SASKATOON - The pre-election rhetoric ramped up Wednesday as the Saskatchewan Party rolled out a $275-million health platform aimed at addressing what it calls the crisis situation that has developed under the NDP government.
Leader Brad Wall pledged that a Saskatchewan Party government would fill the existing 600 registered nurse vacancies and hire another 200 RNs within its first term.
Three hundred more spaces would be created to train nurses, and 60 new physician residency positions would be added.
There would also be incentives to recruit expatriate physicians back to Saskatchewan and to ease the transition phase for foreign-trained doctors.
Wall accused the NDP government of ignoring warnings about shortages from nurses, doctors and other health professionals.
He pointed to a recently leaked memo from the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region asking doctors to discharge patients early because the region is in "crisis mode" and needs to "prevent the system from collapsing altogether."
"We can afford to wait no longer," he told a news conference. "We have a crisis."
Wall insisted the province has the money to make his plan work.
"There's additional revenues even now in the province as the price of oil is now in that $70 neighbourhood for some period of time. We saw in the government's quarterly report there's some additional revenue as well."
"The announcements that we make now and through the next campaign again - people will know they are fully costed, that they are part of a balanced budget."
But Health Minister Len Taylor said Wall has only taken what the government has already done in terms of recruitment, retention and education and attached a bigger price tag.
"For four years, they've been very critical about the New Democratic Party's approach to recruitment, retention and education in health care," Taylor told reporters in Regina.
"Now when they've had an opportunity to put what he calls a comprehensive detailed plan in place, they have failed to do that. They have simply put a dollar value forward, without any details, no i's dotted, not t's crossed."
In blasting the proposal, Taylor said that the Saskatchewan Party has not accounted for how the dollars will be raised and spent. He also suggested that the Opposition doesn't seem to recognize that recruiting nurses has been a problem across the country.
The bitter back-and-forth comes as Premier Lorne Calvert is expected to call an election this fall, and both parties have begun campaign advertising.
The NDP currently holds 30 seats in the legislature while the Sask Party has 28.
