There some interesting announcements this week from the Provincial Government.

First, Mike Murphy, Minister of Health introduced his rationalization plan for healthcare delivery and then Kelly Lamrock, Minister of Education responded to the French Second Language Report. Let's start with Murphy's announcement.

The Minister introduced his changes as "transformational" to the healthcare system. In fact what was announced was a restructuring program designed to save some money, improve the delivery of healthcare services and ultimately to add some consumer-driven oversight to the system.

Here's the deal! Eight regional health authorities will be consolidated into two units, one French and one English. I understand the politics of this decision but I would have preferred to see one bilingual unit, centrally located in Moncton or Fredericton. As announced, one unit will be located in Bathurst and the other in Miramichi thus formalizing a two layered system in lieu of one.

A new operating company will be created to manage the provision of non-clinical services such as materials management, technology services, biomedical engineering, energy retrofits, telecommunications, finance, payroll, laundry and presumably food service.
All of this will be coordinated from Saint John and service the needs of both Authorities.

This should help make our healthcare delivery system more cost efficient and that's important. Little or none of it will reduce wait times at hospitals or wait times for procedures. None of it will attract more doctors or nurses to the province but it might free up some dollars to hire them.

To oversee all of the above, a new Health Council is being created. It will be located in Moncton and have as its mandate the task of creating dialogue between users of the healthcare system and providers of healthcare to ensure that services are meeting the needs of our residents.

It's not clear what role the Council will play in an operational sense but its members are clearly Blue Chip. Chair will be Rino Volpé, former executive with the Irving group. Stéphane Robichaud will serve as CEO. It's not clear who the other Council members will be unless they will be the Chairs and CEOs of the Regional Health Authorities and the service company but that would seem to conflict with the Council's oversight mandate.

From an administrative point of view, Mr. Murphy is to be congratulated for his initiative but I question the wisdom of locating the new health authorities in the north when the majority of the population lives in the south. Locating the health authorities away from major centres may seem politically expedient in light of industrial job losses but New Brunswick's health infrastructure is centralized in the south around major medical and educational centres in Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton.

On the matter of French Second Language training, Mr. Lamrock has announced that he will accept the recommendations of the FSL Commission and that early French immersion will be abandoned in favour of an intense two year program beginning in Grade 5. Following the intense program, students will have the option of continuing in immersion or moving into the main program with French as a continuing core subject.

New Brunswick ranks last in Canada in the areas of literacy, math and science. We fall far short of providing all students with a firm second language foundation. It's pretty clear; we have to do something about it.

In principle, I reject the abandonment of early French immersion but let me come back to that. Mr. Lamrock's announcement places French, as a second language, clearly in the mainstream. It will not be an optional subject. His target is 70% bilingualism for high school graduates. That's an ambitious target but a commendable target. His choice of intensity is designed for the masses, not the gifted but he may be right in that it could produce a much higher rate of two language proficiency than the current system.

On the matter of early immersion, the Minister has wisely "grandfathered" those who are in the system, meaning children who already are enrolled in early immersion will be allowed to continue in immersion through high school. There appears to be no mention of early immersion in private schools so one would assume that for those who have the resources to put their children in private schools, there will be no loss of early French immersion and that is good for them because I've found no evidence, professional, statistical or anecdotal that would support the notion that late immersion or intensity programs are better than early immersion.

That said I recognize that we are talking about the public school system and a majority of students. Mr. Lamrock's solution has to be better than today's system even if it increases literacy and bilingualism by only twenty percent and here's hoping it will be much more.

W.E. (Bill) Belliveau is a Shediac resident and Moncton business consultant. He can be contacted at bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com Atlantic Insight is a published Blog inventory of opinion articles published weekly in New Brunswick's print media as written by W.E. (Bill) Belliveau, who is a resident of Shediac, New Brunswick, and small business owner, operating his Moncton-based marketing consultancy, Bell Strategic. He can be reached by e-mail at mailto:bill.bellstrategic@nb.aibn.com