Crime, health focus of N.B. election two weeks before Oct. 21 vote

With exactly two weeks to go until election day, New Brunswick’s three main political parties spent Monday on the campaign trail talking about crime and health.

The Progressive Conservatives pledged to amend the province’s Community Investment Fund so non-profit organizations could apply for money to enhance security measures at their facilities.

The fund allocates $70,000 to MLAs each year for community projects and priorities. PC leader Blaine Higgs said amending the fund was meant for religious and community-based groups.

“Whether it’s installing cameras outside of a local church, improving security at a mosque, or strengthening the locks at a community centre, these changes will help protect vital places where we come to together, where we practice our religion, or support each other in another social setting,” said Higgs at an announcement in Fredericton.

Higgs said Monday’s announcement, on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, was a coincidence.

“This is something concerning our local issues here with break-ins that we’ve seen in different centres, thefts that vary in scale or size, damage that’s in different communities whether it be a church or community centre, mosque, synagogue,” he said. 

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In Quispamsis, Liberal leader Susan Holt made a commitment to build a collaborative care centre in the area. The Liberals have previously made a $115.4-million pledge to open 30 collaborative care clinics across the province over a one-year mandate, with 10 clinics in the first year.

“I was excited to hear that there is space available in the K.V. Health Centre, there’s space to locate a collaborative clinic,” said Holt. “We’ve talked to health-care professionals, nurse practitioners, and specifically even an opportunity to focus on women’s health. Because we know there are needs in terms of osteoporosis, hormone therapy, cardiovascular issues that are being experienced in this community at a high rate.”

Holt said the recruitment of medical professionals for the collaborative care clinics was ongoing.

In Sackville, Green Party leader David Coon promised to facilitate more local decision-making within the provincial health-care system. Coon referenced the previous eight regional health authorities that were merged into two (Horizon and Vitalité) in 2008.

“It will work somewhat like it once did work before we overcentralized the health-care system,” said Coon. “Where hospital administrators work fulltime in their hospitals and had the authority to manage laterally across the hospital, working with the different departments, surgery, ER, nursing and so on, to address problems in the hospital, implement solutions in the hospital.

“Right now, the way it’s set up, all those decisions are made up the ladder, outside of the hospital, in distant offices, and all the different parts of the hospital are having to work in management silos reporting up to different managers, out of the hospital."

 Coon said hospital administrators don’t have the power or authority to make key decisions at their respective facilities, but said the changes being proposed by the Green Party would include the continuation of Horizon and Vitalité as two separate health authorities.

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