To the Editor:
The following is an open Letter to Huron-Bruce MPP Lisa Thompson and Perth Wellington MPP and Perth Wellington MPP Matthew Rae
GREAN (Growing Rural Environmental Action Network) adds its support to the province-wide coalition event “Public Healthcare not Greenbelt Highways!” on Sept. 14 and 15 with rallies in Barrie, Burlington, Fort Erie, Hamilton, Mississauga, Newmarket and Toronto and open letters from Brampton, Cornwall, Durham Region, Minden and Bruce and Grey Counties.
As environmental activists in Huron-Bruce, we stand with Saugeen resident Marie Millette and her letter expressing her disgust “with overspending on damaging and ineffective highways through the Greenbelt at a time when our province is underfunding our public health care system.”
Unprecedented and Worsening: Ontario’s Local Hospitals Closures 2023, a study by the Ontario Health Coalition “paints a stark picture of a healthcare system that has tipped into collapse,” especially for rural areas, like the riding of Huron-Bruce.
Among the emergency departments, maternity and obstetrics, outpatient laboratories and intensive care units across Ontario that have been subject to repeated closures over the past three years, Huron-Bruce hospitals such as Chesley have been closing evenings, overnight and on weekends since Dec. 5, 2022, Clinton’s emergency department has been closed from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. since December, 2019, Seaforth has had 17 temporary emergency department closures, Walkerton has had 20 and Wingham has had 31. In Perth County, St. Marys Memorial Hospital’s emergency department closed overnight five times, and Listowel’s emergency department closed once. Staffing issues have been a concern in the region, which prompted the Listowel Wingham Hospital Alliance to recommend that residents confirm that other hospitals in the region are open before heading to the next nearest hospital.
“The cause of the closures is staff shortages that have grown over the last three years into the worst crisis anyone has seen, compounded by the Ford government’s wage suppression legislation (Bill 124), privatization of staffing through for-profit staffing agencies, the government’s decision to end emergency COVID funding for locums and extremely short-term funding arrangements announced after short staffing has become critical,” the 2023 report points out.
As ridings that lead all regions of Ontario in total value of agricultural production, we are all too aware of the value and scarcity of the province’s productive farmland. We are baffled why you, Lisa Thompson, current Minister of Rural Affairs and former Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, aren’t fighting fiercely against the paving of prime agricultural land and instead, seem to be standing by while the province pays upwards of $10 billion to destroy 2,000 acres of farmland, 220 wetlands and dozens of waterways for a savings of 30 to 60 seconds of commute time, according to Environmental Defence. In Huron-Bruce, we are also losing far too much farmland to unfettered gravel mining, which aggregate companies are justifying as needed by unnecessary new highways like the 413.
We would expect that you would instead be as concerned about the future of local healthcare facilities as we are. Please tell Premier Ford to stop under-funding our rural healthcare system and stop enriching his developer friends using our tax dollars.
Sincerely,
Susan Hundertmark, Growing Rural Environmental Action Network, of Huron-Bruce-Perth
