Health care's the big ticket so far. Here's what else happened in P.E.I. election's 1st week
CBC
Week 1 of the P.E.I. provincial election is in the books and parties already have a barrelful of promises to sell Islanders on.
The issues that will take the most hold during this campaign are pretty clear. They include health care and doctor shortages; housing; the economy, inflation and the cost of living; environment and climate change; education and child care; and social programs.
All of these topics has been brought up so far, with mentions either sprinkled in or poured on campaign announcements.
But without question, the big talk of the week was health care. Just take a look at Wednesday morning, when the four main parties each made a health-care policy announcement.
Here's some of the campaign promises related to health care from this week:
For the list of promises made in announcements and each party's platform as they roll out, hop over to the 2023 promise tracker page.
Surprisingly, though, there was little to no mention of COVID-19 in any announcement. The closest thing to it was the Greens' pledge to open more cough and fever clinics.
Another Week 1 talking point was the NDP becoming the first party to drop their full platform. It's not costed, but the 40-page document covers affordability, the housing crisis, job creation, education, climate change and electoral reform.
We're only a week in, so there's much more campaigning to do and only so much parties can fit into their agendas.
An unexpected story was talk of moving location of the yet-to-be-opened supervised injection site from Belmont Street in Charlottetown.
At a public meeting on the issue Wednesday evening, all four candidates running in District 12: Charlottetown-Victoria Park agreed the proposed site was the wrong location.
PC Leader Dennis King confirmed Thursday that if re-elected, he would change it.
"It's been heard loud and clear from everybody that I think Belmont is not the proper place for this," he said. "And we would agree with that."
UPEI political scientist Peter McKenna said the "backtracking" on the supervised injection site was a shock to him.