ARICHAT - Midway through his inaugural term as Nova Scotia's Premier Tim Houston is hopeful that the aggressive health-care agenda his Progressive Conservative administration is pursuing will bear fruit in the short and long term. 

Speaking to LJI journalist Adam Cooke at the Arichat studios of Telile Community Television shortly after delivering the lunchtime keynote address at Strait of Canso Superport Days in Dundee, Houston - who repeatedly promised to "fix health care" in the Tories' successful 2021 election campaign - touted his record, which includes the establishment of a provincial Office of Healthcare Professional Recruitment, a recently-enacted Patients Access to Care Act, and a new incentive of $10,000 for doctors to take on an additional 50 patients within their family practices. 

While he noted that doctors who currently face a higher patient total than the provincial average - including those in the Eastern Zone who now oversee nearly 3,000 patients - Premier Houston insisted that his government's approach to rural health care will help to chip away at a wait-list for general physicians that sat at 75,000 prior to Houston's election victory and has since ballooned up to 148,000 as of the end of June. 

The premier also defended his government's opposition to federal carbon-pricing initiatives that came into effect on July 1, driving up gas prices by an average of 17 cents per litre at Nova Scotia gas stations - the highest such increase in the country. Houston said he was disappointed that his government couldn't "have an adult conversation" with the federal government about this method of addressing climate change, and suggested that similar issues have sparked the province to take a second look at its participation in the Atlantic Loop, which is designed to redirect hydroelectric power from Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador to all Atlantic Provinces except Prince Edward Island through subsea cables. 

The federal government announced in April that it would commit $4.5 billion to the Atlantic Loop project, but Houston and his Minister of Natural Resources and Renewables, Tory Rushton, have each insisted that Ottawa must pick up more of the projected $6.8 billion cost of the hydroelectric development.