Daily Archives: February 2, 2010

By Doug Draper

There was Premier Dalton McGuinty on a CHCH television news clip last week, trying to persuade us that his Liberal government is not gutting fair access to hospital services in small communities across Niagara and the rest of the province.

A sign of the times. An American private health care provider is posting billboards like this in Niagara, Ont. to take advantage of a health care system here that is beginning to fail us. Photo by Doug Draper

 “I do sense a responsibility on behalf of Ontarians to do everything we can to ensure that they have access to the best possible health care, as close to home as is reasonably possible,” insisted McGuinty in response to questions a scrum o reporters asked him about comments made earlier by Dr. Alan Drummond, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. “I am convinced we are leaders on that score.”

McGuinty was responding to comments Dr. Drummond and his association were making on the death this past holiday season of Fort Erie teen Reilly Anzovino.

Reilly, who would have celebrated her 19th birthday last week, died in the early hours of Dec. 27 following a traffic accident in her hometown that had her being rushed to an emergency room at a Welland hospital because as of last summer, thanks to the McGuinty government, the emergency rooms at Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital and Port Colborne Hospital have been downgraded to urgent care centres that will no longer take patients suffering some of the most serious medical emergencies. Continue reading →

(The following article first appeared late this fall in The Brock Press – in this publisher’s view, one of the best news outlets you can read in this region by visiting www.brockpress.com or by finding a hard copy on various newsstands in Niagara – and it speaks to the double wammy so many of our young people face as they go ever further into debt paying soaring tuition fees and have ever more trouble finding jobs in an economic meltdown. The article first appeared under the headline “No Student Employment – Bring On The Debt’ and Niagara At Large is proud to join with The Brock Press in republishing it here as a siren call of help from a generation that will make or break our future – Doug Draper)

By Cody Boyko

“Students are stuck between a rock and a hard place,” as Katharine Giroux-Bougard, the National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, puts it.

Our post-secondary students need our support

University students are being forced into debt to pay for the schooling they will inevitably need to pursue a career that may not be the one they once dreamed of.

“With record high tuition fees and mortgage sized debt loads, students are deeply concerned about their future,” said Giroux-Bougard.

She explained that students carry a debt load of an average of $25,000 for a four-year undergraduate degree (and) many at Brock are undoubtedly concerned, as costs rose for incoming students again this year. Continue reading →