Lack of leadership from Furey government

These are difficult times for our province.

In times like this, strong leadership is essential; yet, it is just the thing we are lacking. It’s time for Premier Andrew Furey and his government to start doing a better job. They spend too much time attempting to fly under the radar. They seem not to want to get their hands dirty. They need to be more focused and be more proactive.

The government appeared to be caught off guard when the travel nurses story was broken by a national newspaper; $35.5 million spent on outside nurses for a period of less than five months; to add insult to injury, $1.5 million of this was spent on personal items and perks for outside nurses. Meanwhile, some of our own nurses could not get so much as a paid taxi fare home after working a double shift.

The Globe and Mail article also tells us that, “Compensation for travel nurses accounted for 14.5 per cent of the province’s spending on nurses during that five-month period, despite temporary nurses working only 5.4 per cent of the total hours.”

Health Minister Tom Osborne, in commenting on the probe by The Globe and Mail, is quoted as saying, “I certainly became aware of the meal portion that was identified in the story as a result of the investigation.”

Osborne is quoted further as saying, “So, we are looking for more information about the accommodations and the meal per forms.”

As is so often the case with this government, ministers responsible for various departments often claim not to know what is happening on the ground; then there is a scramble to fix things. They lock the barn door after the horse is gone.

These situations are exacerbated by a cult of secrecy over matters large and small, and even the benign and the mundane. This from a government that promised openness and transparency.

The same can be said of the undignified fiasco around the issue of human remains stored in freezer containers outside the Health Sciences Centre. They did not know about it, but we are reviewing and we will fix the problem; stay tuned.

There have been other situations, like the Uber contract that was terribly mishandled — an application for an Uber operation that was licensed in just one day. The applicant was found to be facing criminal charges and, within days of approving the application, the licence was suspended. Minister of Digital Government and Service NL Sarah Stoodley was not available for questions. Requests for interviews were denied.

And of course there is the matter of promises made but never fulfilled, like electoral reform. But this is something for another day. But it all goes back to a lack of leadership.

Patrick Hannaford St. John’s