PC MLA questions how province will staff Summerside's new community health centre
CBC
P.E.I.’s health minister says the doors to a new community health centre in Summerside should be open early next year, but a backbench Progressive Conservative MLA worries about how the government is going to find doctors to work there.
Summerside-Wilmot PC MLA Tyler DesRoches said people in his community have been watching the transformation of a former trade school site on the city's Granville Street for the past several years.
Demolition and construction work to build the new community health centre on that site has been underway since 2022.
Speaking in the P.E.I. Legislature on Friday, DesRoches said it looks like that work is close to being finished, and asked Health Minister Mark McLane when Summerside residents can expect to start accessing services there.
“No one seems to know when it’s going to open,” DesRoches said. “Is it going to be a soft open, is it going to be fully open? What’s going on with it?”
McLane said the new $23-million centre is expected to include primary care, mental health services, a provincial geriatrics program, as well as public health nurses and dental services.
He said he expects that centre to open in March.
“We’re very excited about a new facility. We know from a recruitment perspective that new facilities certainly help attract our physicians,” McLane said.
While he was pleased the minister provided a timeline for opening the health centre, DesRoches said he has concerns about how the province plans to keep it staffed, specifically with family doctors.
"We hear about extended wait times in emergency rooms, no walk-in clinics they can access in Summerside, or the ones that are there they can't get calls to get in," DesRoches told CBC News.
He said he’s heard from several residents in the area who have been on the provincial patient registry for years waiting to be assigned a primary care provider and fear that, without new family practices, other services like Prince County Hospital's emergency department will continue to be overwhelmed with patients.
“We’ve heard in the past that shiny and new brings physicians," DesRoches said. "You can’t get much newer or much shinier than that big building there....
“[Are] there any new physicians that will be coming to Summerside to fill this new building?”
McLane said family physicians choose where they practice on P.E.I., and while the province will pay doctors $40,000 more through a return-in-service agreement to incentivise doctors to work at PCH, that decision is ultimately up to each individual physician.
Ontario’s police watchdog is investigating after an officer involved shooting at Danforth Go station early Saturday morning, said Toronto police.
Montreal officials will hold a ceremony to mark the 36th anniversary of the Polytechnique massacre today.
The City of Regina's proposal to build a roadway through the McKell Wascana Conservation Park should be discarded, local conservationists say.
A holiday event that began in 2020 during the pandemic with three floats on pickup trucks has now become one of Kelowna’s big winter events, drawing thousands to the city’s downtown core.
WARNING: This story details allegations of child abuse.
It’s been hard to keep track of how many legal challenges and active court proceedings the United Conservative government has tried to quash or pre-emptively block in the last six weeks, but let’s try to tally:
Margaret Walker, the emcee of a Waterloo vigil commemorating the victims of the Montreal massacre, doesn't feel enough is being done to reflect on the killings and address gender-based violence.
The P.E.I. Humane Society says it is doing far more fundraising than it used to, and rising expenses — including the cost of animal medications — are a big reason why.
Ottawa is staring down a court-ordered deadline to submit a new plan to reform the on-reserve child welfare system, as a group of First Nations leaders and children’s advocates prepare a competing proposal.
An underpass revitalization project that was meant to pay tribute to the people of Parkdale has instead deteriorated into “a garbage dump,” according to nearby residents.
A young man has been charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm after a fire at a frat party near Western University that injured five sorority sisters, including two seriously, late Tuesday night.
The massive deal to combine one of Hollywood's oldest studios with a streaming giant hasn't even been approved yet, but it's already riling multiple related industries and politicians concerned about monopolies and media concentration.
Mi'kmaq chiefs and a former Nova Scotia justice minister are criticizing the provincial government for directing police to crack down on illegal cannabis, saying the order undermines relations with Indigenous Peoples.