No new hospital for Brampton, according to Ford’s latest budget
Published November 6, 2020 at 12:15 pm
While the provincial government recently announced they would be providing support to Brampton’s health care system, Premier Doug Ford’s latest budget has revealed otherwise.
On October 27, the provincial government announced that Brampton’s health care system would be receiving support amid the COVID-19 pandemic and revealed that William Osler Health System would be receiving up to 87 new patient beds to help with hospital capacity pressures and reduce wait times, which included 41 hospital beds at Brampton Civic Hospital.
Additionally, Ford recently made a statement regarding a new hospital in Brampton, which led to Mayor Patrick Brown’s “cautious optimism,” which was expressed to reporters at a conference on October 28.
“The Premier has now publicly stated he’s going to get a new hospital built. He wants to get the shovels in the ground. We are going to hold him to that commitment,” said Brown.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re going to see some activity in the very near future. I don’t think he would publicly make this commitment two times in the last, frankly, in less than a year at press conferences, unless he intended to follow through. If they don’t, I think that would look pretty bad on the provincial government.”
Today, (November 6), it was announced that Ford left Brampton out again in his latest budget, failing to provide the city with a new hospital as well as the expansion of Peel Memorial.
“While Brampton families are being hit hard by COVID-19 and hospitals are overwhelmed, Doug Ford is just telling Brampton: you’re on your own. No help is coming,” said NDP Deputy Leader Sara Singh in regard to the budget.
In an interview with Khaled Iwamura from inbrampton.com, NDP Leader, Andrea Horwath confirmed that there will be no new hospital for Brampton.
“No new hospital for Brampton. Certainly not, and in fact, no acknowledgement that our hospitals have been overburdened for many, many, years,” Horwath told Iwamura.
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“So basically, the funding that the government’s looking at is status quo funding. The hallway healthcare situation that we have, which was ground zero in Brampton, is really not being addressed by this budget.”
Steven Del Duca, leader of the Ontario Liberal Party also sat down with Iwamura to discuss the impacts of this budget on the City of Brampton.
“I’ve made a commitment for the need of another new hospital in Brampton,” said Del Duca. “It’s obvious that needs to be moving along and expedited.”
“For residents in Brampton, we need that support so there’s less hospital overcrowding,” he said. “I think that should happen as a priority.”
From incidents relating to “hallway health care” to Brampton’s declaration of a “health care emergency” back in January, to the now second wave of COVID-19 in Brampton, now, more than ever, does the city require support and additional funding.
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