Susan Corkum-Greek is a former journalist who is now taking a run at public office, running as a Progressive Conservative in Lunenburg.
Corkum-Greek is passionate about community-based housing solutions, job creation, local health care services, dignity for seniors, and connecting with local residents to identify their concerns.
She also has extensive volunteer experience in the Lunenburg area with organizations like the Lunenburg Waterfront Association and she is currently vice-chair of the Lunenburg Board of Trade.
In her time campaigning she says health care is the number one issue she hears about, “We’ve seen Fishermen’s Memorial closing daily at 1 p.m. and then the traffic from that gets put on our other hospitals,”.
She says we are currently asking hospitals to carry too much of the health care load and they are now dealing with a broader scope of work than they are equipped to deal with.
The PCs released their health care plan back in February which would be considered early by typical election standards. Corkum-Greek explained the rationale behind that move, “This is such a critical issue and we wanted to put our plan out there so we could get input from Nova Scotians and the health care professional that deliver our services,”.
Corkum-Greek says the PC plan on healthcare is the only one that offers holistic plans to improve health care.
On the issue of housing, Corkum-Greek says the PCs plan to do an inventory of provincial land to see what is suitable for development and then work with developers to provide more housing.
The PCs also recognize there are limits to how they can influence rising home prices so instead, they are focusing on improving wages through programs like the Better Paycheque Guarantee. The program would see businesses receive a 50 per cent corporate tax rebate, on the condition that the rebate is directed straight to employee’s paycheques. The program also stipulates that employees in the top 20 per cent of earners with a company would not be eligible to receive any of the rebate money.
Corkum-Greek says she also has found herself regularly telling people the PCs do not have the environmental track record many people perceive them to have.
“It’s absolutely a stigma we deal with as the PC Party, but that’s not the case, back in 2009 our government established the Environmental Protection and Sustainability Act which not only set up targets that were ambitious by the standards back then but it also set up the framework for how we report that data.”
In the riding of Lunenburg Corkum-Greek is being challenged by Liberal candidate Suzanne Lohnes-Croft, NDP Alison Smith, Green Thoman Trappenberg and At
