Green Party leader, David Coon, described by many as a very thoughtful, insightful politician, got headlines recently in expressing shock and horror at the conditions he found in the DECRH Emergency Department when he went for treatment recently.  He described overcrowding, confusion, and very long waits in the Emergency Department.

In the fall of 2020, I was called to give some advice to people dealing with what turned out to be a tragic case in which the patient was misdiagnosed in emergency and sent home.  Shortly after that, I heard from another family with a similar story in which the results were staggering.

Then comes the Lexi Dakin, case in which a distraught teen was forced to sit in an uncaring waiting room for hours before she gave up and the rest of her story is sad history.

There was, just recently, the case of the young mother, having delivered a baby a few hours earlier, coming to the hospital with post-partum hemorrhage and told to wait.  She went to the Dumont, across town, and was cared for immediately.

The public service provides the stability and due diligence required in order for a society to benefit from government-legislated or approved services.  Maintenance of roadways, water and sewage systems, providing emergency measures services, policing and ever so much more.  Government legislates, the public service executes and regulates.  That system has served our civilization well for centuries.

New Brunswick has been blessed, over many years, with superb public servants, many of whom are called back into service long after retirement by other agencies and governments, the private sector, and more.  Brilliant would be a label attached to some of the leading civil servants with whom I have worked.  Loyal and dedicated would also apply to many.

The entire population of the Atlantic Provinces is 2.2 million or 1.7 million on the mainland, all reliant on the free flow of tourists, goods and services, commerce, education, health care, research and the military.  The population, spread over a significant land mass, is about the size of Montreal.

Jason VandenBeukel, editor of the opinion pages for the Telegraph Journal, said in an article on June 24 that Nova Scotia’s border rules are nonsense.  And he is correct.  Thus it has been for the duration of the pandemic.

Imagine a population group the size of Montreal having 4 different approaches to pandemic management, vaccine roll out, and all the hundreds of other elements involved in pandemic management.  Tough as it has been in Montreal, at least they had the one common voice of one premier who, with his expert advisors, has provided direction.