tides on youth leaving … More stay than leave now.” Minister of Business Geoff Maclellan