West Niagara, Ontario Residents Fight To Save A Beloved Community Hospital

By Doug Draper

The community is in a state of “disbelief and frustration,” said Bob Bentley, the mayor of the Niagara, Ontario municipality of Grimsby of plans outlined in the provincial government’s March 27 budget to scuttle previously promised funding for a rebuild of the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital.

West Lincoln Memorial Hospital as it sits today. How long will it last?

“We were one signature (from the province’s Liberal government) away from putting a shovel in the ground,” the mayor added during a meeting of Niagara’s regional council this April 12 – a meeting during which councillors agreed to make support for the hospital one the Region’s priorities when it takes its annual ‘Niagara Week’ to Queen’s Park later this spring.

West Lincoln Memorial Hospital has, for many decades, been a much beloved community hospital for people living in the neighbouring Niagara municipalities of Grimsby, West Lincoln and Lincoln. Talk to people living in those communities and many who have had friends or relatives who’ve been patients in that hospital have nothing but good things to say about the quality of service.

Little wonder then that more than a decade ago, when the former provincial government of Mike Harris and his Tories went through a hospital restructuring exercise that put West Lincoln Memorial on the chopping block, thousands of residents in those rural communities rallied to a point that the government had to back off. The now governing Liberals were the official opposition then, and backed the residents’ fight to save the hospital.

Now, faced with a $16 million annual deficit, the Liberals (barely half a year after a provincial election in which they left no hint of what was to come) have announced plans to cancel more than $100 million in funding for a rebuild of the aging hospitals – a move that could ultimately see the closing of the hospital altogether.

Bentley went on to mention that the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital site is in the riding of the province’s Conservative opposition leader Tim Hudak and said he’s hoping that has nothing to do with plans to cancel funding for the hospital. “This is not about politics. This is about people and health care,” the mayor said.

Not about politics? That, of course, is a wide open question.

What is of little or no question is this. West Lincoln Memorial Hospital, unlike all other hospital sites in Niagara except for the Shaver Hospital in south St. Catharines, is not part of the Niagara Health System that has been the subject of such concern in recent years over service cuts. It does, however, fall within the jurisdictional territory of one of the province’s Local Health Integration Networks (or LHIN, for short) that is all about “integrating” health care services, to as much an extent as possible, through the Niagara, Hamilton and Haldimand/Brant  areas.

Given all that, the West Lincoln hospital is located between the new super hospital complex the Niagara Health System is building in west St. Catharines and the larger hospitals sites in Hamilton. So for all that we the people know, the LHIN and its provincial government master may be thinking something like this; “With money for health care and other services so tight, and with jurisdictions around the continent turning to consolidating hospital services in larger, more central sites anyway, why keep a little hospital system like this functioning? Let it go.”

Of course, we don’t know if that is the actual reasoning going into the decision not to move forward with a rebuild of the West Lincoln hospital site because the LHIN is a provincially appointed board, with no direct accountability (as in being elected) to the people. However, I have talked to some people who have been closely watching what has been happening with the NHS and the LHIN, and what the province is doing with hospitals in general, say as far back as two or three years ago that they West Lincoln hospital rebuild will never happen because the powers that be will simply decide that anyone in those communities in need of hospital care can go to Hamilton or the new hospital the NHS will be opening in west St. Catharines.

That is not to say that people in rural west Niagara shouldn’t fight very hard to save this respected community hospital.

Bentley said a community group is coming together to fight to have the funding for the hospital rebuild re-instated. Debbie Zimmerman, a former Niagara regional chair and still serving as a regional councillor for Grimsby, said Ontario’s NDP leader Andrea Horwath has a website her party has posted, asking people across the province to feed her their priorities for what services should be spared and how provincial tax dollars should be spent. People in Niagara should take advantage of that website to share their concerns about the plight of the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital, she said.

You can have your say on the NDP leader’s survey of citizens’ priorities by clicking on www.ondpcaucus.com/yoursay/, www.ondpcaucus.com/exprimez-vous/ or by telephone at 1-855-ONT-BDGT (668-2348).

There is also an online petition for the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital that you can add your name to by clicking on http://www.petitiononlinecanada.com/petition/reconsider-cancelling-rebuild-of-west-lincoln-memorial-hospital/867 .

(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. Remember that we only post comments by individuals who also share their real first and last names.)