The things that trouble Nova Scotia’s NDP leader
Gary Burrill talks ‘arrogant’ Liberals, QEII funding and long-term care shortages in Pictou County visit
Sometimes, provincial NDP leader Gary Burrill believes it’s a good idea to get out of the city and away from the walls of Province House, prompting him to tour Nova Scotia after the legislative session ended.
It’s left him troubled about the overall attitude of the Liberal-led government.
“They’re in their sixth year now and I find there’s an attitude of self-satisfaction or entitlement that surrounds their work,” he said.
Almost half of the MLAs in the NS Legislature are opposition members. But he fears that sometimes, good ideas are being ignored because they’re coming from other parties.
“I think the government has missed the boat several times on improvements that were really quite non-partisan.”
He points to a recent debate over a bill that would update the labour standards code to align with recent changes in the federal
parental leave laws. Part of the debate revolved around how long a person should have to be in a job to be able to take leave and be guaranteed their job was protected.
The Liberals said it should be a year, which would be the longest period of any province in the country. The NDP suggested 17 weeks – the same time it takes to qualify for parental leave.
“Everybody who qualified would be guaranteed that their job would be held. It had a deep common sense about it,” he said, adding that even some Progressive Conservative MLAs had acknowledged the merit of the idea.
But he believes it was rejected simply because it was recommended by the NDP.
“I think they were lost in their arrogant fog.”
P3 and the QEII
Burrill is also troubled by the decision to use a P3 funding model - a private company doing the work and leasing the building to the province for 30 years - to redevelop the Halifax QEII Health Sciences Centre.
With the way things change so rapidly in the healthcare field, Burrill said it’s very likely that even in a 30-year period, the building will require modifications.
“We’re not going to be able to make those modifications because it’s not going to be our building,” he said. “In order to make changes during the life of the lease, it’s very expensive – way more expensive than if you owned the building.”
He said the province only has to look at the schools that were built with a P3 model to see what can go wrong.
“The piper was paid after 20 years. It cost us $228 million.”
Over the lifespan of the P3 school agreement, the auditor general examined whether it was a good deal or not several times.
“Every time, the conclusion has been the same,” he said. “The projects don’t get enough oversight when you don’t own it and the private consortiums can’t borrow money as cheaply as the government can. The debt is off the government books but the government has to pay the company for that and, in addition to that, major management fees. In addition to that, every one of these projects has a line for profit.”
Other provinces who have built hospitals this way have found similar downfalls, he says.
Failure to invest in long-term care
Over the last three years, he says the province has cut $5 million from the operating budgets of nursing homes – and he says the effects are being felt.
When workers call in sick, they aren’t being replaced as often, leaving shifts working short. There’s also less money for recreational programming and cutbacks on the quality of food being served.
“We just said continually, if you’re going to cut somewhere, surely you can find somewhere other than nursing homes.”
Currently, 20 per cent of hospital beds in the Northern Zone - which includes Pictou County - are filled with seniors awaiting long-term care placement.
“This is affecting the whole healthcare system,” he said.
Emergency rooms have trouble discharging patients quickly because they’re waiting for available beds. Beds in emergency rooms are full longer, making paramedics wait longer to unload patients and stretching out their shifts.
Burrill believes this could be addressed by building new nursing homes and establishing laws around the level of care for nursing home residents that fits with today’s seniors, who are often in poorer condition by the time they reach a long-term care facility than they were in the past.