Fort Erie and Port Colborne Hospital Closings Have Been In Cards for Years

Yet Niagara’s South-End Residents Continue Fighting Like Hell to Save Them, and THAT’S GOOD!

A Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper

Posted March 21st on Niagara At Large

Sue Salzer and members of her ‘Yellow Shirt Brigade’ feared that the closing of Fort Erie’s Douglas Memorial Hospital was coming years before the grand opening of a state-of-the-art, super hospital on former farmland in West St. Catharines in 2013.

Yet I am sure the Fort Erie community activist, who sadly passed away six years ago, would be among the hundreds of  South Niagara residents who packed Fort Erie’s Leisureplex hall this past Tuesday, March 19^th, fighting advocating like hell to keep what is left of the Douglas Memorial Hospital alive.

In the wake of this past March 19^th’s meeting, hosted by Niagara Health, the body in charge of operating Niagara, Ontario’s hospital system, I could not help but thinking back some 15 or more years ago to the beginning of  the Yellow Shirt Brigade’s efforts to fight for the survival of Douglas Memorial, along with others in Port Colborne and Welland, as fully-functioning hospitals in their communities.

The fight was a valiant one. Yet here we are more than a decade later with representatives of the region’s hospital system, now working under the more stripped down title ‘Niagara Health’, holding the first of a series of public meetings to discuss its plans to move to a “three-hospital model” that includes the hospital in in West St. Catharines, the still-existing, now 64-year-old hospital in Welland, and one now under construction in the south-west end of Niagara Falls that political leaders are trying to pass off as a hospital for serving all of South Niagara.

When the boards of Niagara’s then eight or nine hospitals were directed to joint together under the direction of the former Ontario Conservative government of Mike Harris some two decades and began, in the mid-to-lakes 200s, working toward building what many area citizens referred to as a “super hospital” under the provincial Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty and Lynne Matthews, concern was already growing among south-end residents like Sue Saltzer in Fort Erie and Pat Scholfield in Port Colborne that this could mean the beginning of the end for their community hospitals.

That was when the Yellow Shirt Brigade was organized to fight for the survival of south-end hospitals or, at the very least, urge the Niagara Health System and province to at least build any new super hospital somewhere in the centre of the region so everyone in Niagara could have more equal access to it.

But the Niagara Health System insisted that the new hospital would go in St. Catharines where it would mostly serve as a replacement for the aging St. Catharines General and Hotel Dieu hospital sites in that city.

In response concerns raised by south-end residents, then Niagara Health System (NHS) Chief Administrative Officer Debbie Sevenpifer and her ever-so-loyal board at the time, tried to convince the residents that the NHS was “committed” to keeping their hospitals open.

The leaders of the Yellow Shirt Brigade and many of its members did not buy Sevenpifer and company’s line, and they were proven right not to as the services at the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospital sites were hollowed down to palliative and urgent care centres, and are now slated to be closed completely in the new Niagara Falls hospital opens a few years from now.

(Throw this whole saga up on the pile as one more reason for the growing mistrust and cynicism people have in government.)

It would not be fair to blame the current  administrators of Niagara Health for all this though.

Decades of funding cuts by successive provincial and federal governments to health care and other public services – all necessary to pay for repeated tax cuts insisted on by good number of the country’s citizens, have certainly played a major role.

With all of those decades of tax cuts, combined with an aging population that is placing an ever-greater burden on health care services, the chickens have come home to roost.

Yet, none of this should discourage Niagara residents from fighting to keep hospital services in their communities open and from putting more pressure on a higher levels of government to do it – just so long as we know that governments may have to go back to the old system of raising income taxes in order to collect enough revenue to do it.

If Sue Salzer was still with us, I am sure she would be there on the front lines, with her yellow shirt on, championing the fight for more government funding for quality, accessible hospital services for everyone across this region.

In her memory, fight on!

• Doug Draper, Niagara At Large

To receive the dates, times and locations for upcoming meetings Niagara Health is hosting on its future plans for our hospital services, click on the following link  – https://www.niagarahealth.on.ca/site/news/2024/03/01/niagara-health-hosting-engagement-sessions-on-hospital-transformation-plan

For past news and commentary on this issue, visit the following links

The Damage Has Already Been Done To Niagara’s Hospital Services | Niagara At Large

So Those Who Once Fought For Keeping A Fully Functioning Hospital In Fort Erie, Ontario Were Right – What Was A Once-Proud Community Hospital Is Now ‘Dedicated’ To Palliative Care | Niagara At Large

NHS Chair Insists Hospital Services In Niagara, Ontario Are Already Subject To ‘Quality Control’ | Niagara At Large

Niagara Health System’s CEO Ousted By The Niagara, Ontario Hospital System’s Board | Niagara At Large

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