N.S. opposition leader says liberals ready to hold government to account on healthcare

“Increasing the budget by $800 million in healthcare, that’s a lot of taxpayer money that needs to be targeted in the right areas to maximize the return,” said Iain Rankin

HALIFAXtoday\ Mark Hodgins

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Nova Scotia’s opposition leader says his party will work to hold the government to account on the promise to fix healthcare. 

Iain Rankin says his liberals will be watching how government plans to target the hundreds of millions it plans to invest into the system after campaigning on a promise to fix healthcare.

“Increasing the budget by $800 million in healthcare, that’s a lot of taxpayer money that needs to be targeted in the right areas to maximize the return,” Rankin said. “We’ll be expecting to watch that money flow in soon, not in the next budget, but soon.”

Rankin says almost every province is facing difficulties bringing in more healthcare staff, so it’s a competitive landscape for Nova Scotia to navigate.

“We wish them well to improve outcomes, but we will be ensuring that they put the funding in those areas to make sure they hire 2,000 more healthcare workers as they said they were going to do and create 3,500 new beds within three years,” he explained. “Those are very ambitious targets to reach and we’ll be holding them to account to make sure they do that.”

Rankin applauded premier Tim Houston’s cross-province tour to speak directly with healthcare workers, and said the new premier deserves time to work on fixing the healthcare system.

He also took to Twitter on Thursday evening to call the expansion of VirtualCareNS a start.

“Glad to see the expansion of the successful virtual care pilot we started,” the liberal tweeted.