New Liberal candidate in Portland-Simonds is no stranger to controversy
My top priority would be helping New Brunswickers have medical homes or family practice homes, whereby all New Brunswickers have a team that they could work with. You know, we’ve seen the start of this with the family medicine, New Brunswick. Regrettably, it’s not moved as quickly as it should. In fact, some family dodgers have stepped away. But all New Brunswickers would like to know that they’re cared for by a team of people that are working to scope, for example, nurse practitioners, nurses, family doctors, dietitians, pharmacists, social workers. So that when you walked in, you had the right experts working on your case, number one and #2. If one of those team members was missing, retired on holidays, sick, having children, your care isn’t interrupted. You do not need to wait 345 weeks or months or a year for someone to replace that, that person. You sound like a potential health minister. Is that the role you aspire to? You know, I I do aspire to be on Susan Holt’s team. You know, and I met with all, not all but most of the liberal legislators last night. And boy, they are a smart punch. Some have experience in healthcare, some have experience in building and finance and education. And so I, I, I would look forward mostly to being a strong representative of Portland Simons. That’s my first task. If I find that we are in government and I am hopeful for that, then I am hopeful that Susan Holt will recognize some of my talents. There’s no assurances. You know, at the end of the day, she is in charge of a collaborative team and I have confidence that she will put the right people in the right job. I remember speaking to you when you became CEO of Horizon and to some degree you sounded the same back then. You were determined, you had ideas, you wanted to effect change. How do you think the political route will be more effective for you? Well, when when I was CEOI did have a lot of enthusiasm and would have advanced my ideas. The difficulty with being CEO of an RHA is that you have less control over a negotiations and interactions with other players. For example, a nurses union, a physicians union we were mostly concerned with in hospital activities, not so much what happens in in the community of of primary care. So, so even then I recognized that I would have less influence input into the bigger picture working with a government from within that does make decisions, can make decisions, can make timely decisions. I feel that I have a heightened opportunity to to make those changes now, more so than I did when I was ACEO.