Health care leads discussions during Tuesday's opening session of the N.B. legislature

Health care dominated the discussion of Tuesday’s opening session of the New Brunswick legislature.

"The collaborative clinic model is exactly where we're going to go,” said Premier Blaine Higgs.

“With all of this, it is certainly what physicians, what health-care workers are looking for, that collaborative care, we need to unload the ERs, we know that,” Higgs said.

Newly elected Liberal leader Susan Holt spent her first day in the legislature from the viewing gallery – she hasn’t won a seat yet.

"His team and our team and the third party are all talking about the same thing,” said Holt.

“We need multidisciplinary, non-urgent care clinics and we need to start investing in that infrastructure now,” she said. “So, it seems like if all three of us agree what's the hold up in moving that one forward.”

Rob McKee, the Liberal opposition house leader, took government to task over health care.

"There is a crisis in health care, and we are not seeing action from the new health minister or this government,” McKee said.

Green party MLA Megan Mitton says urgent care centres are needed and could divert people from ERs. She has hope in health-care workers but not in “government's political will” to do what she says is the right thing to do.

"We saw the health-care plan presented last year, and it didn't even have a pillar of recruitment and retention,” Mitton said.

“So, I don't have that much hope, because they're still working with that plan,” she said.

“They haven't been listening to the health-care professionals, doctors, nurses, others that have given them the ideas and they have a record breaking surplus and we don't see the investments that are needed."

The $135.5 million surplus was a topic of conversation that overarched health care.

Holt says it should be used for things residents need.

“They didn’t budget for, and they haven’t used [it] to invest in New Brunswickers. So I was a little surprised to hear them patting themselves on the back,” said Holt.