Rankin visits Cape Breton to make campaign promises on cancer care

Nova Scotia's Liberal leader made two campaign promises related to cancer care at stops in Cape Breton on Wednesday.

Outside the new downtown fire station on George Street in Sydney, Iain Rankin said if re-elected, his government would expand the list of cancers covered by workers' compensation for both professional and volunteer firefighters.

The Workers' Compensation Board of Nova Scotia covers six cancers. The Liberals are promising to add 11 more.

Rankin said firefighters are on the front lines and define true public service.

"Today we are recognizing the sacrifices that our volunteer and professional firefighters have been making to this province every single day," he said.

Nova Scotia professional firefighters have been covered for six cancers under the Workers' Compensation Act since 2003. In 2019, the province added volunteer firefighters.

Gilbert MacIntyre, deputy chief of the Cape Breton regional fire service, welcomed the news.

"If you ask somebody what hurts, what kills, what injures firefighters, they'll tell you a fallen building, a window," he said.

"Nobody thinks of the cancer, and the cancer is what's taking us out."

In 2015, a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study found firefighters are nine per cent more likely to get cancer than the general public and 14 per cent more likely to die from that cancer, MacIntyre said.

A more recent study out of the University of British Columbia found that modern fires are more toxic than ones previously studied.

"The fires of 60 years ago burned a different material than the fires of today," MacIntyre said. "Much more synthetics and carcinogens in the fires of today and that's what's killing us."

The more recent study found there were 568 work-related firefighter deaths over a 10-year period, he said. Of those, about 85 per cent were cancer deaths, eight per cent were from chronic illness and six per cent were from injuries.

NDP say they tried to expand coverage in 2019

After the Liberals made the announcement, the New Democratic Party issued a release reminding the Liberals of an NDP bill from 2019 that would have tripled the number of cancers covered by workers' compensation.

The party said the Liberals rejected the suggestion in favour of overhauling the entire act.

Following the Liberals' firefighter announcement, Rankin went to the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, where he promised the Liberals would fund the operating costs of an imaging device for cancer care.

The Cape Breton Regional Hospital Foundation plans to start fundraising for a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner to help with early cancer diagnoses.

Foundation CEO Paula MacNeil said the machine could cost up to $3 million to buy and another $700,000 each yearto operate.

She said Cape Breton cancer rates are "very high" and the machine would save about 500 area residents from having to travel to Halifax to access a PET scan.

"Barriers such as finances, transportation and the wherewithal make Halifax feel like a world away," she said.

"We have to ensure that people don't have to travel five hours for access to care during what can be one of the most vulnerable times in their life."

Rankin said enabling the purchase of the imaging machine is an issue of fairness for all Cape Breton residents and it fits with the billion-dollar restructuring of hospitals in CBRM.

"I think if we're going to build a standalone cancer centre as part of our redevelopment, then you need to have a PET scanner," he said.

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