Ontario NDP Leader Slams McGuinty Over More Hospital Bed Closures In Niagara

For the record, Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath asked Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty about news that up to 120 long-term care beds could be ‘slashed’ at the Welland hospital site, and this is how the exchange went this May 3 in the provincial legislature.

NDP leader keeps bashing away at Niagara hospital cuts

The provincial hansard on this subject reads as follows;

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Premier. Niagara region families are reeling from the latest news of what this government is planning for local health care. The Niagara Health System is looking to slash anywhere from 75 to 120 long-term-care beds. Will the Premier tell us exactly how many long-term-care beds his government plans to cut in Welland?
Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Let me just say to my honourable colleague that I think she has a good understanding of where we’ve been coming from on the matter of health care for the last seven years plus now.

She will know that we have increased operating dollars by close to 50%. I think she’s aware that we’ve hired some 11,000 more nurses, some 2,900 more doctors. We started from zero; we now have 200 family health teams treating some three million patients. We’re going to have 25 nurse practitioner-led clinics, the first of their kind in North America, I think treating some 30,000 or 40,000 patients. Some—what is it?—94% of Ontarians now have a family doctor; that’s 1.2 million more than before. We’ve done a lot by any objective assessment. There’s always more to be done. Again, I could add that we now have the shortest wait times in the country. We didn’t even measure them before.

So, again, there’s real, objective, measurable progress, but there’s always more to be done. I certainly acknowledge that.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?
Ms. Andrea Horwath: Well, one of the things the Premier needs to do is fulfill his own promises about things he plans to do in places like Welland. Right before the last provincial election, the McGuinty Liberals announced the construction of a new long-term-care home in Welland. Has it materialized? They promised the community would see about 100 new beds, but now not only did that not materialize, but there are plans to cut long-term-care beds, despite the fact that at least 500 seniors are on long-term-care home waiting lists.

For months, local municipalities have called for an independent investigation of the Niagara Health System. Why has this Premier ignored these pleas from the community, and why has he now decided to put much-needed long-term-care beds on the chopping block?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I want to restate something that has been said several times before by myself and my honourable colleague the Minister of Health (Debbie Matthews), and that is we’re not cutting health care. We keep finding ways to invest more dollars in health care, and we keep finding more ways to do it in as efficient and as effective a way as possible.

One of the things that we want to take up with the new federal government is a new 10-year health accord. I’d ask my honourable colleague to join us in that regard. We think we can complete that new deal by the end of 2012 rather than by the end of 2014, as originally was planned. We’re convinced that we can get it done in a way that secures medicare for the future.

The issue, to my mind, is not where we’re going to cut. It is, what are we going to do smarter and better than ever before as we invest new dollars to ensure we get the best possible results for the people of Ontario.

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