Recession puts raises promised to New Brunswick MDs in jeopardy

No one, it seems, is immune from the havoc the current recession is wreaking on the economy. Medicine is sometimes called "recession-proof" but when physicians are paid by the government, as they are in Canada, shrinking government revenues mean that the state's rapidly emptying coffers affect doctors much as they do civil servants.

Facing budget shortfalls, New Brunswick Health Minister Mike Murphy has asked the province's doctors to set aside the two-year contract they agreed on with the government last year and instead accept a two-year wage freeze. The government hasn't signed the agreement and may refuse to pay the doctors' raises regardless of the medical society's response to the minister's pleas.

Setting aside the raises would save the province's health system $36 million, Mr Murphy said. If that money isn't saved on doctors' pay, he said, it will have to come from cutbacks somewhere else. "If we were to turn the tentative agreement into a full agreement, we undoubtably would have to close down hospitals and shut down programs. Then the question is, where would we do that?"

Progressive Conservative health critic Margaret-Ann Blaney accused the government of negotiating in bad faith last year. "They have sabotaged this process from day one," said Ms Blaney. "They have shown the doctors no respect." [Saint John Telegraph-Journal]

Saint John Medical Society president Dr David Iles was pessimistic that physicians could stop the government from imposing its will. "We can ask for binding arbitration, but likely the government will legislate the freeze," he told the Telegraph-Journal. "If you look across the country, no other provincial government has imposed a freeze on doctors so they continue to have raises in salaries... Just to stay competitive across the nation, you need to at least honour our contract. Our salaried docs are well behind other doctors in the region."

New Brunswick doctors will simply leave the province if pay is frozen, said Dr Don Craig, the president of one of the province's medical staff organizations. "A loud sucking sound will hit the east and away we go." [Saint John Telegraph-Journal]

Mr Murphy, meanwhile, has apparently set out to make the province's physicians look like the bad guys. "There are patients of physicians in this province who are undoubtedly suffering some angst over the economy and the inability, sometimes, to pay the mortgage or pay for their children," he said in the legislature last week, implying the doctors shouldn't complain about their high pay. "We are looking for the co-operation of the medical society's members for merely 10 more months so that we can meet a common goal of restraint." [CBC News]

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