MEDIA RELEASE: Keep Hospitals & Health Care Public

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

We were deeply disturbed to learn that Stephen McNeil’s Liberal government is once again spending public dollars investigating the possibility of entering into a P3 deal to fund our province’s public hospitals.

“This government wasted $825,000 looking into privatizing our registries before realizing it was a bad idea. A previous Liberal government wasted millions privatizing our schools,” acting NSGEU President Sandra Mullen said, pointing out that Nova Scotia school boards have now moved away from the P3 model entirely.

“When is this government going to realize they are throwing good money after bad, pursuing these private deals?”

P3 arrangements, which are “public-private partnership” deals, have been proven to be bad deals for the public, over and over again. Globally, these deals have led to corruption, a complete lack of public accountability, and have ended up costing far more than a pure public project would.

In fact, the Department of Health’s own former Deputy Minister, Peter Vaughan, recently admitted there were no examples of P3 deals he could find that would withstand public scrutiny.

“Once again, we see this Liberal government has a single-minded fixation on making it appear as though they are balancing their books, when in reality, they are simply looking for ways to push the cost of these important capital projects even further down the road,” Mullen said.

The NSGEU is calling on government to show leadership on this file, and ensure Nova Scotia’s hospitals are built, controlled and fully owned by the public, without any interference from profit-driven private interests.

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The Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union represents over 31,000 women and men who provide quality public services Nova Scotian’s count on every day.

For more information, please contact:

Holly Fraughton, NSGEU Communications Officer
902.424.4063 (office)
902.471.1781 (cell)
hfraughton@nsgeu.ca