For Immediate Release
6 July 2022
The NL NDP is questioning the motives behind the decision to shuffle the Ministers of Education and Health. The pandemic highlighted the state of our public education and healthcare systems created by successive Liberal and Tory governments. It is concerning that two Ministers who’ve produced disappointing outcomes for the people of this province are each awarded large portfolios that have great impacts on our society.
“For two years we’ve been told to wait for plans and recommendations to outline what the Premier’s motives were while patients and our school communities suffered and these two Ministers were unable to resolve glaring concerns in their respective departments. I appreciate the Premier listened when I called for each of these Ministers to resign, but I didn’t mean reward them with another public service portfolio.”
“Will this cause delays in action while these Ministers get up to speed on these new portfolios? Or will they not bother and start through with cuts to services that were planned all along? Their track record doesn’t exactly inspire confidence,” said NL NDP Leader and MHA for St. John’s Centre Jim Dinn.
Throughout the pandemic, the impacts of neglect from decades of successive Liberal and Tory governments were made blatantly clear. In the education portfolio schools don’t have mechanical ventilation to provide clean air, connectivity and digital learning is less than equal across the province, students cannot be socially distanced if needed, and classrooms continue to be overcrowded. In health, emergency rooms are being shut down, hospital workers were and are still being pushed to the limit, thousands of people across this province are without a primary care provider, and nurses are overworked with no end in sight.
“Ministers serve at the will of the Premier, and for the sake of the people of this province who have suffered through a pandemic struggling to make ends meet and experienced the inadequately resourced public health and education services created by decades of successive Liberal and Tory governments, I hope we start to see some positive outcomes and that this isn’t simply shuffling of the deck chairs to buy time,” Dinn ended.
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NDP Caucus Office, Confederation Building, St. John’s, NL A1B 4J6 ˑ 709-729-0270 ˑ