Renewed Call For Investigation Of Niagara Health System Is Applauded By South Niagara Citizen Groups

By Doug Draper

The public gallery of the Niagara regional government’s council chambers might very well be painted in yellow this coming Thursday, February 10 – yellow shirts that is.

Yellow Shirts from south Niagara gathered in regional chambers last September, only to hear the council say 'no' to a resolution for an investigation of the Niagara Health System's managment of our hospitals.

Recently elected Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati is planning to reprise a previously defeated resolution, asking the regional council to support a call for an independent, provincial investigation into the way the Niagara Health System has been managing the region’s hospital services. And suffice to say, members of the Yellow Shirt Brigade, a south Niagara citizens group fighting to preserve hospital services in the region’s southern muncipalities, including Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Wainfleet, Welland and Niagara Falls, are planning to be there to support Diodati’s effort.

The Yellow Shirts and their supporters in south Niagara are hoping that with this recently elected regional council, a renewed call for an investigation of the NHS might finally get approved, just as the same call for a provincial investigation was passed last year by seven of Niagara’s 12 local municipal council’s – those of Niagara Falls, Thorold, St. Catharines, Wainfleet, Welland, Port Colborne and Fort Erie.

“Join (Diodati) and us at the regional headquarters (off Hwy 406 and St. Davids Road and Hwy. 406 in Thorold) this Thursday, February 10 at 7 p.m.,” says south Niagara resident Pat Scholfield, who wears one of those yellow shirts and is a founder of a Port Colborne area group, Peoples Healthcare Coalition.

“I am elated to hear of Mayor Diodati’s resolution to have the province conduct an independent, internal and external investigation of the NHS,” Scholfield told Niagara At Large.  “This resolution was rejected before because some of the mayors and representatives said there had already been a number of investigations, most of those investigations had been in-house and did not include reviewing the effects on the region of the Niagara Health System’s hospital improvement plan (HIP). …

“When the HIP is fully implemented,” Scholfield continued, “there will be no acute or emergency services at hospitals in the southern tier. Right now the closures of ERs in Port Colborne and Fort Erie has left the hospital system in chaos…. way above provincial wait times at the ERs in St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland, and soaring off load times for the paramedics across the region.”

“We are supportive of Mayor Diodati and his efforts to move an investigation of NHS,” added Sue Salzer, a Fort Erie resident and head of the Yellow Shirt Brigade in comments to Niagara At Large. “Perhaps the new regional council, which had the sense recently to reopen the public’s ability to address full meetings of council, will now support the seven local municipalities across the region that have already voted in favour of an investigation of the NHS.”

“We will definitely have a representative group in attendance (at the February 10 regional council meeting) in support of (Diodati’s) motion,” Salzer said. “We see this motion as a step forward in achieving our goal to regain, retain and improve a Niagara health system that is in chaos.”

The Yellow Shirts and other south Niagara residents gathered in the regional council chambers last September – one of the final meetings of the last term of regional council before that fall’s municipal elections – and witnessed the council turning down a resolution for an NHS investigation.

Among those who gave their thumbs’ down to an investigation were Niagara Falls and Welland mayors Ted Salci and Damian Goulbourne – who were rejected by the voters in their municipalities in those fall municipal elections, but were still there at the time of the September regional council session to support the NHS. About five years earlier, Goulbourne and Salci joined then St. Catharines mayor Tim Rigby, in a trip to Queen’s Park to lobby for the NHS’s decision to build a new hospital complex for Niagara in west St. Catharines. The move upset more than a few constituents, including city councillors, in Goulbourne’s and Salci’s municipalities.

Yet that didn’t stop them from joining a majority of others on regional council in voting against a resolution for an investigation into the NHS last September, and it certainly didn’t stop Rigby (by then and now a St. Catharines regional councillor) from voting against the resolution. In fact, Rigby went so far as to offer supporters of the resolution one more slap in the face by declaring that the new hospital complex the NHS is building in his municipality in a “St. Catharines hospital,” even though it is so obvious that most of the acute care hospital services for all of the Niagara region will be sucked out of hospital sites in the south to this new St. Catharines site.

The Yellow Shirts and others have hope that this time, with a new regional council, their concerns over the way hospital services have been managed by the NHS may finally be heard.

Niagara At Large will be there and we shall see.

(Visit Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater Niagara area.)