FOR RELEASE
August 6, 2022
Ford’s healthcare plan is closing emergency rooms in Carleton Place and across the province.
CARLETON PLACE — Lanark Frontenac Kingston Green Party of Ontario President Maddy Dever and 2022 candidate Dr. Marlene Spruyt issued the following statement in response to the continuing health crisis of closing of hospital ERs including Perth and Carleton Place.
“Hospitals across the province are continuing to close their emergency rooms because they don’t have the staff to run them.
Earlier this summer, the Perth & Smiths Falls District Hospital closed the Perth hospital ER for over a week, and today the Carleton Place & District Memorial Hospital announced it is closing its emergency room over the weekend.
The Ford government’s continued inaction is showing, yet again, that they do not fully understand the crisis at hand.
Hiring more nurses is only one piece of the puzzle. A plan that hires more nurses to not be paid enough and get burnt out will not solve the problem.
We need to address the underlying issues.
New hires need to be mentored by senior nurses so that they have the opportunity to learn.
Too many senior, experienced nurses have left because of being devalued, exhausted and burnt out. It is difficult to maintain the quality of our current system without their leadership and guidance.
And to make matters worse, this government froze their wages under Bill 124.
We need to retain the nurses that we have. And we need to reward nurses who worked so hard over the past years during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Small rural communities are already experiencing so many health workers leaving their communities, home care workers, personal care workers, nurses and primary care practitioners. Losing our hospital emergency services is causing significant additional harm to our community. We need more healthcare workers, not more beds, and we need them now.
Our community is now served by an MPP of the governing party. However we haven’t heard anything from MPP John Jordan regarding the closure of either Perth or the Carleton Place Hospital ERs this summer. We call on our MPP to speak out and get his government to step up now.
Jordan and Ford must act urgently to significantly improve working conditions, fair bargaining, and better wages for healthcare workers.
And that means first and foremost repealing Bill 124.”
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Maddy Dever (they/them)
President, Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston Green Party of Ontario CA
maddydever@gpo.ca
613.700.8090
