Horwath will hire the nurses Sault Ste. Marie needs, and stop the cuts so people get care faster

SAULT STE. MARIE – NDP Leader Andrea Horwath will fill the 15 nursing vacancies at the Sault Area Hospital and train and hire hundreds more nurses, doctors and health care staff in the North so health care is there when people need it.

“You deserve health care when and where you need it — and we need more nurses to do that. When you’re in the ER with an inconsolable child, you want someone to take a look right away. When your mom is in the hospital, you want to know there’s a nurse checking on her day and night,” said Horwath.

“The good news is, we absolutely can help people get care faster, right here in the Sault and throughout the North. We can stop the cuts, give nurses the respect they deserve, and staff up so that nurses at the Sault Area Hospital and everywhere in the North have time to care for you and your family.”

Horwath and the NDP will add 30,000 nurses in Ontario with a strategy to recruit, retain and return nurses, alongside addressing the doctor and psychiatrist shortage in the North. For Sault Ste. Marie that means filling the gap of 20 doctors. Throughout the North, the NDP plans to recruit 40 psychiatrists and more than 300 doctors.

Horwath and the NDP will:

• Scrap Ford’s low-wage policy Bill 124 and increase health care workers’ wages.
• Increase hospital funding that matches inflation, population and the community’s needs.
• Give all workers 10 permanent paid sick days.
• Increase funding to the Nurse Graduate Guarantee program at Sault Area Hospital to provide more opportunities for nursing graduates to get practical experience.
• Expedite recognition of nursing credentials of 15,000 internationally trained nurses so they can get to work in their field faster. 
• Create new jobs for late-career and recently retired nurses in supervisory and mentorship roles.
• Implement a funded Return to Nursing program to bring back the over 4,000 nurses who have left the profession.
• Develop and implement a strategy to address violence against health care professionals. 
• Lead the way on pharmacare and immediately eliminate out-of-pocket costs for take-home cancer drugs to address the higher-than-average cancer-related deaths in Algoma compared to the rest of the province

The NDP is also committed to addressing the growing mental health and addictions crisis in the North. Horwath will work to open the residential withdrawal management centre quickly, and bring mental care under OHIP so people can access therapy and counselling in the community with their OHIP card, not a credit card.

Doug Ford is poised to cut $2.7 billion — and Northerners know cuts from the Wynne and Del Duca Liberals and Ford’s Conservatives, fall hardest on Northern communities.

“Conservative cuts won’t fix health care wait times in the Sault, and Ford has more cuts lined up,” said Horwath. “But I want people to know that, together, we can turn things around and fix what’s broken. Let’s take care of nurses so they can take care of our families.”

Background

• Horwath’s NDP will invest $623 million on nursing recruitment and retention initiatives over three years, starting with $198 million in year one.
• Algoma has an aging population and a greater population of Indigenous Peoples and seniors 65-years-old compared to the rest of the province.
• According to a 2018 Financial Accountability Office (FAO) report, since Doug Ford took office the PC government’s plans for health care spending did not keep up with the demands of a growing and aging population in the North.
• The FAO also reports that Ford’s spending projections in health care will result in $6.1 billion in cuts.
• Ford promised Sault Ste Marie a new 20-bed residential withdrawal management program at a satellite location for Sault Area Hospital in May 2021 and promised services would be up and running for the following spring. Saultites say they have not seen any progress.
• More than 7,300 RN positions were eliminated in Ontario from 2012 to 2021 either through layoffs, elimination of vacant positions or elimination of services or programs. 75 per cent of these positions were lost when the Liberals were government.

media@ontariondp.ca