Health care, housing top of mind for N.S. political leaders moving into 2024

Premier Tim Houston says his government has made “incredible progress” in 2023 to fulfil the promise of fixing health care that propelled the Progressive Conservatives to a majority government in the August 2021 election.

“I was upfront with Nova Scotians that it would take time and it would take money,” Houston said of the health-care fix. 

“It is taking time and it is taking money but we’ve made incredible progress,” Houston said.

“The YourHealthNS app, the Patient Access to Care Act, the labour negotiations with our health-care professionals and others, those are three significant things just this year and those things are making an incredible difference in the delivery of health care,” he said.

“There are people on the list (Need a Family Practice Registry) and we will continue to look at that but the options that Nova Scotians have to access care through the pharmacies, through virtual care, through the mobile clinic, through the non-urgent treatment centres, these are helping Nova Scotians every single day.”

As of Dec. 1, there were 148,512 Nova Scotians, 15 per cent of the population, listed on the registry as needing a primary care provider.

“I want to be very clear and frank with Nova Scotians that being on that list does not mean you don’t have access to care,” the premier said. “There are a multitude of ways to access care and we want to make sure that people are aware of those.”

Houston said the App had more than 140,000 downloads just over a month after its Nov. 1 launch and Nova Scotians are using the app to access care, to have a discussion about symptoms and where best to access care for the presenting symptoms, whether that care comes from a pharmacy, a mobile clinic or virtual care.

“We’ll continue to improve the App and add more information to it, but it’s helping people navigate a complex system and that’s a very powerful thing.”

Legislative fixes

Houston said the Patient Access to Care Act, passed in April, made Nova Scotia a leader in common-sense credentialing for health-care professionals.

“A doctor in the U.K. in good standing with their licensing body, good enough the U.K., good enough for us,” Houston said of the legislation that he says has already made a significant difference in the field of nursing, in which Nova Scotia had 1,500 nursing vacancies on May 1 but has since had 19,000 applications from nurses from various jurisdictions around the world who show interest in coming to the province.

The premier said the Patient Access to Care Act also provided initiatives to reduce administrative and red tape issues that are robbing doctors of hours they could be devoting to hands-on patient care.

Houston said doctors identified hundreds of thousands of hours spent each year on red tape when the PC government took office, a number he says has been reduced by 250,000 hours since the PCs came to office, in line with a government promise to reduce physician red tape by almost 400,000 hours a year by the end of 2024.

Further, the Act facilitated an expanded scope of practice for regulated health-care professionals.

Houston said passing the Patient Access to Care Act not only changed the delivery of health care in Nova Scotia but it will be regarded as having changed the delivery of health care in the entire country.

Not better off

Unconvinced, the opposition parties offer legitimate arguments that Nova Scotians were better off last year while they chanted the words to Auld Lang Syne to close out 2022 than they will be when belting out the popular New Year’s chorus on Sunday.

“I’m really worried about the state of Nova Scotia,” Liberal Leader Zach Churchill said. “We have seen the number of homeless people double over the last year, cost pressures are impacting every single person in Nova Scotia, whether you are a young person trying to start a family here or whether you have a family or whether you are a senior.”

Churchill said Nova Scotians are facing power rate increases again while dealing with the highest rental increases in the country.

“All of these pressures are having a real impact on the lives of people and you see that most severely with those who are finding themselves homeless, even people that are working are finding themselves now in tents trying to stay warm this winter and I really worry about how much the government cares or doesn’t care about these issues.”

Churchill said “Nova Scotia is worse off now than we were last year,” influenced or evidenced by high inflation, high rents, more people dying in emergency rooms and twice as many people without a family doctor. 

“The only real thing that the government can brag about is how much money they are spending,” Churchill said, pointing to unprecedented provincial government spending, more revenue intake from the federal government, and “we’re seeing outcomes in homelessness, in housing and in health care worsen across the board.”

Costs ‘out of control’

Claudia Chender, leader of the New Democratic Party, said her caucus regularly hears Nova Scotians’ concerns about housing and affordability.

“On housing, we hear a lot of (government) announcements, we hear a lot of talk but we also know that there are people becoming homeless every day, there are people struggling to pay their rent at the end of each month, there are hundreds of people giving up on home ownership altogether in this province … because costs have spiralled so far out of control.”

Chender said government is cutting red tape for developers and creating new special planning areas, “but the reality is … our population is growing incredibly rapidly so there is no question that people will inhabit all of those units as fast as we can build them but what we have been pushing for, for the entire mandate of this government, is a plan that prioritizes, not exclusively, affordable housing because people are falling through the cracks every day, life is getting more and more expensive, our rents are rising faster than anywhere else in the country and this government has shown a marked unwillingness to address this issue with the urgency that it requires.”

Chender said government needs to “massively incentivize” the building of genuinely affordable housing, to maintain people in the affordable homes that they currently occupy, and to overhaul a residential tenancy system that is not working for tenants or landlords. 

She said government has yet to heed the call for a residential tenancy enforcement branch and has not addressed the issue of fixed-term leases.

On the health-care side, Chender said a one-hour meeting with Health Minister Michelle Thompson earlier this month did not convey a government commitment to attaching Nova Scotians to primary care.

“That’s something we’ve been really focused on,” Chender said, acknowledging that there are more entry points like virtual care and pharmacy clinics to the health system now, but the 148,000 Nova Scotians unattached to primary care remains a major concern.

“We are over halfway into a mandate of a government that pledged to fix health care and the fact is that there isn’t really a light on the horizon for a lot of folks around knowing that there is an office they can call.”

‘Bold action’

Houston acknowledged that the housing crisis is real and very visible with some two dozen homeless tent shelters erected at the Grand Parade in front of Halifax City Hall.

“As a provincial government, we have taken and will continue to take bold action to address the really unprecedented crisis that we see right now,” the premier said. “Our five-year housing plan includes plans to support building 40,000 new units and that will help make up 14,000 more affordable units that will be in the system. We’re taking steps.”

The housing plan, based on the first-ever Nova Scotia housing needs assessment, showed that the province needs all types of housing, “market housing, affordable housing and public housing, so that’s a $1.7-billion investment in housing that the provincial government is undertaking on behalf of Nova Scotians.”

The premier said government, like all Nova Scotians, does not want to see people homeless or living rough.

“We’re working with service providers to support Nova Scotians, we’ve opened a 24-7 shelter in Dartmouth … we created almost 450 new units in the last two years.”

Houston said his government had a lot of work to make up from past governments not addressing the housing issue “but we will continue to open and stabilize existing shelters,” and it is important for people to know that capacity does exist at shelters.

“We want people inside those shelters.”

Houston said the overall work of government will never be done.

“My personal motto, and it’s the motto of our government, is do more and do it faster,” Houston said. “I think Nova Scotians have the right to expect that their government feels the same urgency that they feel on these issues. I am proud that we are a government of action. We’ve seen that on a number of files, we are getting things done, but there is more to do so we will continue to focus on supporting Nova Scotians in every way possible.”