Cuts to Laurentian will have a devastating impact on northern health care: NDP

SUDBURY — NDP MPP Jamie West (Sudbury) hosted a virtual press conference on Monday to discuss the impacts on northern health care that will come from massive cuts and restructuring at Laurentian University.

“Our nursing school is being cut, and our school for midwives is being eliminated. Because the Ford government is refusing to save Laurentian, our under-resourced health care sector could find it even harder to recruit badly needed health care staff in the future,” said West. “Even before the pandemic, health care wait times were painfully long in the Sudbury area. We need more doctors, nurses and specialists — and Doug Ford is setting us up to have many fewer, instead.”

Research has repeatedly shown that leaving the North for post-secondary education makes it much less likely that professionals will return to work in the North.

West was joined by MPP France Gélinas (Nickel Belt), the NDP’s Health critic, and Abigail Roseborough, an Indigenous student in her third year at the School of Midwifery at Laurentian University.

“The cuts to Laurentian will not only devastate jobs and the lives of our students in the region — it will deeply hurt our health care system, and the future health outcomes of Northerners,” said Gélinas. “Cutting health care workers and their schools of training during this third wave of the pandemic when we are facing a shortage of front line care makes absolutely no sense. We can’t afford to lose these health care workers and future health care workers.”

The Ford government has been forced to appeal to other provincial governments to send their nurses to Ontario to help with the surge of COVID-19 cases because Ontario is facing a shortage of nurses.

Roseborough said that the cuts to Laurentian means that many Indigenous students will be prevented from pursuing their studies or will have to leave the North altogether.

“There are so few universities in the North, and so few with a priority in Indigenous education. Laurentian is one of these few universities. The cuts made by Laurentian have a large effect on the connectivity of the North. They are cutting off vital education to northern communities. The cut of the northern Midwifery program cuts off the expansion of the profession in the North,” said Roseborough.

“The cuts at Laurentian will force students to leave the North to study, but increased travel time, costs, and living expenses means many will be prevented from pursuing their education. And those northern Indigenous students that do leave to study in the south often remain there, and do not return to the North.”