MPP Wayne Gates, November 23, 2023, VOL. 5 ISSUE 6
As the Member of Provincial Parliament for our community, there is no issue more important to me than protecting public health care.
It’s no secret that health care in Niagara and across the Provine of Ontario, is suffering. We have severe staffing shortages, long wait times for patients, rising violence & harassment in our hospitals, and we are now facing closures & reduction of hours for front-line health care – like right here in our community at Douglas Memorial.
I have been clear that the decision to reduce service hours at Douglas Memorial is, to me, unacceptable. Every single person in Fort Erie, and across Niagara and the Province, deserves access to 24/7 health care. It’s not right that people showing up at Douglas Memorial at 9pm are turned away, and forced to drive half an hour or longer to get the care they need.
That’s why I was proud to present petitions from people in our community, directly to the Ford government at Queen’s Park in Toronto. Over 4,000 people across Fort Erie signed petitions demanding that we restore 24/7 services to Douglas Memorial.
I want to thank the people of our community for making their voices heard on this issue. I also want to thank the organizers and volunteers with the Niagara Health Coalition for putting together the petitions and spending long hours collecting signatures across the community.
As we know, Niagara Health cited staffing issues for the reason behind the reduction of hours at Douglas Memorial. We have a staffing crisis in public health care – a staffing crisis that has been worsened directly by this government’s actions.
Whether it is Bill 124 – Doug Ford’s wage suppression law that kept pay for nurses’ below the rate of inflation, which they are fighting over in court with your tax dollars – or the fact that they are underfunding our public hospital system by $21 billion over the next five years, according to the Financial Accountability Officer – this government has refused to take action to support our health care workers and patients.
And now, Doug Ford and the Conservatives are pushing forward an agenda of health care privatization, that will lead to higher costs, unequal wait times, worsened staffing shortages, and hidden, out-of-pocket costs.
We learned recently, thanks to a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, that provinces with for-profit clinics and hospitals have worse wait times than provinces with no private care. We also know that we are close to the bottom of Canadian provinces when it comes to funding public care.
And we found out recently that the Ford government is now paying for-profit clinics between two-and-four times the amount they pay hospitals for OHIP-covered surgeries. And now, Ford’s former Health Minister Chistine Elliot is now lobbying on behalf of one of these private, for-profit surgical clinics.
It’s clear what’s happening – the Ford Conservatives are trying to dismantle our system of publicly-funded, publicly-delivered health care, so they can move us to a system to private, two-tier, American-style health care. And it’s communities like ours in Fort Erie which are now suffering the consequences of underfunding and staffing shortages.
We need to invest in public health care. We need to properly fund our hospital system, pay nurses and front-line staff fairly, have a plan for long-term recruitment & retention in the sector, ensure every community has 24/7 care, and stop the efforts at privatization.
I will continue to be an advocate for health care access for Fort Erie.
