ARICHAT - The new episode of Telile Community Television's Roundtable series concentrates on two presentations made earlier this week to Richmond Municipal Council's Committee of the Whole meeting.

At 1:45, we hear an update on the activities of the Cape Breton South: Recruiting For Health (CBS:RFH) committee from the woman hired as the two-year-old group's latest healthcare recruitment navigator this past fall, Richmond County native Gina MacDonald. In outlining her committee's strategic plan for the coming year, MacDonald warned her Richmond council audience that shortages in doctors, nurses, continuing care assistants (CCAs), pediatricians, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals is not simply a local or provincial issue but a national concern, making the work of MacDonald and her colleagues even more difficult. 

"Doctors are not going to fall out of the sky and land in Richmond County - we have to go and get them and make sure that they come here," MacDonald insisted. 

To that end, MacDonald finished her presentation with a request to Richmond Municipal Council to consider providing $30,000 in funding in 2022, with a three-year commitment for the same amount in annual funding in 2023, 2024 and 2025, to help the committee pursue its activities in terms of recruiting and retention of healthcare professionals. She added that CBS:RFH made the same request to Port Hawkesbury Town Council last week.  

At 12:42, we shift the focus to two representatives of the Cape Breton Island office of Housing Nova Scotia (HNS), Shaun Bond and Cecil Smith. The pair arrived at the Richmond Municipal Building on Monday evening in Arichat to provide details for the municipal unit and county residents to apply for provincial assistance in specific housing projects, including upgrades that would allow residents to house aging relatives who are no longer capable of living on their own but do not wish to spend their remaining years in a long-term-care facility.