NEW BRUNSWICK · 2028
HealthCare First NB
Our Platform & Commitments
A comprehensive policy platform for a healthier, stronger New Brunswick —
built on evidence, accountability, and the belief that care can't wait.
01 — NB Hydro & Energy Affordability
02 — Cost of Living
03 — Seniors Housing — The Keystone Issue ★
04 — Healthcare Staffing & Culture
05 — Strategic Immigration
06 — Housing — Create the Environment, Not the Houses
07 — Education — Back to Basics
08 — Medical Specialist Shortage
09 — Dual Health Authorities — Merge or Reform?
10 — Government Accountability & Fiscal Discipline
11 — Rural & Infrastructure
12 — Mental Health & Addictions
13 — Small Business & Economic Development
14 — Environmental Stewardship / Natural Resources
15 — Indigenous Relations
healthcarefirstnb.ca · April 2026
01 — NB Hydro & Energy Affordability
NB Hydro carries significant debt from past poor decisions. The EUB, while acknowledging mismanagement, has stated it cannot penalize the utility financially — meaning ratepayers absorb the cost. Many New Brunswickers are already struggling to heat their homes. This is a classic crown corporation moral hazard: poor management decisions are socialized onto taxpayers.
Accountability
▸ Full independent public audit of NB Hydro debt — what decisions created it, who made them, what governance failures allowed it
▸ Reform the board appointment process — require genuine energy sector expertise, eliminate patronage
▸ Performance benchmarking against comparable utilities in other provinces
▸ Rate freeze while the audit is conducted — government absorbs the gap
Rate Relief
▸ Low-income energy affordability program — targeted subsidy or dedicated rate class below the income threshold
▸ Revisit the EUB mandate — affordability and social impact must be explicit criteria, not just financial sustainability
Structural Debt Reform
▸ Debt restructuring — government formally absorbs NB Hydro debt in exchange for hard governance commitments
▸ Accelerate energy efficiency programs and home retrofit incentives — reduces demand and doubles as economic stimulus
▸ Green energy transition plan for NB Hydro — reframes the narrative and attracts federal investment
▸ Any future major capital decisions require strict independent review before commitment
CORE MESSAGE | We will find out exactly how this happened, stop it from happening again, and protect the most vulnerable ratepayers right now.
02 — Cost of Living
Cost of living is one of the hardest issues for a provincial government because most levers are federal or global. The winning strategy is targeted relief paired with radical honesty about what is and isn't in provincial control.
What the Province Can Do
▸ Provincial fuel tax reduction — modest but meaningful; it flows downstream to transportation and food costs
▸ Aggressive public advocacy to Ottawa on the carbon tax — costs nothing fiscally, plays well with working families
▸ Community food networks — food banks, community gardens, co-op grocery models in rural food deserts
▸ Support local agriculture and shorter supply chains — economic development story alongside affordability
▸ School nutrition program — feeds children, reduces household budget pressure
▸ Childcare cost reduction — expand implementation of federal-provincial childcare framework
▸ Renter protections — rent increase limits are provincial jurisdiction and a growing pain point
▸ Property tax relief for lower-income homeowners
What We Cannot Control — And Won't Pretend We Can
▸ Grocery prices are already PST-exempt — that lever does not exist
▸ Supply chain dynamics, corporate pricing margins, and inflation are federal or global forces
▸ Fuel excise taxes and the carbon tax are federal levers
CORE MESSAGE | I won't stand here and promise to make groceries cheaper — that would be dishonest. What I will do is fight for you in Ottawa, make sure no family in this province goes hungry, and manage our fiscal house so we have tools when it matters most.
03 — Seniors Housing — The Keystone Issue ★
This is the signature issue of the platform. Fixing seniors housing is the one action that unlocks the entire healthcare logjam. Two decades of governments have known this and chosen not to act. That failure of political courage is the opening.
Why This Is the Keystone
▸ Seniors inappropriately occupying acute care hospital beds block surgical and emergency capacity
▸ Surgical wait lists grow, ERs back up, healthcare workers burn out, recruitment collapses
▸ It becomes a self-reinforcing vicious cycle — fixing seniors housing breaks the cycle at the source
▸ Every other healthcare issue becomes more manageable once this logjam is cleared
The Convertible Build Model — Our Signature Idea
▸ Build nursing homes designed from the outset to convert to apartments when demographics shift
▸ Directly answers the long-term fiscal objection — the asset retains value beyond its initial use
▸ Addresses the healthcare crisis AND the housing supply crisis simultaneously
▸ Eligible for federal funding from both health transfer AND CMHC/housing streams — double dip opportunity
▸ Modular and adaptable construction is mainstream — this is practical, not theoretical
Getting Municipalities On Board
▸ Municipalities that fast-track zoning get priority placement of facilities and associated economic activity
▸ Frame clearly as local job creation — construction phase then permanent healthcare employment
▸ Partner early with the New Brunswick Association of Municipalities — make them co-owners of the plan
Critical Companion — Staffing
▸ Buildings without staff are empty promises — staffing plan must be announced simultaneously
▸ PSW and care aide training pipeline must expand in parallel with bed announcements
▸ Immigration pathways specifically for long-term care workers — fight for this at the federal level
▸ Wages and working conditions in long-term care must be part of the commitment
CORE MESSAGE | Two decades of governments have known what needed to be done and chose not to do it. We will.
04 — Healthcare Staffing & Culture
The staffing crisis in NB healthcare is not simply a numbers problem — it is a culture and environment problem. Good people leave not because they stop caring but because they cannot work in a way consistent with why they came.
The Root Problem — Moral Injury
▸ Workers are drowning in administrative burden and unable to spend meaningful time with patients
▸ Chronic short-staffing makes every shift feel like a set-up to fail
▸ Feedback goes nowhere — staff feel unheard by management
▸ Burnout accelerates departure, which worsens conditions for those who remain — a vicious cycle
Work Environment
▸ Psychological safety — staff must be able to raise concerns without fear of reprisal
▸ Adequate staffing ratios — the single biggest factor in worker satisfaction and retention
▸ Physical workspace quality — clean, functional, properly equipped facilities
▸ Fixing seniors housing directly improves this — appropriate patients means more manageable work
Structure and Recognition
▸ Annual performance evaluations framed as career investment, not surveillance
▸ Team-based incentives tied to patient outcome metrics
▸ Career advancement pathways — unions can accept this more readily than individual bonuses
▸ Bring unions into the design process early — design with them, not for them
Training Pipeline
▸ NBCC and UNB training capacity must expand with guaranteed NB placement agreements
▸ Return of service agreements — tuition support in exchange for commitment to work in NB
▸ Atlantic Immigration Program targeted aggressively at healthcare workers specifically
CORE MESSAGE | Healthcare workers didn't leave this profession — we failed to give them a place worthy of their commitment. We are going to fix that.
05 — Strategic Immigration
NB needs population growth. But the current federal system is being gamed by large corporations using temporary foreign worker programs as cheap labour pipelines, depressing wages for existing New Brunswickers. We are pro-worker and pro-immigration simultaneously — these are not in conflict.
Strategic Skill Priorities
▸ Healthcare workers at all levels — directly feeds the staffing strategy
▸ Trades and construction workers — directly feeds the seniors housing build
▸ Technology and engineering professionals
▸ French-speaking workers from West Africa, North Africa, and France — serves NB's bilingual reality
▸ Entrepreneurs willing to invest in rural New Brunswick communities
Provincial Levers
▸ Provincial Nominee Program — drive this much more assertively with specific skill targets
▸ Prioritize permanent residency pathways over temporary programs
▸ Publicly and loudly oppose corporate abuse of temporary foreign worker programs
Integration — Where Governments Fail
▸ Settlement services are underfunded and concentrated in cities — expand to rural communities
▸ Credential recognition barriers must be reduced — a doctor or engineer should be able to practice
▸ Rural placement strategy — specific incentives to settle outside Moncton and Fredericton
CORE MESSAGE | Immigration that works for New Brunswickers — strategic not random, permanent where possible, supported with real integration, serving rural NB and our cities alike.
06 — Housing — Create the Environment, Not the Houses
Government doesn't build houses well. Never has. The role of government is to create the conditions where builders, developers, and communities can solve the housing problem themselves. That means removing barriers, not adding programs.
Remove the Barriers
▸ Fix zoning — municipalities must be supported and where necessary required to allow density and mixed use
▸ Cut red tape in the approvals process — timelines that stretch years kill projects before they start
▸ Adjust PST on new construction materials — make building cheaper
▸ Provincial infrastructure investment that unlocks serviced land — water, sewer, roads
Measure What Matters
▸ Measure housing starts, not announcements — governments love ribbon-cutting, we want units built
▸ Public dashboard of approvals timelines by municipality — transparency creates accountability
▸ Annual housing supply targets with consequences for municipalities that consistently fail
Rural and Affordable Housing
▸ Support nonprofit and co-operative housing developers — they deliver affordability that market alone won't
▸ Seniors housing convertible build model addresses both long-term care and future housing supply
▸ Rural housing strategy — depopulation is accelerating and the housing stock is aging
CORE MESSAGE | Get government out of the way, fix the rules, and let builders build. Count the units, not the announcements.
07 — Education — Back to Basics
Literacy and numeracy scores in New Brunswick are declining. The curriculum has expanded in every direction except the fundamentals. This is winnable ground if the message is anchored in outcomes — what children learn — rather than in culture war territory.
What We Will Do
▸ Literacy and numeracy guarantee — every student reading and computing at grade level by Grade 3
▸ Curriculum review focused on outcomes — what skills and knowledge should a graduate have
▸ Reduce administrative burden on teachers — more time in front of students, less time on paperwork
▸ Transparent provincial reporting on school and district outcomes — parents deserve to know
▸ Parental involvement frameworks — structured, meaningful, not performative
What We Will Not Do
▸ We will not use education as a culture war battleground — children deserve better than that
▸ We will not cut education funding — we will redirect it toward what works
▸ We will not ignore teachers — they are the delivery mechanism for everything we are promising
CORE MESSAGE | Every child in New Brunswick deserves to leave school able to read, write, and think. We will hold the system accountable for delivering that — and nothing less.
08 — Medical Specialist Shortage
Residency caps, competition from larger provinces, and twenty years of patchwork responses have left New Brunswick critically short of medical specialists. The pipeline is broken at every stage — training, recruitment, and retention — and no single fix is sufficient.
Training and Pipeline
▸ Fight Ottawa for increased residency allocations specific to NB priority specialties
▸ Expand Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick and UNB medical training capacity
▸ Return of service agreements — fully funded specialty training in exchange for NB practice commitment
▸ Locum and visiting specialist programs to cover gaps while pipeline builds
Recruitment and Retention
▸ Competitive compensation packages — NB cannot afford to keep losing trained specialists to Ontario
▸ Recruitment bonuses for high-need specialties in under-served communities
▸ International medical graduate fast-track — credential recognition reform to activate this pipeline
▸ Quality of life and practice environment — specialists stay where they can practice well
Technology Bridge
▸ Tele-medicine expansion — not a replacement for specialists but a meaningful bridge for rural patients
▸ Inter-provincial specialist sharing agreements — formalize access to expertise across Atlantic Canada
CORE MESSAGE | Twenty years of waiting lists are not inevitable — they are the result of decisions made and not made. We will fix the pipeline, compete for talent, and make sure every New Brunswicker can access the specialist care they need.
09 — Dual Health Authorities — Merge or Reform?
New Brunswick operates two regional health authorities — Horizon and Vitalité — divided primarily along linguistic lines. The duplication costs New Brunswickers dearly. At the same time, Vitalité's role in protecting Francophone healthcare services is constitutionally significant and politically sensitive. This requires honest treatment.
The Cost of Duplication
▸ Two CEO offices, two executive teams, two sets of administrative infrastructure — for a province of 800,000
▸ Procurement duplication — two authorities buying the same equipment and supplies separately
▸ IT systems fragmentation — patient records do not flow seamlessly between authorities
▸ Strategic planning fragmentation — two authorities competing for the same scarce human resources
The Bilingual Reality — Non-Negotiable
▸ Vitalité exists to protect Francophone New Brunswickers' right to healthcare in French — this is a constitutional commitment
▸ Any restructuring must explicitly protect and strengthen French-language services
▸ The Acadian community's trust must be earned, not assumed — engagement must be genuine
Our Position
▸ Full independent governance and cost review — with full public transparency on findings
▸ Explore a single authority model with a legislatively protected Francophone services division
▸ Any savings from consolidation must flow to front-line care, not disappear into general revenue
▸ No decision without genuine consultation with the Francophone community and Acadian organizations
CORE MESSAGE | The status quo costs New Brunswickers money that should be going to patient care. We will look at this honestly, protect French-language services as a non-negotiable, and make decisions based on evidence and community input — not politics.
10 — Government Accountability & Fiscal Discipline
New Brunswick's deficit has ballooned from a projected $600 million to $1.4 billion in a single year. A credit rating agency just downgraded the province's fiscal outlook. Debt service alone will consume $860 million this year — money that cannot go to healthcare, education, or seniors. This is not a revenue problem. It is a spending discipline and governance problem. Someone has to say it plainly.
The Problem with How Government Manages Itself
▸ Departments asked to 'find savings' protect their budgets and cut visible services to generate public pressure — it never works
▸ Budget decisions are made bottom-up, with political pressure flowing upward — the result is always more spending
▸ Crown corporations carry billions in debt with inadequate board oversight and no real accountability to taxpayers
▸ Programs that don't work are never eliminated — just quietly underfunded
▸ Major capital commitments are made without independent review — NB Power's debt crisis is the direct result
Zero-Based Accountability
▸ Zero-based budgeting — every department justifies its full budget from scratch each cycle, not just the increment
▸ All major fiscal decisions made at Cabinet level — not delegated to departments to soften
▸ Independent Program Evaluation Office — every significant program reviewed against outcomes on a defined schedule; programs that fail get eliminated, not trimmed
▸ Legislated fiscal responsibility framework — a balanced budget law with defined timelines, so future governments cannot simply reverse course
Crown Corporation Reform
▸ Board appointments based on sector expertise, not patronage
▸ Mandatory performance bench-marking against comparable jurisdictions
▸ Any capital commitment above a defined threshold requires independent panel sign-off before Cabinet approval
▸ NB Power governance reviewed as a priority — $5.9 billion in utility debt cannot be left on autopilot
Transparency
▸ Real-time public dashboards on departmental spending — not annual reports buried on a website
▸ Every program evaluation published in full
▸ Capital project reviews published before commitments are made, not after
What We Will Not Do
▸ We will not ask departments to find savings and call it a plan — that is not a plan
▸ We will not protect any department, agency, or Crown corporation from scrutiny because it is politically sensitive
▸ We will not make budget decisions designed to survive a news cycle — we will make them to survive a decade
CORE MESSAGE | Telling a department to find 10% savings is not leadership — it is the delegation of a decision no one wants to make. We will make the decisions, at the top, on the record, and we will explain exactly why.
11 — Rural & Infrastructure
For too long, provincial investment has followed population density. If you live outside a major urban centre, you've felt it — in the roads you drive, the internet speeds you endure, and the services you can't easily reach. That has to change.
A strong New Brunswick isn't built in Fredericton, Moncton, and Saint John alone. Our small towns, villages, and rural communities are where much of our province's character, culture, and economic backbone live. They deserve infrastructure that reflects that.
What We Will Pursue
▸ Roads that work — A transparent, needs-based priority system for road maintenance and repair, with rural routes receiving fair assessment alongside urban corridors
▸ Broadband as a right, not a luxury — High-speed internet is no longer optional. It drives remote work, education, healthcare access, and economic opportunity. We will push for universal broadband access across NB, holding providers and government accountable for delivery timelines
▸ Services closer to home — Government services, healthcare access points, and public transit connections should not require a 90-minute round trip. We will advocate for satellite service models and mobile delivery where permanent facilities aren't feasible
▸ Small town economic viability — Infrastructure investment and rural service access are economic development tools. Communities that function well attract and retain residents, businesses, and young families
The bottom line: Rural New Brunswickers aren't asking for special treatment. They're asking to be included.
12 — Mental Health & Addictions
Behind the statistics are neighbors, coworkers, and family members. Mental health and addictions touch every community in New Brunswick. Yet our system still treats mental health as secondary to physical health, and addiction too often as a moral failing rather than a medical one. Wait times are long, beds are scarce, and the path to help is needlessly hard to navigate.
What We Will Pursue
▸ Wait times for mental health assessments in NB are unacceptable — weeks and months when people need help now
▸ Addiction is a health issue — our system needs to treat it like one
▸ Too many people fall through the cracks between crisis care and long-term support — the middle of the system is broken
▸ Youth mental health supports in schools are underfunded and inconsistent across the province
▸ Community-based care options are scarce outside urban centres — rural residents face the longest waits and fewest choices
▸ We need clear, public accountability on wait times — if we can't measure it, we can't fix it
▸ The opioid crisis is not slowing down. A reactive system is not enough
The bottom line: A person ready to get help should never be turned away by a system too overwhelmed to receive them.
13 — Small Business & Economic Development
Small businesses are the backbone of every NB community — they employ our neighbours, sponsor our hockey teams, and keep Main Street alive. Government should be making it easier to build something here — not harder.
What We Will Pursue
▸ Starting a business in New Brunswick should not require a lawyer and six months of paperwork
▸ Regulatory burden falls disproportionately on small operators — large corporations have compliance departments; a family business has the owner working nights
▸ We will conduct a full review of provincial licensing, permitting, and approval processes with one question in mind: is this necessary?
▸ Response times from government departments must be measured and published — delays cost real money for real people
▸ One-window service for small business applications — not five departments, five forms, and five wait times
▸ Regulations should be reviewed regularly and sunset if they no longer serve a clear purpose
▸ Less friction means more startups, more hiring, and more economic activity that stays in NB
▸Review rates for small business from NB Hydro. Make sure they are being charged fairly.
The bottom line: Government's job is to set the rules — not to be the obstacle.
14 — Environmental Stewardship / Natural Resources
New Brunswick's forests, fisheries, rivers, and coastline are not just environmental assets — they are economic ones. We cannot afford to mismanage them. Environmental stewardship is not an ideology — it is responsible management of assets that belong to all New Brunswickers, now and in the future.
What We Will Pursue
▸ Forestry policy must balance industry viability with long-term sustainability — clear-cutting practices and Crown land management need transparent public oversight
▸ Clean water is non-negotiable — watershed protection and wetland preservation are common sense investment in public health
▸ Our fisheries are under pressure from warming waters, regulatory gaps, and corporate consolidation — coastal and Indigenous communities who depend on them deserve a seat at the table
▸ We will require meaningful environmental impact assessment before major resource extraction approvals — not rubber stamps
▸ Climate adaptation is coming whether we plan for it or not — coastal erosion, flooding, and extreme weather are already costing NB communities. A plan is cheaper than the damage
The bottom line: We inherited these resources. We are obligated to pass them on intact.
15 — Indigenous Relations
The Wolastoqey and Mi'kmaq peoples have called this land home for thousands of years. That history deserves respect — and honest acknowledgement of where government has failed. Reconciliation is not a slogan. It requires concrete action on housing, health, education, and economic opportunity in Indigenous communities.
What We Will Pursue
▸ Lasting progress requires genuine partnership — not programs delivered to communities, but plans built with them
▸ Self-determination matters — Indigenous governance structures should be respected and resourced, not undermined or bypassed
▸ Economic participation is a path to community strength — resource agreements, procurement opportunities, and business development support should reflect Indigenous rights and interests
▸ Accountability flows both ways in any true partnership — we will speak plainly about outcomes, measure progress, and expect the same transparency we ask of all public institutions
▸ The goal is not dependency — it is the conditions for thriving, self-sustaining communities
The bottom line: Respect the past. Build the future together. Measure the results.
HealthCare First NB
Care can't wait. And neither can we.
healthcarefirstnb.ca