May 30th, 2022
NDP will invest in Sudbury’s hospital, staff and stop Ford’s cuts
SUDBURY – The NDP will stop Doug Ford’s planned cuts of $2.7 billion and invest in Health Sciences North and the staff needed to provide care for families in Sudbury, Nickel Belt and across the Northeast, said the NDP’s Jamie West (Sudbury) and France Gélinas (Nickel Belt) during a press conference outside Sudbury’s hospital on Monday.
“Families in Sudbury cannot afford any more cuts to their hospital,” said West. “The good people of Sudbury and Copper Cliff already face long wait times in the emergency room and our hospital is synonymous with ‘hallway medicine’. New Democrats will finally end the hallway medicine left after 15 years of Liberal government and never fixed under the Ford Conservatives. We will stop Doug Ford’s billions in planned cuts that will devastate our hospitals. New Democrats will invest in Health Sciences North, in more nurses, and more doctors and more front line staff to provide more care.”
“Our top priority is making sure families get health care when they need it,” said Gélinas. “We will ensure that Health Sciences North receives the funding it needs to expand its facilities to provide more care to meet the needs of people in Sudbury and the region. We will support front line health care workers by repealing Doug Ford’s demoralizing low wage bill 124. We will respect every health care worker, so they can return to good jobs that where they are no long overworked and underpaid.”
To support Sudbury’s Health Sciences North provide the care people need, the NDP will:
- Immediately repeal Doug Ford’s low-wage Bill 124 and recruit, retain and return health care workers.
- Provide Health Sciences North with the $5 million it requested to start the first phase of its expansion.
- Increase hospital budgets to exceed health care inflation, population growth and meet the unique needs of the community around it.
- Immediately hire and recruit 300 doctors in Northern Ontario including 100 specialists and 40 mental health practitioners.
- Create a specific strategy to recruit and retain nurses in Northern Ontario, including opportunities for mentorship to ensure that nurses who work or have worked in Northern communities can provide support and training to nurses newly arriving in Northern Ontario.
- Expand operating room hours over evenings and weekends so people don’t wait in pain for surgery.
- Help seniors live at home longer by overhauling home care.
- Launch Universal Mental Health Care so anyone can get counselling or therapy in the community, instead of ending up in the hospital in crisis.
- Recognize the credentials of 15,000 internationally-trained nurses.
- Work with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to expedite the process for international medical graduates to obtain their license to work in Northern Ontario.
- Expand access to midwifery care including in Francophone, rural and Indigenous communities and return a midwifery program to Sudbury to support Indigenous and Francophone midwives and families.
- Ensure 24/7 mental health crisis centre is built in Sudbury.
“We cannot allow Doug Ford to cut billions from our health care system,” said West. “ We cannot go back to the Liberals under Steven Del Duca who was in cabinet when they froze hospital budgets and fired 1,600 nurses. We don’t have to keep going like this. Together we can fix health care and end hallway medicine at Health Sciences North.”
