By Fiona McMurran
Wow!
It was a big victory in the Welland council chambers on Tuesday, Jan 19 for those residents in this city fighting to keep hospital services at Welland’s hospital and for others fighting for better hospital services throughout Niagara.
Welland councillor Frank Campion
The city’s council finally passed a motion put forward by one of its councillors, Frank Campion, to join Niagara Falls, Port Colborne, Fort Erie and Wainfleet in urging the province to investigate the way hospital services are being managed by the Niagara Health System – the body the former Conservative government of Ontario created a decade ago to amalgamate hospital operations in Niagara and that the province’s Liberal government continues to have calling the shots when it comes to most of the hospitals in the region.
The council also supported a resolution by Campion to establish a subcommittee of its own to monitor and develop plans in concert with neighbouring municipalities to ensure quality hospital services for residents.
“We need to make common cause with other area municipalities in order to show a united front to the province,” Campion said.
The council for the city of Niagara Falls first passed its motion pressing the province for an investigation of the NHS in November of this past year an the councils for Port Colborne, Wainfleet and Fort Erie soon follow with votes of support for it. But Welland residents sharing the same concerns as those municipalities for a loss of local hospital services under a so-called ‘Hospital Improvement Plan’ tabled more than a year ago by the NHS, have been pressing Welland’s council since last fall to support the call for an investigation.
Altogether, it took from April of last year, when doctors from the Welland area went to the press with their criticisms of the ‘Hospital Improvement Plan’ to Jan. 19 of this year for Welland’s council to unit in opposition to the plan.
What a difference an upcoming municipal election makes!
(Fiona McMurran is chairwoman of the South Niagara Chapter of the Council of Canadians)
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Niagara At Large 
Kudos to Welland City Council because we need to keep this issue about the NHS cuts alive and closing the ER’s in Fort Erie and Port Colbourne make no sense what so ever.CEO Debbie Sevenpifer and her St Catharines centric staff at NHS are the major cause of the problems of health care in the Regional Municipality of Niagara.
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