Over the last week, the Ontario Health Coalition organized a historic referendum, both here in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and across the province of Ontario. The volunteers with the Niagara Health Coalition, the local branch of the Ontario-wide organization, set up polling stations across our community – including last Saturday at the St. Davids Firefighters Association breakfast, where I stopped by to check in.
The questions posed by the referendum is simple: do we want more private, for-profit services replacing our publicly-funded, publicly-delivered health care, and here in Niagara, do we want to ensure all present Niagara hospital sites and services are protected?
The Niagara Health Coalition revealed today that across Niagara, a total of 17,123 residents voted ‘No’ to privatization of our health care.
Firstly, I want to thank the volunteers for organizing the referendum, and I want to thank the people in our community, including here in Niagara-on-the-Lake, for coming out and making their voices heard on this issue.
Let me be clear: we do have a crisis in health care in the province of Ontario.
Today, in the province of Ontario, we have patients asked to wait months, sometimes years, for routine procedures.
We have nurses, PSWs and front-line workers crying in parking lots before heading into their shifts, and leaving the profession they love in droves, after three years of pandemic, increased workloads, staffing shortages, rising violence in hospitals, and the disrespect & financial impacts of Bill 124.
In Niagara and across the province, we are facing serious issues with ambulance offload delays at our hospital, with three of our hospitals here in Niagara consistently experiencing some of the longest offload times in Ontario.
Emergency rooms and urgent care centres across the province are closing, while this government is underfunding our hospital system by $21 billion by 2028 – that’s billion, with a B.
And what is the Premier’s plan to deal with this crisis?
He’s ending the current legislative session in less than two weeks, without a plan to resolve this crisis. As of the end of next week, he’ll be sending the legislature home until September.
This is wrong.
We should be here, working for the people of Ontario and addressing the urgent crisis in health care. And how do we solve this crisis?
It starts with the following.
Firstly, the government should drop the appeal and immediately repeal Bill 124. Bill 124 has held nurses’ wages below the rate of inflation, capping their total annual compensation increases to 1 per cent. These are the same workers that have been on the frontlines of the pandemic, who risk their safety every single day to serve our communities and protect our health. The least we can do for them is ensure they are paid fairly for the work they do.
Once Bill 124 is gone, there is another Bill we need to address: Bill 60.
Bill 60 is the most dangerous Bill I have seen in my time at Queen’s Park. By expanding the role of private, for-profit services in our health care system, Bill 60 will worsen wait times and the staffing crisis we see in public health care. And while the Premier says patients will only have to pay with their OHIP card, we know that not only is private more expensive than the same procedure in a public setting, but some patients, including seniors, are being extra-billed and surprised by hidden fees. We cannot allow this to expand and harm vulnerable seniors here in Niagara.
We then need to ensure we are using our existing operating room capacity here in Niagara. We have operating rooms across the Niagara Region that we, as a community, could be using to deal with surgical backlogs without delays. Working together, we can make sure we get the funding and staffing we need right here in Niagara to make that a reality.
And finally, we need to – once and for all – end the cruel and ineffective system of private, for-profit long-term care in the province of Ontario.
We know that during the pandemic, over 5,600 long-term care residents lost their lives from COVID – and the vast majority of the tragic deaths occurred in private, for-profit homes. We have seen this government refuse to take on the bad corporate actors in long-term care – in fact, they are awarding 30-year licences and fast-tracked expansion to homes like Orchard Villa, where the military had to intervene during the pandemic, and where some residents were left for hours in soiled diapers, or lost their lives – from dehydration.
As I head back to Niagara, health care is going to be my number one priority.
As a community, we’re going to ensure that we work together to get shovels in the ground for our new South Niagara Hospital as soon as possible. I also remain committed to increasing access to primary care services right here in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Finally, we need to ensure there are enough beds in long-term care homes, so that residents can stay here in the community they love, close to their families.
Working together as a community, I know we can get good things done for families and patients here in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and we will continue to support out publicly-funded, publicly-delivered health care system.