By Doug Draper
The back-and-forth debate between the Conservatives and NDP over which one of the two parties is most likely to keep some of the promises they “borrowed” from each other for their election platforms continues.
Worker gets ready to remove emegency room sign at Port Coblorne hopsital more than two years ago.
Conservative leader Tim Hudak told supporters during a campaign stop in the Port Colborne/Welland area this October 1 that he will reverse the decision the Niagara Health System and Hamilton-Niagara-Haldimand-Brant Local Health Integration Network made under the Liberal government’s watch to close the emergency room at the Port Colborne Hospital site if he become Ontario’s next premier.
“I’ve always said that Dalton McGuinty’s decision to close the ER in Port Colborne was short sighted and would reduce care for families and seniors in this community,” said Hudak during a visit to support the candidacy of Welland riding Tory Domenic Ursini. “That’s why an Ontario PC will reopen the ER that Dalton McGuinty closed.”
Within a half an our after the Hudak camp posted this promise in a media release, the NDP came out with a statement of its own calling the promise “empty.”
The Conservative’s plan “keeps the status quo health budget, with no funding increase to re-open the ERs – not to mention the fact that the (Mike Harris) government (Hudak) was a part of cut nearly 6,000 hospital beds between 1995 and 2003,” the NDP release charged. “The New Democrat platform allocates $10 million annual to re-open ERs in Port Colborne and Fort Erie.”
Hudak has repeated said that he would scrap the Local Health Integration Network for this area and others across the province and re-allocated the millions from those bureaucracies to front-line health care.
NDP leader Andrea Horwarth made a stop in front of the Fort Erie Douglas Memorial Hospital site on September 24 and declared her determination to re-open both emergency rooms in Niagara’s south end. The rooms were closed more than two years ago by the Niagara Health System, the board responsible for operating most of the hospital services in the region, and turned into urgent care centres that no longer accept the most serious emergency cases. Those cases now have to be transported at least as far away as Welland and Niagara Falls.
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Niagara At Large 
Shameless. Is there any binding legislation to make him honor his promise?
Answer: No
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You should know that this is nothing but political posturing. Just wait. If either Hudak or Horwarth is elected, there will a lull and then it will be announced that it would be impossible to re-open the ERs because the equipment is in use and vital to the other hospitals and would cost too much to replace.
The best anyone can hope for is the return of ICU beds for heart attack and stroke victims and a few other “amenities.”
What is really needed is a new state-of-the-art hospital on Highway 3 half way between Port Colborne and Fort Erie. Will that ever happen? Probably not.
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Who would believe that two small communities in the Southern Tier could bring such grief to the sitting Premier. Thats the result of him committing a grievous error and refusing over three years to listen to the problems in the Health System that resulted from the Hospital closures.
Interesting that other facilities on the chopping block survived because of the unrelenting barrage of dissatisfaction that McGuinty was subjected to as a result of these closures,
Its become an election issue that he may live to regret.
You can be assured that on this issue the Liberals are gaining little sympathy. The reopening of two Community Hospitals is our dream and will be a reality.Its the right thing to do.
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Where was Hudak before and after the closures? I believe he also turned his back on the Yellow Shirts when they went to Queen’s Park. Horwath was the first leader to appear in Fort Erie for the hospital cause and had several public meetings on the topic. I also heard her give information that I presented at one of those meetings repeated verbatim in Parliament. Kim Craitor has been very supportive but I fear his party affiliation will be a point against him. Hopefully SOMEONE will listen to us.
I find it unbelieveable that thousands showed up at Queens Park on Sept. 13th to protest the closures but it never made a dent in the tv casts or papers. This subject affects us all. On the other hand there were about 100 protestors re water quality in an Ont community and that got 3 minutes air time. Curious indeed.
protestors (re water quality in an Ont. community)
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I believe that like the man I met last week promising me some cheap swamp land in Florida, for real cheap.
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I would like to know the rationale that Tim Hudak has in saying that he will reinstate Port Colborne’s ER & doesn’t mention Fort Erie’s ER! I would be very happy for the people in PC but wonder that since FE is still further away from “life & death” help why he chose PC.? It won’t be a surprise as has already been stated that neither of the two hospitals will be considered & is a ploy being used to hopefully gain votes for the party.”HOW VERY DISAPPOINTING THAT TRUTH & HONESTY DOESN’T SEEM TO PREVAIL!!”
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Anne, the reason this was mentioned is because it is an issue and this is an election. If there was no election, none of the parties would say a thing about this, or do anything of a substantive nature. This is also true of a gas power plant that nobody wanted in Mississauga and Oakville that was being put there regardless of what people thought and nobody said anything until the eleventh hour when both McGuinty and Hudak saw the opportunity and decided that each of them would allow the plant not to open there. During the debate, it was interesting because one of the leaders asked McGuinty what changed to make him take this 180 degree turn. Horwath intelligently responded, “There’s now an election. That’s what changed.”. I highly suspect the same reasoning is at work here with respect to the Port Colborne emergency room promise … I’d take it with a grain of salt and vote on the parties’ records instead.
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I have been a strong supporter of a health care system that truly cared (past tense) about the peoples of all the Canadian provinces …. BUT……. a few short years ago it was obvious the system was doomed to become just another dream. I have seen dirty CORPORATE politics enter and literally take over Political parties as well as the very media, medias that enables Corporations to dominate so totally and in so doing stifle the voice of dissent and reason.
Mike Harris aided and abetted by Conservative MPP pawns put onto the front burner the slide into the infamy of Corporate Privatization and I shudder when MPP Hudak has once again gained the media microphone and rants on as in the past. This MPP as Ontario Conservative Party leader lost two previous elections and is relegated to the back benches because of fear he generated in many voters hearts and minds. The “New” Provincial Conservative Leader a back- bencher in Harper’s Federal Conservatives advocates a platform of social responsibility that echoes, almost verbatim the rhetoric of the ONCE compassionate and caring CCF and NDP.
When I “NOW” listen to rhetoric of “FORCING” the restoration of Health Care Services I shudder in disbelief for it was the above peoples “only” who spear headed and fought to save the system that was attacked from all sides by the Corporate owned media, the for Profit Corporations and the Political Party proponents and pawns of Privatization including the Medical profession.
God Bless Canada and the Canadian People????? No,No, better to be honest and say God “?HELP” the people.
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