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Nova Scotia’s health minister says public meetings in communities with a pattern of emergency department closures will continue, despite her government repealing legislation last year that included a requirement for the meetings.
“I am very confident in that,” Michelle Thompson said in an interview Wednesday.
“I think it’s part of the mandate of the work that Nova Scotia Health does.”
Legislation passed by the Progressive Conservatives last year did away with the Emergency Department Accountability Act. Among other things, the legislation mandated an annual report showing the total number of hours each emergency department in the province was closed.
But there was also the requirement for the community meetings, and details about those sessions were included in the annual reports. A spokesperson for the health authority said in a statement that officials have continued to hold meetings throughout the province to provide updates on health care and that those meetings “could include emergency department closures if applicable.”
“We are also increasingly linking up with existing events/opportunities to help share our information and build those community partnerships, for example by having booths in farmers markets in Digby and Shelburne and sending health ambassadors to summer events,” Keith Corcoran said in the statement.
With the government terminating the reports, CBC tracked unscheduled emergency department closures for 2025 using public notices from Nova Scotia Health.
Communities that have struggled for years with closures, including Digby and Shelburne, continued to face those challenges in 2025. Some, such as Lunenburg, saw reduced unscheduled closures, while closures were up in Port Hawkesbury and Windsor.
The emergency departments at Digby General Hospital and Roseway Hospital in Shelburne were both closed for more than 4,800 hours in 2025. Strait Richmond Hospital’s emergency department was closed for more than 3,000 hours.
Hants Community Hospital in Windsor was closed for about 1,000 hours in 2025, while Fishermen’s Memorial Hospital in Lunenburg experienced about 870 hours of unscheduled closures.
The reports the government used to produce covered a fiscal year, while the data compiled by CBC was for a single calendar year.
As the government continues to try to add health-care staff to these and other communities, it’s expanded the availability of virtual services even during times when emergency departments are closed. Virtual urgent care is now at many sites, allowing patients to speak with a provider based at another location, and a same-day clinic has been added to the Roseway on weekends.
Differing levels of detail
When Thompson introduced the legislation last year, she said the report was no longer necessary in part because the information was outdated by the time it was published — the report would come each December for a fiscal year that had closed 10 months prior.
Thompson also pointed to the availability of information on the Action for Health public reporting website, which tracks a variety of health-care system metrics.
But an examination of that website and other online resources shows there is less information available to the public now than what was contained in the report and it is no longer possible to produce yearly averages without near-daily tracking.
Average wait times by emergency department, for example, are now only available in real time. Information about the number of people attending emergency departments is no longer broken down by age and specific site.
Information on the government’s open data website, meanwhile, is either outdated or no longer available for topics such as closure hours, the urgency level of patient visits and how many people leave without being seen.
The minister said her department, Nova Scotia Health and the IWK Health Centre have many datasets they use to help inform decisions. While she doesn’t think there is “a huge request” for that information, Thompson said it could be provided if people want it.
“And we’re always looking at ways that we can take the information that we have, make it digestible [and] really help tell the story about what’s happening so that people have confidence in the system.”
Thompson said what is most important for patients when they need help is real-time data so they have a sense of what’s happening at the site where they intend to seek treatment.
But NDP health critic Rod Wilson said even that information might not be reliable.
Wilson, a doctor by training who continues to provide coverage at emergency departments when his schedule allows for it, said he’s been working at sites when the wait time average posted online is not reflective of what’s actually happening at the site.
He also said it’s vital for community meetings to continue happening each year where closures persist.
“If your emerg is closed and your constituents are left not knowing when your emerg is going to be open or if it’s going to be open, there needs to be some accountability at the MLA level and also on behalf of [Premier] Tim Houston,” Wilson said in an interview.
Interim Liberal Leader Iain Rankin said it’s difficult to see how the public is better served by the absence of the annual accountability report.
Rankin said collecting data and making it public allows people to track progress on efforts to improve the health-care system.
“I think most people understand that what’s measured gets done.”
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