Tories say Nova Scotia's health-care 'crisis' will decide the election

HALIFAX -- Nova Scotia's Tory leader is framing the provincial election as a referendum on health care, but his main opponents say his party's policies lack the substance to win on that terrain.

Jamie Baillie was greeted by cheers as he took the stage at an event in Halifax on Monday morning surrounded by candidates, supporters and children waving signs reading "More Doctors."

Baillie relayed stories he picked up from voters on the campaign trail about family doctor shortages, emergency room closures and prolonged wait times for mental health care. He accused Liberal Premier Stephen McNeil of sticking his head the sand while the province's health system devolved into a state of "crisis."

"Take a cold hard look at the McNeil government record in health care, and decide whether we're doomed to worse," Baillie told the crowd. "Only a change in government would lead to better health care."

Baillie said, if elected, he would reach out to the province's medical professionals and local providers to fix health care on the front lines, spend $13.5 million to recruit more doctors to Nova Scotia and double tuition relief for practitioners working in rural and underserved areas.

He told reporters that the Conservative party is polling neck-in-neck with the Liberals in the waning days of the campaign, and he thinks the question of health care may be enough to tip the scales in his favour.

"Do we want the kind of leader who works against ... the people that provide health-care services, or do we want the kind of leader who reaches out to them to make our system better?" he said. "That's really the question before Nova Scotians this week."

Baillie's political rivals pounced on the Conservative leader with accusations of political grandstanding, setting off a spree of duelling "fact checks" against the other parties as the campaigns jockeyed over health-care policy.

"(Baillie) is scaring people into believing that the sky is falling and he's the only one to hold the ceiling up," McNeil said at a news conference Monday afternoon. "The fact of the matter is that at no point this morning, or at any other time, has he laid out how he's going to provide primary health care to Nova Scotians."

The Liberal leader defended his record, saying the province has worked with health-care providers to improve the medical system, and his party has laid out a substantive platform to ensure that progress continues.

McNeil said a re-elected Liberal government would improve access to primary care by creating 70 collaborative care clinics, spending $25 million to hire doctors and specialists and expanding tuition relief for medical professionals in communities across Nova Scotia.

McNeil said he aspires to follow through on his unfulfilled 2013 campaign promise to provide every Nova Scotian access to a family doctor if he wins a second mandate, but wouldn't commit to a time frame.

The premier said that Baillie trades in political platitudes to distract from the cuts his party would make to lower the province's deficit. McNeil speculated that social programs such as affordable housing, income assistance and work training for people with disabilities would likely be on the chopping block.

"(Baillie) has very little in his platform to support vulnerable Nova Scotians," McNeil said. "Nowhere has he come out and said ... what are those cuts going to look like."

Meanwhile, the New Democrats say health care has been their party's top priority since the first day of the campaign.

"In what has become a pattern for Jamie Baillie, today his polling told him he needed to talk about health care," the party said in a statement. "Baillie's sudden attention on health care is just another example of his 'photo bombing' style to politics."

Leader Gary Burrill said in an interview Monday that the NDP is the only party willing to make the $120-million investment to provide every Nova Scotian with access to primary care.

He said the total cost of transforming the health system could put the province in the red for years, but an NDP government would do what it takes to secure care for every Nova Scotian.

"The health care of the people of the province is more important than generating a surplus for the budget of the province," Burrill said. "We are the only party willing to make the investments at the scale that is required to meet the need."

Nova Scotians head to the polls on May 30.