Dear Editor,
To MPP Clark:
What healthcare successes?
On June 19th, you announced additional funding for Brockville General Hospital and Kemptville District Hospital. While announcing the funding you said, “It just builds upon some of these successes that we’ve been able to do over the last five years.” We have to ask, what successes are you talking about? In the last five years, we’ve seen rural ER closures in evenings and over weekends become regular occurrences. We’ve seen people waiting hours in ERs to see doctors and waiting days in the ER to be admitted to hospital. We’ve seen staff shortages caused in part by the pay suppression in Bill 124, which has been struck down by the courts, yet Premier Ford is determined to appeal. We’ve seen the number of people in Ontario without a family doctor or nurse practitioner balloon to an estimated 2.2 million.
These are not just numbers, they are real people whose health has been affected. They’re our friends, neighbours, and families. As a community pharmacist, I see people every day who are suffering due to failures in our healthcare system.
Ontario’s healthcare system is in a worse state than it was five years ago. This additional funding is like sticking a band-aid over a gaping wound. Premier Ford and his PC government must stop defending unfair wage-limiting legislation like Bill 124 and ensure that our dedicated nurses have decent wages and working conditions. They must make major investments in our public healthcare system and drop the pretence that privatization is the only route to improvement.
Ontario is in robust financial health and it’s time the Ford government started acting like it, and truly look after Ontarians.
Steve Gabell
Steve Gabell: “additional funding” is a massive distortion of the facts. Health care spending was cut, or allocated and not spent. They are pretending to spend more of our money than they promised when they are in fact spending far less and watching it all burn to the ground.