Liberals to unveil their plans for more nursing home beds
Published Saturday November 28th, 2009
Seniors | Liberals promised to add 700 beds; 403 added so far
A massive new nursing home building program will be announced in Tuesday's capital budget, the provincial government says.
The Liberals promised in 2006 to add 700 nursing home beds. So far they have added or announced 403 beds, of which 216 are through a public-private partnership.
"We will announce a major plan for nursing homes that will lay out the path to deliver on our commitment of 700 new beds added across the province," said Premier Shawn Graham in his speech Friday to end the throne speech debate.
"As we enter the final year of our mandate, and as Tuesday's budget will demonstrate, we will continue to make the changes and investments needed so New Brunswickers have access to quality health and senior care no matter where they live."
Graham announced Thursday the capital budget will be worth $1.6 billion spread over two years.
That's up from last year's capital budget of $1.2 billion spread over two years.
"In a period of global recession, government can take steps to not only create economic activity but to make investments that will benefit our residents for decades to come," he said.
Graham said Tuesday's announcement will herald the largest nursing home bed infrastructure expansion in New Brunswick.
He also said that unlike when the Tories were in power, he won't play politics with the locations of the new nursing home beds.
One of the new nursing homes will be built in Edmundston, a riding occupied by Edmundston-Saint-Basile Tory MLA Madeleine Dube, he said.
The premier said he's doing that despite Dube criticizing his government for not doing enough for seniors in a newspaper article Friday.
Opposition Finance critic Bruce Fitch said the previous Tory government never played politics when creating new nursing home beds.
"When we were making the decisions, we put nursing homes in Caraquet, Bathurst, Saint John and McAdam, which was a Liberal riding at the time," he said.
Fitch said he was pleased to hear there were more nursing home beds coming, particularly in Dube's riding.
"She has been working on that for years," he said. "It was due to go three years ago. It was postponed by this government."
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why do I feel anything announced by this government is "suck up" stuff?
Speaking of announcements, when are we going to hear about the Death Review Committee which was promised in the speech from the Throne in 2006 by this same government?
Will all the stationary engineers be making these beds when their jobs are gone? The plants they currently work in will close after the sale of NB Power to Hydro Quebec.