Ontario Green Party leader Mike Schreiner is accusing the Ford government of failing to properly fund the health care system. He was recently in the riding and took part in an Ontario Health Coalition forum in Bracebridge.
The Greens had a good turnout in the last election. When Schreiner was asked whether he was in the riding to score political points given the controversy in the community surrounding Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare’s capital redevelopment plans for two hospital sites, Schreiner said that he’s been advocating for two acute care hospitals for Muskoka for years.
“The premier promised two acute care hospitals in Muskoka, and I’m just asking the premier to keep his promise to have two acute care hospitals—South Muskoka and Huntsville. We don’t want to see communities pitted against each other, and at the end of the day, the buck stops at the premier’s desk, the health minister’s desk and the local MPP’s desk to ensure that our healthcare system is properly funded. So, the premier can keep his promise to have two acute care hospitals in Muskoka,” said Schreiner, adding that the problem of healthcare funding is not limited to Muskoka but one felt across the province.
“We have the lowest per capita funded healthcare system of any province in the country. Doug Ford needs to be held accountable for that, and the implications of that here in Muskoka is not only the controversy around the need for two hospitals, but we also heard from people [about]lack of access to home and community care. Lack of access to a primary care physician. There are so many shortages in our healthcare system, all being driven by the fact that you have a premier who is more interested in putting, you know, a billion dollars into booze than building more beds for healthcare or who wants to spend ten to twelve billion dollars on a highway that all the transportation experts agree is absolutely not needed…,” said Schreiner.
Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Graydon Smith noted that the hospital capital redevelopment plan is still at the local planning level. “What is without question is that a billion dollars is an unprecedented amount of money for a small community to work with and then on a per capita basis, if you want to look at it that way, we have been given by this government, again, an unprecedented opportunity to redevelop the hospital sites in Muskoka. You know we’re awaiting a plan on the provincial side, which is yet to be submitted and still being discussed at the community level, and so, as I’ve always said, I want to see a win-win scenario, but this is at the planning stage. And what we have done is provided every bit of dollars required to do those plans and ultimately submit it to the Province. So, you know, once the plans are submitted, they can be evaluated, but they’re not at that stage yet.”
Smith said that MAHC is working with the Ministry on the cost of those plans. “They’re working with the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Health, and those conversations are ongoing, but again, it’s an unprecedented investment in rural local healthcare redevelopment, and if MAHC wants to do something that is different from what they’ve been talking about, you know, again, they have to make a submission so it’s very difficult to comment when there hasn’t been a submission.”
Smith said he has been working on healthcare in Muskoka for a long time.”My hope is that we end up in a win-win scenario; that’s always been my hope. That’s why I did all the work that I did when I was mayor, and that’s where I’m confident we can get to.”
Asked to comment about concerns that if the community cannot arrive at a consensus, MAHC could lose its spot on the funding cue, Smith said he would continue to fight to ensure that doesn’t happen. “As an MPP, what I have been doing… is to make sure we don’t lose our spot in the cue and make sure our prioritization remains just that.” Smith said he would prefer that the time be taken to evaluate the input from various stakeholders during consultation sessions and ultimately work towards a plan that works for everybody.
Concerns about nursing shortages are also weighing heavily on the idea of staffing the two sites.
Schreiner said there are qualified nurses who no longer want to work in their field because they feel disrespected and underpaid, particularly when the province tried to cap public sector wages at one per cent per year for three years through Bill 124, legislation that was repealed by the courts.
He said those who do choose to return end up working as agency nurses where the pay and hours are better, and they have more flexibility despite not being given a set number of hours and benefits. “And that’s actually costing the system way more money now. So many local hospitals are paying far more for agency nurses now than if we just have… full-time nursing staff,” he said, adding that capping wages put administrators in a precarious position because they could not offer more money. “It was just so short-sighted… now I know we can’t keep looking back, we gotta look forward now, but the best way we can address that is to bring those people back into the public healthcare system by offering fair wages and better working condition,” said Schreiner.
Smith said Bill 124 was before his time. He argued that his government is working hard to facilitate the graduation and certification of more nurses. “We’re expanding what we can with a clear eyes-wide-open view of what the future requires and what the present requires and making investment where appropriate, and organizations which are partisan, opposition-backed organizations like the Ontario Health Coalition, love to undermine that work,” said Smith.
“Listen, we continue to make more and more investments in the health care system all the time, and I can’t speak for an individual and what decisions they want to make around what works for them, but I can say the government has been very, very committed in the healthcare system which has gone through a stressful time, certainly during COVID and with an aging population,” he said. “It is a challenging time, and we are stepping up to that challenge and making sure that we are bringing new healthcare professionals in, and making sure that we are training more people and making sure that in a small, ostensibly rural community like we have here in Muskoka, that we’re making, again, unprecedented investments in capital redevelopment for the future and adding to the number of beds and recognizing that we need to add to the number of services. So, the investments from this government continue, and [I’m] not surprised that the opposition wants to talk about what they don’t like because, you know, we are very actively working on this file and making changes for the better.”
He also said that unlike he one hospital model that was being pushed on Muskoka by a previous government, his government had agreed to the redevelopment of two hospital sites.
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