Mandryk: NDP haunted by hospital closures
By Murray Mandryk
The list of all the problems the NDP has in rural Saskatchewan is too long for just one column.
But its biggest problem boils down to one of credibility — specifically, credibility in accounting for its past and providing solutions for the future.
We were reminded of this again last week when NDP leadership hopeful and Regina Lakeview MLA Carla Beck — one of now two people vying to replace Ryan Meili along with Saskatoon lawyer and community Kaitlyn Harvey — raised the issue of emergency care in rural Saskatchewan closing on weekends because of lack of staffing.
(One supposes that on this list of NDP problems would be the reality that the NDP has not had an elected leader representing a seat outside Regina or Saskatoon since Woodrow Lloyd a half-century ago. By contrast, the Saskatchewan Party has never had a leader from Regina or Saskatoon.)
It wasn’t as if Beck’s points in the assembly weren’t good ones.
In fact, they were the very concerns raised to her by rural municipal leaders, which is saying something.
Such is the Sask. Party’s stranglehold in most of Saskatchewan that many people — even elected municipal leaders — are afraid to speak up.
If rural people are complaining about something this Saskatchewan Party government is or isn’t doing, you know it’s got to be a problem.
Moreover, it’s not just rural residents fearing a health care disaster that is frustrated by the lack of emergency services issues.
Beck was also tapped into sentiments of “tired, burned out” health care workers feeling “disrespected.”
A recent internal poll by the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses suggested that three in five have said they have considered quitting the profession.
But the first problem for Beck and the NDP is what they would actually do that is different to address these issues.
Asked about this after question period, Beck called for more intensive recruitment of doctors and nurses — pretty much the same approach Health Minister Paul Merriman had cited moments earlier and the certainly what Harpauer talked about in the March presentation of the 2022-23 budget.
Doctor and nursing shortages have been a problem for years — and have worsened in the past five years.
But the Sask. Party government is not wrong in saying that there is still far more of both since it came to power in 2007.
Moreover, the Sask. Party eagerly cites the 36-per-cent raise it gave the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses in 2008 and the creation of STARZ ambulances in response to rural emergency situations.
As Beck suggested, it’s still not enough to address the rural health care problems.
But she and the NDP should surely have to come to the legislature with solutions to problems like this.
In fact, it’s critical for the NDP to do this, given that a big contributing factor to all this was the decision of the last NDP government’s momentous decision 29 years ago to close 52 rural hospitals and the Plains Health Centre on the outskirts of Regina.
“I expected when I asked the question today that would be the retort from the minister,” Beck later told reporters. “I understand that plays in the legislature, but it doesn’t play (for those) who drive up to their local emergency room experiencing symptoms of a heart attack and find out they have to reverse course and go down the road to another emergency care room that is open.”
No, it is not just an issue in the legislature. But rural people know the reason they must drive further for emergency or any other care because there are less rural hospitals.
New Democrats can argue closing costly hospitals was a needed financial choice at the time, but they can’t just argue that problem is the rural hospitals are gone.
The NDP’s problem? They need to propose better alternatives.