by Wayne Gates
Jan 20, 2022, VOL. 3 ISSUE 11
Fort Erie is home to over 30,000 residents – it needs its urgent care facility, end of story.
As many of you know by now, my team has taken the extraordinary step to tell Premier Ford that he must make a formal request to send Armed Forces to support to Fort Erie to get our Urgent Care Centre (UCC) back open. Simply put, it is not acceptable that tens of thousands of people are told they must drive out of their own Town to access critical urgent care. To make matters worse, they’re being told to travel roads which can be notoriously dangerous in the wintertime.
Some have told me that the military should only be used as an option of last resort, in crisis. My question to them is simple – how does this get worse for the residents of Fort Erie?
As far as I’m concerned, this is as bad as it can get for the residents. I am willing to knock on every single door to find resources that are desperately needed to get our UCC re-opened. If that comes from the military or the Red Cross, it doesn’t matter – what matters is telling the residents of this community that they have access to quick healthcare in case of an emergency.
I am fully willing to admit that this decision was made under enormous stress by Niagara Health. Many of you raised your voices alongside me in late November to tell Doug Ford that a new wave was coming, that we needed boosters made available, rapid tests easily accessible and our health system prepared for this wave. In fact, Doug Ford’s own scientific advisors were telling him this. After two years of this pandemic, it is almost inconceivable that our Province still does not have a system in place to rapidly produce and distribute the critical tools needed to protect seniors, keep kids in schools and reduce transmission. However, now is not the time to fight the battles of the past. Premier Ford’s choices were his own and he’ll have to answer for them this spring. What we’re doing now is working with all of our partners on a plan to first get Douglas Memorial’s Urgent Care operational again, and second, get assurances from the Health system that our UCC will be re-opened urgently with at very least the exact same levels of services we had before this decision was made.
I must give credit to Mayor Redekop and Regional Councillor Tom Insinna, both of who have been on the frontlines of fighting for our UCC here in Fort Erie. They have been incredible voices in our joint efforts to ensure that no services are lost at that facility long-term.
While the fight to get it re-opened is urgent, the fight to ensure we maintain the exact same standard of care is critical. Someone recently showed me a photo from 12 years ago when I stood shoulder to shoulder with the Yellow Shirt Brigade to fight the loss of services at Douglas Memorial. In 2010, long before I was elected to anything, I proudly ushered the support of my local union to support every effort to stop the McGuinty Government from robbing that site of its services. The reason we fought then is the same reason we’re fighting today; no community should go without access to healthcare services, especially not our beloved and unique Town. We are telling any level of Government that if you try to remove these services you will have a fight on your hands.
We will continue working around the clock to find the doctors and nurses sorely needed to re-establish services at Douglas Memorial. We will leave no stone unturned. As the omicron wave breaks we will continue our advocacy and ensure services are restored to their pre-Omicron levels. Douglas Memorial has been an icon in this community since 1931, we will not let more bricks be taken from it.
