NDP continues fight for new Brampton hospital, expansion of Peel Memorial Centre

Official Opposition Leader Andrea Horwath said that Brampton families have suffered long enough from crowded emergency rooms and hallway medicine, and she wants funding in place for construction of a new hospital in Brampton, as well as expanded medical services at Peel Memorial.

The NDP will move a motion at Queen's Park for that funding to be guaranteed in the spring budget.

“Brampton families deserve so much better than the hallway medicine, crowded emergency rooms and painfully long waits they've been suffering through,” said Horwath. “There’s a better way forward. It starts with the immediate Phase 2 funding to expand Peel Memorial Centre, then building a new hospital for the growing Brampton community.

“The Liberals let health care grow into a crisis in Brampton – and it's going to take a major commitment to finally give families the health care they need and deserve.”

The Liberals and Kathleen Wynne froze and cut hospital funding – causing waits to get longer and hallway medicine cases to pile up. So far, Doug Ford has refused to take action on the problem – and his government has warned that hospitals need to prepare to do even more with even less.

In 2017-18, the Peel Memorial Urgent Care Centre only received funding for 6,250 visits despite seeing over 61,950 patients – leading to over 55,000 unfunded visits. This year, the centre expects the number of unfunded patient visits to hit 67,750.

Meanwhile, Brampton Civic Hospital was in Code Gridlock 114 days last year, where more patients were left waiting for admission than there were open beds available.

“You can’t fix decades of cuts to hospital funding with even deeper cuts” said Horwath. “It's time to invest in Brampton families, and the care they deserve. ”