Lunenburg MLA Suzanne Lohnes-Croft Chairs the Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Economic Development
Suzanne Lohnes-Croft is seeking reelection in the riding of Lunenburg for the third consecutive election.
Before entering politics Lohnes-Croft was an early childhood educator.
She also credits her volunteer efforts with giving her a perspective on the issues being faced by her constituents. “I learned how to talk with people and work in collaboration with people from all walks of life,” Lohnes-Croft said.
In 2010, the town of Mahone Bay recognized her for her volunteer work making her their nomination for the Provincial Volunteer Award for that year.
As for the issues being faced in this election, Lohnes-Croft sees health care as the most important issue.
“Being without a family physician is an issue I hear about often and we’ve been working on recruiting doctors throughout our time in government,” She said. “During the pandemic, it’s been challenging but we were able to bring in 62 trained international doctors.”
Lohnes-Croft went on to say the challenge of recruiting doctors is not isolated to her riding or even Nova Scotia. She says communities around the world are now vying for doctors which means competition is stiff.
In order to help recruitment Lohnes-Croft says the Liberal government has made it so Nova Scotia offers the highest pay for doctors in Atlantic Canada.
The Liberals have yet to release a full health care plan as part of their campaign.
Housing is another issue on the top of Lohnes-Croft’s mind with her recognizing that people in Lunenburg are struggling to find affordable housing.
She pointed to a partnership with the federal government as one of the solutions, “We have entered a ten-year partnership that comes with $513 million that will help provide affordable housing for all Nova Scotians,”.
The Liberals also introduced a 2 per cent rent increase cap in response to the pandemic but they do not view that as a long-term solution. “Research shows that rent caps won’t solve everything, oftentimes developers will stop working on new projects because of them and that is why we are focusing on affordable housing,” Lohnes-Croft said.
As Lohnes-Croft begins canvasing she says she intends to run a positive campaign and will not be disparaging her competition. She also voiced how proud she was to see all of the candidates running in her riding were female which she believes shows how important equality is to her riding.
At the time of our interview, the Green Party had not yet announced Thomas Trappenberg was running in the riding of Lunenburg.
