Paul MacNeill, publisher Eastern Graphic

Doug Currie the minister of health who shut hospitals and centralized health care to Summerside and Charlottetown

by Paul MacNeill, publisher Eastern Graphic

When Health Minister Doug Currie finishes his political career he has a great future down at the Ghiz casino shuffling cards because that is what he is doing with PEI’s health care system.

Currie wants Islanders to believe that operating the PEI health system within the Department of Health somehow has led to a massive, unwieldy bureaucracy. He wants us to believe that centralizing health care under the control of an arm’s length board will somehow magically make the bureaucracy disappear, the system run more efficiently and taxpayers’ money will be saved.

Make no mistake about what Doug Currie is doing. He is simply shuffling the deck.

His initiative will neither save money nor trim the bureaucracy. The health bureaucracy today is as large, larger even, than it has ever been. It does not matter if health care falls under control of a department or a so-called arm’s length board. The end result will be the same.

How do we know? Look at history. The Binns government created such an arm’s length authority. It didn’t work.

Dough Currie, Health Minister and card trickster

The Ghiz government is creating a health care scapegoat. What Currie and Ghiz don’t talk about is PEI’s looming budget crisis. Transfers will be frozen or reduced. Cuts will need to be made. Remember our budget deficit this year is easily over $100 million. Our provincial debt is $1.6 billion.

Health is our biggest bill. It’s the logical first place to look for savings. Look for hospitals and emergency rooms to be closed. But when that happens politicians like Doug Currie will offer sympathy; they may even mildly protest. Then they will look the TV camera straight in the eye and say: ‘sorry, there is nothing we can do. Health care is run by an independent authority.’

It is political BS.

It is also typical of how the Ghiz government operates. It did the same thing to education. Rather than government close schools it deferred the dirty work to the Eastern School Board. Education Minister Gerard Greenan showed zero leadership. What he did do was create a closure process that led to an inevitable conclusion.

What’s particularly appalling is Currie wants Islanders to believe his bureaucratic two-step will actually create efficiencies. Efficiencies can be found in health care, but not where Doug Currie is looking.

Why does PEI negotiate drug prices independently? Tens of millions could be saved if provincial governments joined forces and demanded better prices from pharmaceutical companies.

It’s not politically correct to say, but why does PEI spend tens of millions of dollars building, staffing and maintaining a cancer treatment facility when we have neither the population nor budget to justify it.

Government fears cooperation will reduce provincial autonomy. Rubbish. Real leadership means making real decisions.

We don’t see real leadership very often on PEI. Rather we see our Premier defending more well connected Liberal friends landing sweet patronage rewards.

The latest example is defeated Liberal MLA Hector MacLeod being named chairman of the PEI Liquor Commission.

Before him John Broderick, a past Liberal Party president, found a soft landing at Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission.

There was former Liberal MLA Nancy Guptill nabbing the chairman of the Workers Compensation Board.

And don’t forget the premier’s bagman, Brooke MacMillian, shuffled off to the CEO of the Liquor Commission when the immigrant investor file got too hot.

Premier Ghiz wants us to believe it’s purely coincidence his political buddies are looked after with patronage rewards.

Islanders know the truth. We know this government would rather hand out patronage rewards than lead. That is the record of the Ghiz government.

Paul MacNeill is Publisher of Island Press Limited. He can be contacted at paul@peicanada.com