Throne speech gets mixed results from opposition critics
Posted Apr 1, 2011 05:55:20 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Dexter government is looking back on its accomplishments and forward to what it’ll be doing in the next session in the latest speech from the throne.
The speech is heavy on strategies for future work: expanding immigration, managing tobacco use, and enhancing international commerce.
PC leader Jamie Baillie says he’s on board with a plan to unify social services access in the new “211” phone line – but overall, said the NDP needs to focus more on action and results.
“We’re at the midpoint of the government’s mandate,” he said. “I think the time for strategies has long passed and the time to acheive something and create real results is now here.”
The speech focused most heavily on Nova Scotia’s health care system, and the plan the government calls “better care sooner.”
Premier Darrell Dexter’s says he’s about to announce the province’s first collaborative emergency centre, part of the bigger plan that Dexter says is working to reduce wait times and fix the system.
“What we have done, for the very first time, is brought forward some of the most innovative delivery of health care services in not only our province’s history, but in many regards our country’s history,” he said.
Liberal leader Stephen McNeil counters that health care is not better today.
“Not in any community I’ve been in,” he said. “I can tell you, in my view, they’re focusing on the wrong issue. The issue has always been access to primary health care.”
However, McNeil said there were other points in the throne speech that he liked, particularly plans to develop an energy corridor and to support local shipbuilding efforts.
“We’ll certainly work with this government to ensure that the national shipbuilding effort lands here, in the Irving Shipyard here, and that those jobs are available to Nova Scotians,” he said.
Dexter says help for the shipyard, which is competing for contracts worth $35 billion under the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy, could include financial support for a lobbying effort.
