Another legislative session is in the books.
Our Liberal MLAs brought forward the issues that matter most to Nova Scotians while holding the Houston Conservatives to account on their promises.
Nova Scotians are facing an unprecedented affordability crisis. The cost of living continues to climb, but the Houston Conservatives haven’t provided support to help people who are struggling. That’s why we put forward a number of ideas that would help more people get the help they need:
• More and more people are falling behind without any help from this government. The threshold of social assistance programs should be increased to help more people access funds to help heat their homes, access housing, and pay their bills.
• When the cost of living goes up, Nova Scotians on a lower income should receive more support. New Brunswick is now indexing income assistance supports, and we should be too.
• Under the Houston government, Nova Scotia is the only province that has failed to provide meaningful supports to help shoulder the burden of the affordability crisis. We used the house session as an opportunity to advocate on your behalf, but we won’t stop fighting.
The Houston Conservatives were elected on a promise to fix healthcare, but in the year that they have been in power, more people than ever are in need of a doctor, our hospitals are bursting at the seams, and healthcare workers are being pushed to their breaking point.
• Since coming into power, the waitlist has soared by nearly 60 percent with over 120,000 Nova Scotians now without access to a family doctor.
• After withholding the Need a Doctor Waitlist numbers for two weeks, we called on the government to release the information and tabled a bill that would require the numbers to be released in the first five business days of every month.
• Many critical healthcare services are inaccessible for Nova Scotians, which is why we introduced bills that would ensure better access to preventative lung cancer screening and breast cancer reconstruction surgery for survivors.
• We joined the Liberal Seniors Commission to table a bill that would promote equitable access to vaccines by making the high-dose flu shot available for all seniors.
Whether we’re in the legislature or in your community, our Liberal team is working hard to fight for issues that are affecting Nova Scotians. I’m proud of the work we accomplished this session – but we’re just getting started.