Less than a day after releasing a 25-point list of throne speech expectations and one day before that speech was to be delivered in the provincial Legislative Assembly, Cam Broten, the leader of the Official Opposition, engaged in a conference call with reporters stationed outside Regina and Saskatoon.
“It’s a new legislative session and it’s time to take the summer feedback we have received into the session,” said Broten, referring to the 25-points noted in their Oct. 21 media release that outlined what the nine-member opposition party felt should attract the attention of the governing Saskatchewan Party.
“We want to see what happens, what they can do that will benefit the province and its people. We expect to raise a lot of topics, beginning with their need to take away some of their American consultants and start investing more in education, health and cost-of-living concerns that need to be addressed.”
Broten said the current government’s plan appears to be one that will cost the general population more out-of-pocket money to access health care.
As for the Lean systems of improving efficiencies in the health care field, Broten said, “there are certain lessons we can learn from Lean applications, but it’s definitely gone too far now. They have forgotten to listen to the front line employees. It should be a bottom up process but this is a top down system they’re using and it’s very rigid, dogmatic and punitive. The facts are that there needs to be patient satisfaction in the system. Infection rates in our health facilities are going up, while Lean is being rammed down on the people who are getting pretty unhappy with what’s going on and they’re not confident in what it’s doing to the system.”
Broten said he is dismayed to learn the government continues to bring in Japanese sensei’s at $3,500 a day, instead of investing the money in facilities and health delivery programs.
“The government needs to start spending the money in the right spots. The system is chronically short staffed.”
Broten said the new Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon is being built based on Lean methodology and already the designers have had to back up a couple of times to correct errors and poor planning.
When it comes to building on public, private partnerships, Broten remains skeptical.
“We need to build hospitals and schools not on ideology, but rather on what makes sense.”
Broten said leaning on P3 construction concepts for major projects simply means, “the government is dragging its feet because they see they have to start building fast.” He said he was concerned about transparency and accountability and whether or not the government was engaged in actual competitive bidding.
“We (NDP) would also like to ensure that the communities where these projects are being built, play a role in the planning and the third point, we make on P3 is that there is a need to know the true costs up front including interest payments. You can rent a hospital for 30 years, but at what real cost? We know they’re just kicking the can down the road without showing us a true picture.”
Broten said there needs to be a comprehensive approach to reduce poverty in Saskatchewan and again, he felt the Sask Party was unwilling to move in that direction, but hoped there would be something in the throne speech to address it.
As for the recent musings by the premier regarding the introduction of more private MRI examinations to reduce surgical wait times, Broten said that simply exposes the fallacy in that kind of thinking.
“The idea should be to improve it for everyone, not a few. Alberta got into those murky waters and have discovered they’re not reducing wait lists at all, and, in fact, it’s going the other way. If someone on the wait list gets to jump the queue, then they get surgery earlier, but the lineup for the rest, just gets longer because of the queue jumper,” Broten said. If the public system is raided to serve the pay-as-you-go system, there is no net gain.
In conclusion, Broten said the NDP will be making suggestions regarding the need for Saskatchewan residents, especially government, to buy locally and use that preference to raise the profile of community businesses across the province.
“Right now the government’s procurement policy is a lazy one that simply sends the work out-of-province, or purchases from out-of-province. They simply look at lowest bids and don’t even seek all the defining factors such as whether or not the business is located or headquartered in Saskatchewan or the delivery schedule or components being used in the product. They ship the business out-of-province and local businesses are laying people off while trucks with Alberta, Ontario and Quebec plates roll in here every day,” Broten said, noting that his party will also bring ideas to the table to reduce the growing reliance on temporary foreign workers to solve the needs surfacing in other sectors that are retaining business.
