Cabinet Shuffles, Part the Third

You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold them...

The Political Animal has been forced to time-share his laptop with the Official Sister the last couple of days, but I’m back with the long-delayed, over-budget third (and final) part of the series looking at last week’s provincial cabinet shuffle. Part 1 dealt with Greg Byrne, Victor Boudreau, and Kelly Lamrock, Part 2 with Roland Haché and T.J. Burke. We’ll begin where left off in the deck last time, Justice, where the new minister is…

Michael (Mike) Murphy. Murphy was Health Minister and leaves the departmeent with an awful lot of fires burning. Ambulance New Brunswick has lurched from once controversy to another (see Response Times and Cody Jones) over its brief and unillustrious life; the ER at the Saint John Regional Hospital (a hospital that serves roughly a sixth of the province) has only a fraction of the permenant staff it needs;constant delays in the new Trauma system (also centred in Saint John) a francophone group is challenging his health authority reorganization (after no less than an ex-Supreme Court justice told them they had a case);  and, oh yeah, the doctors are pissed about the wage freeze he’s imposing on them.

That said, Murphy probably sees his move to Justice as a promotion and we should treat it as such. After all, it is the job he’s wanted since he entered provincial politics six years ago. But considering the mess he’s leaving behind, why is he getting promoted? Simple: he did exactly what Premier Graham wanted him to do.

Ambulance NB was a Graham government initiative. There were always going to be bugs in the setup and it was Murphy’s bad luck to be in the portfolio in the agency’s formative days. Whether it was a good idea in the first place is debatable, but people probably won’t remember it come election time.

All the dickering with Saint John doctors mostly stems from the trauma centre debacle, although Tory health critic and Rothesay MLA (and, if she ever needs it Saint John Regional user) Margaret-Ann Blaney helped keep the general situation on the table every question period. The problem with the trauma centre is where to put it: Saint John is the only accredited trauma facility in the province but the Georges-Dumont and Moncton City Hospitals are in Murphy’s riding (the only Moncton area riding the Liberals won in the last general election). Thus, when a report says Saint John should be the provincial trauma centre, Murphy gives it to a committee. When the committee says it should be Saint John’s, he aquieses, but decides to make a “network” out of it – with the Moncton hospitals figuring prominently. When the Saint John-based trauma specialist applys to be director of the network, the department gives him the runaround until he gives up. The trauma centre could fill a whole 700 word post,  but obviously (and somewhat bewilderingly, to me) the premier approves with what he’s done with the “network.”

As for the constitutional challenge, it was bound to happen if he messed with the former Beausejour Health Region, the only designated Francophone health region in the province. It may have been untactful for him to say publicly that the case would take years to work through the courts, but it was still basically his bad luck to head the department when the government decided to change the health regions. Whether it was smart to create two regions is, again, debatable, as is the decision to form those regions essentially along linguistic rather than geographic lines, but Graham must think that Murphy’s moves were the right ones.

But the doctors. It’s impossible to know whether the incredibly stupid idea to set aside a tentative agreement (ratified by the doctors, I might add) in favour of a wage freeze came from Murphy himself or the Government, but god knows Murphy came off wearing the worse of it. This dispute can take another 700 words to explain, but as Murphy leaves the department, the mandatory wage freeze is awaiting royal ascent and the medical society is planning a lawsuit and possible job action. In spite of the backlash, Graham still decided to give Murphy his dream job.

Now that Health is nicely bollocksed up, what’s Murphy got to do as the province’s new Attorney-General? He’ll have to act on the scathing family court review tabled in the Legislature last month. He’ll also ahve to deal with the fallout from all the cuts made to the Justice Department in the last budget.  Cutting small claims courts is putting more cases into an already-overburdened court system and the legal aid cuts are already creating outrageous delays in some cases. I wonder how long it’s going to take for a judge to find the legal aid delays unreasonable and start dismissing cases for want of legal aid. Oh, yeah, and then there are the province’s high-profile court cases with Erin Walsh and Henry Morgentaler (whose case for standing the province will not appeal to the Supreme Court). At least Murphy knows the court system and its major players well, an advantage he didn’t have in Health.

Finally, Mary Schryer in Health. Mary Schryer, the one queen in the Cabinet deck of 21, was surprisingly (to me at least) designated as the fireman (fire-woman? fire-person?) in Health. She comes from Social Services where she didn’t do anything controversial, other than trip over the premier’s words once or twice on an energy rebate promise.

Why is she Health Minister, then? Well, the most closely related department to Health is probably Social Services, the department in charge of senior care. Schryer is from the suburbs of Saint John, just beside Blaney’s Rothesay riding (and, for the record, the home riding of The Political Animal) which should help put the Saint John hospital problems in perspective.  She doesn’t have a reputation for antagonism, either in Fredericton or as a municipal councillor. And, likely, nobody else wanted to take a portfolio that is notorious for politically killing good ministers in the best of times. And these are far from the best of times in Health.

Her first (and most important) responsibility is solving the dispute with the doctors. Nothing else is worth doing in Health until that gets sorted out. As mentioned above, they are considering both legal and job action against the government if the freeze goes through, but they would be willing to go back to the table if the province drops the wage freeze. This isn’t going to happen and both the doctors and Schryer know it. This dispute is about more than money for doctors, it’s about trust, something it lost in the province partly through the trauma debacle but mostly through the government reneging a deal signed seven months ago. They don’t buy the government’s excuse about the lousy economy, because it was just as lousy last December.

As for job action, they won’t go on strike like they did in 2001, mainly because the province’s contract offer was so derisive in 2001. What might happen is a work-to-rule similar to what New Brunswick teachers did in 2005. That job action reduced class time and scuttled thousands of school activities driven by teachers volunteering. If the doctors went on work-to-rule, stopping hospital committee work, provincial pilot projects, and potentially uncontracted ER shifts, it would be devastating for the province’s health system.

If and when the  wage dispute gets settled, Schryer can start to worry about doctor recruitment and ER closures. But if all her alleged “quiet diplomacy” can’t stop job action, Schryer may have a hard time keeping her membership in the LA, much less keeping her seat at cabinet.