Members of the New Brunswick Health Coalition, an advocacy group lobbying for the preservation of public health care, rallied in front of Health Minister Bruce Fitch’s Riverview office on Monday to protest against the privatization of health-care management.
Ambulance New Brunswick, Telecare, the province’s extra-mural program and the new NB Health Link program are all run by Medavie Health Services.
eVisit New Brunswick, a virtual after-hours clinic, is run by a company named Maple.
The province has also recently partnered with a clinic in Bathurst to complete cataract surgeries outside the Chaleur Regional Hospital.
NB Health Coalition co-chair Danny Legere said his organization opposes subcontracting parts of health care to the private sector for multiple reasons.
“Private corporations are accountable to their shareholders, not to the people of the province,” he said.
He also said there are a limited number of health-care workers, and his organization is concerned that the private sector hires the limited number of people who could work in the public sector.
“In the public sector there are certain rights that are protected,” Legere said.
“Pay equity is guaranteed in the public sector and there’s the whole question around linguistic (duality in health care). In the private sector, those rights aren’t necessarily guaranteed,” he said.
Lise Ethier, who worked as a nurse for 35 years in the New Brunswick health system, attended the protest because she says the private sector’s motivation to maximize profits goes against health-care workers’ need to do what’s best for patients.
She says the resources being invested in the private sector need to be reinvested in the public sector.
“We cannot multiply the resources. If we send the resources in the private sector, we won’t have enough in the public sector. The government takes the resources from the public and then he says
they’re not good enough,” she said on Monday.
While Fitch was out of province on Monday, a spokesperson for the Department of Health told Global News in an emailed statement that a meeting between the minister and the coalition will take place in the coming weeks.
“The Government of New Brunswick and the regional health authorities have often worked with the private sector to provide clinical and operational services to the population, while respecting the Canada Health Act,” the spokesperson said, adding that subcontracting health services to the private sector is “simply meant to support and enhance the public health-care system.”
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