By Doug Draper
Wasn’t it just a month or so ago that Kevin Smith, the supervisor appointed by the province to get the Niagara Health System in order, tossed out the idea of a new hospital for Niagara, Ontario’s southern tier?
The only new hospital Niagara is likely to get for many years to come - way over there in the former farm fields of west St. Catharines. Photo by Doug Draper
Well, we might just as well forget that idea, if it was ever one we could take all that seriously in the first place.According to a front-page story in this March 21st’s Globe and Mail, the province’s Liberal government will be announcing plans by the end of the month to “axe” several hospital construction projects that are already on the books – all as part of austerity measures aimed at driving down a $16 billion deficit.
“Ontario’s government will back-track on planned construction of new hospitals and upgrades to existing ones just months after Premier Dalton McGuinty promised them during a series of showy pre-election announcements,” reads the Globe story. “Multiple sources have confirmed that the cuts to finding for previously announced hospital projects will be part of a broader scale-back of infrastructure spending that Finance Minister Dwight Duncan hinted at last week.”
The newspaper goes on to note that “commitments now in period include a new hospital in Vaughan, a tripling of the size of the hospital in the fast-growing city of Milton, major additions to the Mount Sinai and St. Michael’s hospitals in downtown Toronot, and a redevelopment of the general hospital in Brockville. … While predicting that a couple of higher-profile projects will be reprieved, a source conceded that a ‘significant’ number of others will be delayed or even cancelled outright.”
Given that, what chance is there for the idea of a new hospital in south Niagara that is not even on the province’s waiting list yet? That is a question you can no doubt answer yourself.
It was a mere seven weeks ago, before the infamous Drummond Report was released and the McGuinty government was still behaving as if his government had all kinds of money to spend, that Smith mentioned in an interview with a Welland Tribune reporter his openness to the option of a new hospital for south Niagara and possibly even a separate health system board for the southern tier. Smith was responding to multiple concerns from south-end residents about a reduction in hospital services in their communities and the distance to the new hospital complex the NHS is constructing in the western end of St. Catharines.
At least some south-end residents, including health care advocate Sue Salzer, questioned how realistic the idea of another new hospital in the region was from the start and continued to call on Smith and the NHS to bring back emergency rooms and other reduced hospital services in the Fort Erie and Port Colborne areas.
Following the news this March 21 in the Globe and Mail story, Salzer, who heads up the Yellow Shirts Brigade, a Niagara-based citizens group fighting for fair access to quality hospital services for everyone in the region, had these thoughts to share with Niagara At Large; “Many approved new builds and expansions (of hospitals in other regions of the province) have been on the books awaiting action for literally years,” said Salzer.. “Yet here we are in Niagara hoping to join the bottom of a most lengthy list and expect a new hospital in our lifetime.”
The new hospital option floated by Smith this January “is neither realistic nor is it even a faint hope based on the Ontario Ministry of Health release of projected approved projects that will now rejoin the dusty portfolios of hospital projects that have yet to make the approved list,” added Salzer.
“It’s time,” she stressed, “to examine other options to repair the systemic problems caused by the Niagara Health System’s Hospital Improvement Plan implementation and put the idea of a new facility on the back burner, exactly where it would sit if it ever made it to the Health Ministry.”
The only new hospital complex the Niagara region will likely get for decades to come – the one located in the western end of St. Catharines, is expected to be opened sometime next year. The NHS chose this site for the hospital despite calls from some Niagara residents, including city councillors and doctors in the Niagara Falls area, for a more central location.
(An NAL footnote – NAL made a request to the Ontario health minister’s office last month for a list of hospitals in the province that have been approved and are still waiting to be built. We can only speculate that the list was not forthcoming because the ministry was already in the process of deciding which hospital building projects would be axed.)
(We welcome you to share your views on this post. Please remember that we only post comments by people willing to share their real first and last names).
Niagara At Large 
An article just posted on the Toronto Star’s website, covering one of a series of planned protests by hospital workers (members of OCHU) outside the offices of Liberal MPP, contains a few note-worthy comments from Deb Matthews. Like this one: “ We have been very, very clear that we are protecting health-care funding. We are not cutting funding.’ ” And here’s another: “ It’s universally agreed that these [changes] are the right way to go for the future of health care in this province, said Matthews. ‘So if people actually care about universal health care they should be celebrating the changes that we’re making.’ ”
You have to admit the lady can be counted upon to stay on message, reality notwithstanding. She ought to be in the Harper cabinet.
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Another pile of manure from Deb Mathews. She should be in Agriculture not Health Care.
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They are all the same including the NDP !!!!
The party System Sucks !!!!!!
Matthews has no Idea what she should do, but wont admit it !!!!!!!
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Heaven forbid that Kevin Smith should be accused of being disingenuous in the matter of a new hospital for South Niagara. He should be forgiven for his tiny lapse in judgment in speculating beyond his pay-grade. Dr. Smith works at a level where tactics, not strategy, are his purview. As I recall, the other option floated was to upgrade one of the existing South Niagara hospitals, one that the aggrieved communities can settle on.
However this does posit the first question – how have the voters of South Niagara lost control of their communities? That is a matter of history. In the 1970s politics tilted the playing field, and all the marbles rolled North until they bumped into the QEW where they stay to this day.
The second question is why? The short answer is simple. Federally and provincially, South Niagara has been punished for “voting the wrong way” for the better part of 40 years. Stick by stick the means of sustainability were removed by an avaricious political machine until we see today’s spectacle of have-not communities scrambling for crumbs like vagrants fighting over a dropped quarter on the sidewalk.
In kicking the bed-pan down the corridor however, Kevin Smith inadvertently put his finger on the problem. Niagara Region will only get one hospital – only one to a customer. Being from Hamilton, he didn’t realize that the new St Catharines hospital was actually built in Lincoln Region … oopsie Lincoln County – smack-dab in the middle – just off the QEW. It will soon to be served by a South-bound ramp off the short-cut to the Pen Center, also known as the 406.
What about Welland County? Well, he didn’t realize the bloody minded voters of Southern Niagara are too rural, too working class, too politically unruly to deserve services, schools and infrastructure, let alone be entrusted with a modern hospital, and so he couldn’t have realized he had spoken out of turn.
Although the prevailing smarty-pants elites tell us that if we don’t like it to get real and move, Kevin Smith provided a clue to a credible alternative. If the Southern tier wants a hospital of its very own, it needs to become a Region of its very own. Niagara Region should revert back to two self contained entities – Lincoln & Welland Counties/Regions/fiefdoms … whatever … Haldimand-Norfolk offers precedent. Buyer’s remorse set in, and an amicable resolution was found. And if I read the tea leaves correctly, Durham Region may be the next.
And only then will single tier government make sense. As the former Welland County is able to hang onto it own taxes, set its own rules, develop it own resources, look after its own business development, rebuild its infrastructure through its very own renewed South-centric focus, reclaiming its dignity and some semblance of self-determination, leaders with suitable vision will emerge. A sense of pride, a positive parochialism, will reinvigorate a supplicant area that for too long has been the butt of elitist snickers.
Kevin Smith should be thanked.
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Hear, hear, Chris!
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Bravo! You have brought to light what so many residents of the former Welland county have endured for too long. I’ve lived most of my life in Fort Erie and have seen it go downhill since regional government was forced on us in 1969. Over 40 years of mismangement is enough!
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Chris, you’ve elaborated on this idea even better in the Welland Tribune on Thursday 2012-03-22. Hope everyone takes time to read it:
http://www.wellandtribune.ca/2012/03/21/niagaras-solution-lies-in-a-return-to-the-two-former-counties
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As usual Sue Salzer hit the nail right on the head.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense could see Kevin Smith was only throwing out red meat to the political animals of South Niagara to see if they would fight over it.
Even though I knew full well he knew a new hospital would not be built for South Niagtara, I thought it would be fun for the southern communities to get together on an agreed site…..just to call his bluff.
However, I still think it is of prime importance to demand services at the current hospitals at WCGH and GNGH remain until this new (cough, cough, wink, wink) hospital is built.
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As my late father said when Regional government was instituted years ago…”St. Catharines will get the roads and we’ll get the pot holes”. I never realized he was a prophet!
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