Op-Ed: Looking for answers for Cape Breton

By: Tammy Martin, MLA Cape Breton Centre

I went into the legislature this spring looking for answers to the many questions people in our province are asking.

After six weeks in the House, it’s clear that the McNeil Liberals are not in the business of giving answers. In fact, they spent those weeks trying to convince Nova Scotians that life is getting better.

I don’t know if Stephen McNeil has been to Cape Breton lately, but there’s every indication that for people here, things are actually getting worse.

Children are being sent to Halifax for mental health treatment because it isn’t available on the island. Adults are waiting almost a year for mental health services.

Seniors are waiting months for home care, and those who can no longer stay in their homes face long nursing home wait times and even separation from their spouses.

Because so many long-term care patients are occupying hospital beds, our ERs have nowhere to move patients and are treating people in hallways and even bathrooms. The situation in our overcrowded Regional ER is disgraceful.

The government’s answer to this situation is to close two of our hospitals.

Closing community hospitals is not going to make people’s lives better. Instead, it will put more pressure on a system that is already at its breaking point. The Regional, even after the planned expansion, will be hard pressed to accommodate the 20,000 people who are losing their local ERs in New Waterford and North Sydney.

Even with new health centres coming to Cape Breton years from now, what are we supposed to do right now? The Health Authority announced this week that the Glace Bay ER will be closed from now until the end of May.

Regular ER closures continue to plague Glace Bay, New Waterford and the Northside and people are worried about what will happen if they have a medical emergency.

Given the recent departure of 20 physicians from Cape Breton, an increasing number of people are going without primary care or have to wait weeks to see their family doctor if they do have one.

This is happening today, yet I have not heard one satisfactory response from the Premier or the Minister of Health to these real, pressing concerns.

The McNeil government continues to be vague about the redevelopment’s timeline and refuses to give us any information about what will happen in New Waterford and North Sydney when the hospitals are gone. I guess people are just supposed to wait and see, and hope that nothing bad happens in the meantime.

Instead of making meaningful changes that could actually help people, the government has maintained this arrogant attitude, insisting that all our troubles will be solved by new health centres.

This session on behalf of our Caucus, I introduced a series of bills that would make information about what’s happening in our ERs available to the public, make medications more affordable, and extend universal dental care to children.

I also introduced a bill that would extend presumptive Workers’ Compensation coverage to firefighters to include many more cancers linked to their job, and legislation to extend benefits for former DEVCO miners.

The Liberal government did not pass one of these bills.

It’s sad that for members of the Liberal government, including their Cabinet Ministers in Cape Breton, partisan politics is more important than doing what’s right for the people they represent.

I plan to keep asking questions and working with my NDP Caucus members to keep these issues in the forefront. People elect politicians to represent them, and that’s what I’m here to do.