Access to Basic Healthcare in Remote Areas is Lacking - Emergency Debate

CLAUDIA CHENDER: As we know, Buchanan Memorial Community Health Centre serves the communities of Neils Harbour, Dingwall, Bay St. Lawrence, Meat Cove, Ingonish, and the surrounding areas. Anyone who's driven the beautiful Cabot Trail as we've talked about today, knows how unique and how remote these communities are. This is a great example of how one size does not fit all in health care in our province.

I had the good fortune of spending a couple of weeks in beautiful Inverness County a couple of summers ago with my family. We took the occasion to drive the Cabot Trail, and when we stopped in Pleasant Bay, there was a young girl working at the Whale Interpretative Centre.

I was fascinated just by the difference of her life to my own children's lives, growing up in an urban centre. We talked about how she gets to school and what she does in the summers. One of the themes of that conversation, in fact, was transportation. She has to go over a mountain to get to school every day, and a lot of times that mountain is impassible, and she doesn't get to school; when she does, she's on the bus for maybe four hours a day. That's just quite a different reality than many of us, myself included, who live here encounter. That's one thing for children to get to school, it's quite another thing to get the health care services that they need.

As we've been discussing, the reduction of laboratory and X-ray services at the Buchanan threatened the viability of that hospital and that directly further threatens the health care of Cape Bretoners. Quite frankly, Madam Speaker, that's unacceptable. Dr. Margaret Fraser, President of the Cape Breton Medical Staff Association, said recently in an interview that the work environment in Neils Harbour is already difficult. They are very isolated; they're two and a half hours from Sydney by road on a good day. So, if they have a major emergency up there, they're on their own until we can get the patient stabilized and get them out - and I can table that.

I think this is how many Nova Scotians have been feeling about the amalgamation of the Health Authority, Madam Speaker, they're on their own. Without leadership and local decision making, who is standing up for the vital services provided by these community health centres? They're dying.

We hear about it in this House every day, Madam Speaker. All of these community health centres are under threat. I'm glad that this debate was accepted today, because when a community health centre is located in such an isolated region it has a particular impact that is different. We have challenges at the Dartmouth General, we have challenges at hospitals across the province, but for many of us we've got good roads and flat geography and the ability, even if it is by taxi, which it never should be, to get somewhere else - these residents don't have that same luxury.

A doctor recruitment site for the Buchanan Memorial includes testimonials from community members, including Barb and Rob Costello. They say they feel very fortunate to have raised their children north of Smokey: our children have had lots of exposure to arts and culture, sports, the great outdoors, the sense of belonging that comes with living in close-knit communities. We also feel it has been a blessing to have the medical services available to us at our local hospital and pharmacy. We've received the best of medical care and this has been a great comfort to us in raising our family.

Madam Speaker, it is that comfort, that access to timely essential health care services that this government seems willing to sacrifice, either in the name of or as a by-product of centralization and austerity. Before this decision was made to reduce health services, did anyone talk to Barb and Rob? Did anyone talk to these community members? As my colleague over here, the member for Northside-Westmount, said, this has been an ongoing issue that many members on this side of the House have raised around the redevelopment of health care in Cape Breton. Where has the consultation been? Who has the conversation been with, if anyone?

These are the questions. Has anyone actually looked at a map? Does anyone know where Neils Harbour is? In 2017, the hospital's charitable foundation sold raffle tickets to raise $35,000 for a portable ultrasound. At that time an EMT said: as paramedics we've seen two-hour transfers to the Sydney hospital turn into three- and four-hour trips in snowstorms, it would be nice to have an ultrasound in the community. They said at the time, and I would agree, that an added machine might free up waiting lists at other clinics in Cape Breton.

This is such an important fact that front-line staff in our health care system understand all too well. Closing community-based hospitals adds to the bottlenecks in other parts of the system. Emergency rooms are closed, ambulances are waiting for off-load, emergency rooms that are open are at capacity and are sending people away, asking them to come back tomorrow. All of the alarms are going off, but we are not responding, Madam Speaker. This government is not responding to the scale of the emergency.

Right now, we're talking about X-ray technicians, but what we're actually talking about is the viability of a community hospital and it's so important, Madam Speaker, that Nova Scotians, wherever they live, have access to health care and have equal access to health care.

When we see that people's lives are quite literally on the line, I respectfully implore the government to take a different approach. In this case, Madam Speaker, we are asking that the government restore X-ray and laboratory services to the Buchanan Memorial Community Health Centre. Give the people of Neils Harbour, Dingwall, Bay St. Lawrence, Meat Cove and Ingonish the services, support and comfort they deserve. Thank you, to my colleagues for bringing this issue, and with those few words, I will take my seat.