New Brunswick election focusing attention on province's health-care woes

One week into New Brunswick's provincial election campaign, the state of health care in the province has emerged as a central issue — with parties differing sharply on how serious problems in the system have become and whether spending more money is needed to fix them.

Jamie Gillies, a political scientist at St. Thomas University, told Information Morning Fredericton on Thursday that after this week's leaders' debate, it is clear troubles in health care will be front and centre for voters this year

"I think that's where Susan Holt especially wants to push the narrative of this election," said Gillies. "Look at things like a health-care system in crisis." 

During Wednesday's debate, Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs was under attack from both Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon for steering money into debt reduction over six years, which they argued should have been used to improve basic health services.

"One of the reasons why it's taking so long to advance primary care in this province is because we have a government unwilling to act and invest in health care and very inflexible about the approach they take," said Holt.

Higgs disputes that claim and in the election is sticking to his long-held conviction that health-care problems can be fixed without spending heavily to do it.

"No one ever says that government is running things as well as it could be," said Higgs during the debate.   

"No one ever says that we couldn't find better results in innovative solutions."

WATCH | From promising investments to pointing fingers, here are the party leaders on health care:

What each party leader said about health care during the N.B. election debate

2 months ago

Duration 1:10

The state of health care in New Brunswick generated sparks during the CBC leaders debate on Wednesday and has emerged as the central issue opposition parties are focusing on.

That is a similar argument Higgs made in the 2018 election when he pledged to cut wait times for knee and hip replacements in New Brunswick in half, through innovations like better scheduling of surgical suites and redirecting existing hospital budgets "to focus on wait-list reduction."

It was a prescription that appears not to have worked. Five years later, waits for those procedures have grown longer.

In 2018, according to the Canadian Institute of Health Information, 55 per cent of hip replacement surgeries and 43 per cent of knee replacements in New Brunswick were happening within the national benchmark recommendations of six months.  

In 2023, those numbers had slipped to 42 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively. 

Other health services have also deteriorated

This year, between January and June, provincial data shows between 11 and 19 per cent of cancer patients who were ready for radiation therapy had to wait more than four weeks for treatment — depending on the month.  

That is more than double the number of those who had to wait that long in any month in 2018.

And last December, a national report on health-care wait times published by the Fraser Institute showed that in 2023, when counting all procedures needed to correct an array of medical conditions, it took a median number of 26.3 weeks for a patient in New Brunswick to receive treatment after having an appointment with a specialist.   

That was double the national average and nearly 10 weeks more waiting than New Brunswick patients faced in 2018. 

For non-urgent psychiatric treatment, the median wait time in New Brunswick after a doctor's referral has grown to 52 weeks, five times the national average. 

Higgs does not dispute that problems exist in New Brunswick's health-care system but is adamant there are solutions, not yet implemented, that can be deployed without great cost.

"We have a billion dollars more per year we're spending on health care than we were four or five years ago," said Higgs during the debate.

"There would be those that say spend more money in health care and it'll get better. And I will say we need to find a way to do health-care better."

National health-care reports do support the claim that health-care spending is up in New Brunswick.

The Canadian Institute of Health Information says government spending on the full range of health-care services in the province increased by $983 million between 2018 and 2023.   

However, that increase was the smallest, in percentage terms, among all 10 provinces.  

The average increase in health spending among provinces since 2018 has been one-third higher. Had funding increases in New Brunswick matched that average, it would have added another $344 million to provincial health-care spending in 2023.

That, and the fact New Brunswick has run budget surpluses for the past six years, but chose to retire $2.5 billion in provincial debt rather than boost health-care spending further, has become a central point of attack against Higgs by his opponents.

Seven of the first 13 planks released in the Liberal platform so far involve fixing health-care problems in some way.  

The party is also running two new candidates who directly tangled with Higgs over health-care issues in the last six years.  

That includes former PC MLA Bruce Northrup, who broke with Higgs in 2020 over an abandoned plan to reduce emergency services in smaller hospitals. 

Also running is the former head of New Brunswick's anglophone hospital system, Dr. John Dornan, who was abruptly fired by Higgs in 2022 and subsequently won a $2-million wrongful dismissal judgment against the province.

The Green Party has also made health care a central issue in its campaign. It's proposing a $1.5-billion increase in funding over four years to shore up what it calls a "crumbling" system.

"We have a state of emergency in our health-care system," said Coon during the debate.

"It is Code Orange. Everyone has to get on deck and it's going to require a generational investment to fix the problem."

Higgs calls proposals like that a mistake that will put New Brunswick "back in the red."

PCs have proposed their own $1.5-billion plan over four years to cut the HST by two percentage points but Higgs says that will be affordable by managing government costs, including in health care.

The party has announced a plant to spend an extra $25 million per year to improve access to doctors, nurse practitioners and others but the party believes savings to be found inside the health system can help pay for other improvements.