Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
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As the Sask. NDP works on its Big, Bold Plan for health care, it’s brought in an experienced health-care researcher to make sense of the data.
Researcher, Dr. Cheryl Camillo, was announced as a part of the Opposition’s team on Thursday. She will be the lead researcher on its Your Care Your Say project.
She was an associated professor at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina, but is American and came to Saskatchewan on a prestigious Fulbright U.S.-Canada Fellowship.
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Camillo said she spent 10 years conducting health-care research in Saskatchewan, including working on a recent paper about rural health care in the province. Before that, she worked in the U.S., including developing policy that she said would later influence Obamacare.
The NDP launched its health-care consultation last fall, and its health-care critic, Meara Conway, said the response and engagement from the public have been tremendous. Leader Carla Beck said more and more people are reaching out, in part, because it’s a meaningful consultation.
“This is not what, unfortunately, health-care workers have seen in the past – fake consultation that doesn’t take into account any of the things that they are telling those who are doing the research,” said Beck.
The information gleaned from the consultation will, and has, influenced private members’ bills for the NDP MLAs and will help to inform the NDP’s platform for the next election, likely in 2028.
Camillo will help the NDP interpret that information and develop it into solutions for the problems in the province.
She said, right now, the province’s health-care system is collapsing.
“I’ve been here 10 years working on the health-care system, and I’d say, especially since the end of the COVID lockdowns, it’s been declining at just an unbelievably rapid rate,” said Camillo.
She also warned against moving toward a U.S.-style health-care system, saying it would be a disaster for Saskatchewan.
Conway said an initial report will be produced from the health-care consultation, but couldn’t say when that might happen. She said a lot of information has been coming in, and the party doesn’t want to rush things.
Meanwhile, the Sask. Party government says it’s focusing on putting patients first and improving access to the publicly-funded health care that people count on.
“This includes delivery of some publicly funded, privately delivered health services, which the NDP have consistently campaigned to shut down. This would result in the cancellation of thousands of surgeries and diagnostic procedures performed in Saskatchewan every year, further increasing wait times for Saskatchewan patients,” said the government in a statement.
