NDP leader Horwath lauds community for its hospital fight
Posted By David Gough, COURIER PRESS STAFF
Posted 1 month ago
Count Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath as a fan of the Save Our Sydenham committee.
Horwath was at an early-morning meeting at Wallaceburg's UAW Hall on Oct. 15. The plight of the Sydenham District Hospital was one of the items at the top of the agenda.
"I definitely believe that it's an issue of equity of access to health-care services. I think the SOS committee and the whole community is fighting the right fight," Horwath told the Courier Press after the public meeting.
Earlier this year, a consulting group recommended to the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network that the Sydenham ER be closed and converted into an urgent-care centre. This triggered the SOS group to come out of hiatus and advocate to keep health-care services in Wallaceburg.
The LHIN started to get public comment and was expected to make a final decision in June, but put the process on hold after the province formed a government panel that will examine rural health care across Ontario.
The Rural and Northern Health-Care Panel is expected to finish its work this fall.
While the panel is doing its work, Horwath said she is alarmed that hospitals are closing and departments are being removed from hospitals in Ontario.
"The thing that concerns me is that if the government was serious about the work of this panel, they would put a moratorium on any changes until the results of that panel are made public."
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The NDP is coming up with policy on the LHINs, which were created by the Dalton McGuinty government. Horwath said they're investigating whether LHINs should be revamped or removed.
Horwath said that LHINs provide a smokescreen for the government, as well as a layer of bureaucracy that doesn't do justice to local communities and their health needs.
"People are disgusted with the extent to which the LHINs have become really just a cover up for the government. (They're) a way to distance themselves from cuts to health-care services in local communities."
SOS's Jeff Wesley agreed with Horwath.
"Don't let anybody fool you; they're not local and they are not concerned about local health care," Wesley said, adding that they are just another level of health-care bureaucracy.
Horwath said when recommendations come from the LHIN, whether it's a hospital losing its emergency ward or a hospital being shut down, the government points out that it's just acting on the recommendations of the LHIN. She said the government always points out that the LHINs are locally appointed members of the community who make those kinds of decisions.
"We know that those people that are on those boards of the LHIN are not necessarily local people who are connected to the communities," Horwath said.
