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Broad Opposition and Mass
Actions Against the People Force Government to Back Down from Attacks on Health CareNew Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs announced on February 16, the suspension of a series of anti-social measures due to be implemented March 11. The most brutal and life-threatening measure was the permanent overnight closures of the emergency departments of six community hospitals, in Caraquet, Grand Falls, Perth-Andover, Sackville, Sainte-Anne-de-Kent, and Sussex. Residents of these communities needing emergency services from midnight to 8 o'clock in the morning would have to travel 45 minutes or more depending on the weather to bigger centres for services. In addition, 120 acute care beds in these hospitals would be transformed into long term care beds.
Both the PCs currently in power and the Liberals before them have long declared that the mandate of the government of New Brunswick is to limit the wage increases of health care workers and public sector workers to below the cost of living. They currently are waging a war against nursing home workers to deprive them of any legal options to fight for improvement of their wages and working conditions, including strike action if necessary. Working conditions throughout New Brunswick's health sector are deteriorating while governments pose the problem as a shortage of health care workers, not the conditions in which they work and deliver the services. Governments advocate an anti-social pay-the-rich economy as the only way to run the province at the expense of the rights and well-being of the people. Paramedics exposed the fiction of the government that closing emergency departments overnight would be of little consequence to patients because they would just go to the emergency rooms in bigger centres. They wrote: "Government's decision to close 6 emergency departments across the province will unnecessarily increase travel time to larger centres. This decision directly affects public safety in the event of an emergency. The major centres are already overcrowded. Having paramedics stuck in hospital hallways with patients waiting for hospital staff is already severely reducing ambulance availabilities for 911 calls. The public will now be forced to commute, in some areas over an hour, to a facility for care. With these longer commutes, the potential for incidents will increase and will further deplete this province's valuable resources and put public safety at greater risk. Every emergency department and clinic plays a vital role in this province, even more so in rural New Brunswick. As the saying goes, this change will be nothing more than 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' and as history has shown, it never works. [...] "The solution for New Brunswick health care should never be the elimination of services! If we truly want to reform health care in New Brunswick, we need to look beyond shutting down emergency services like emergency departments. We need to invest in our people and focus on compensating and recruiting people for the exceptional service they provide everyday while still dealing with the repercussions of past government's decisions." Congratulations to the people of New Brunswick who have shown in practice that they are committed to stepping up their fight against the anti-social offensive in the province. The people demand increased investments in social programs and to stop paying the rich!
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
Immediately upon
learning of these anti-social attacks
on their health care, the people of New Brunswick sprung into action.
They united as one declaring a definitive 