Today in Hants County, Nova Scotia, I committed a future Liberal government to improving the health services of rural Canadians.
At the Hants Shore Community Health Centre I announced that a Liberal government would help attract doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners to underserved rural communities by forgiving up to $20,000 of their student debt.
It’s the first of a series of announcements I’ll be making in the coming weeks – announcements that outline the concrete steps a Liberal government would take to improve the lives of rural Canadians.
Rural Canada matters. It puts food on our tables and drives much of the resource wealth of our country. Rural Canadians deserve the same opportunities and levels of service that are on par with what urban Canadians enjoy.
And yet this Conservative government hasn’t just divided rural and urban Canada. It has let the rural economy suffer unnecessarily during this recession, making it harder than ever for rural Canadians to get the services they deserve.
At the Canada at 150 conference in March, we presented Canadians with a clear choice: the Liberal plan to tackle the Conservative deficit and invest in jobs and people – including rural doctors and nurses – or Stephen Harper’s priority of giving more tax cuts to corporations (already among the lowest in the G7) before our country and our families can afford to lower them further.
At the conference, we also determined that we’ll have to work together as a network of responsible actors to overcome Canada’s challenges. For this reason, I’d like to invite you to join me for a live online town hall. I want to hear what you think of our policies. And I want to answer whatever questions you might have about how these commitments will touch your life.
So stay tuned for more announcements in the coming days and please RSVP now to participate in the online town hall.
Thank you.
Michael Ignatieff
