Tonight, medical care will once again be the first mind for Walkerton residents, Ontario.
With eight days for the provincial elections and only four weeks after hundreds of people aligned in the cold to have the opportunity to assure a family doctor, the candidates will meet for a debate with all the health -focused candidates in health in Victoria Jubilee Hall.
Although the candidates of the green, NDP and Liberal parties have said that they will be there, the candidate for the Huron-Bruce PC, Lisa Thompson, told the organizers that she will not attend due to other campaign obligations.
Brenda Scott is moderating the meeting and said that the absence of PC representative at Wednesday and others in the region is beginning to be noticed by voters in a part of Ontario, where access to medical care is a problem of First category.
“People in the city are very upset,” Scott said. “Many people in these rural communities have had the dirty extreme of the stick and want to know about people in the government. They want to hear what they are going to do about it.”
In addition to organizing the debate, Scott is a member of the Community Action Committee of the Chesley Hospital, a group that fights the beds of that small hospital.
CBC The news communicated with the Thompson office to comment. In an email, they said “will be in contact for a greater commitment.”
Vickers omitted the meeting of medical care candidates
A similar story was developed last week in the adjacent driving of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound.
On February 10, the PC candidate, Paul Vickers, also lost a meeting of the candidates organized by the Gray-Bruce Health coalition at the Durham Community Center.
Jana White helped organize Durham’s meeting and presides over a committee that fights to restore beds and hours of the emergency room at the City Hospital. The past fall, the South Bruce Gray Health Center announced that it would move 10 beds for hospitalized patients from Durham Hospital to Hospitals in Walkerton and Kincardine.
White told CBC News that he expected Vickers to present himself to answer questions about the future of medical care in the area. Vickers told him that he was too busy to attend. White estimates appeared about 200 people.
“The whole meeting was about medical care,” White said. “Many questions were presented and were answered by the three candidates, except the PCs, which is unfortunate because it could argue that it is the party that put us in this situation, so I would have loved to know about him. [Vickers]”
Both White and Scott say that voters in the vast rural area, in large rural part, between the coast of North Lake Huron and Owen Sound are worried about access to medical care.
The hours of the emergency room at the Durham hospital are currently limited to 7 am to 5 pm after that, patients are sent to hospitals in Owen Sound, Kincardine or Goderich.
Those are units that can usually take an hour or more when roads are not snow -covered, which has been the case in recent weeks. White said it is an unacceptable situation in a community that houses a population that ages and in many residences of older people and care homes.
“If I had an emergency after hours, how are you arriving at the next hospital?” White said. “Are you going to pay for a taxi?”
Nick McGregor is postulated for the NDP in Huron-Bruce. Last week he issued press releases on the closures of the emergency participation in Clinton and Wingham due to personnel scarcity.
McGregor believes that PCs are not attending the meetings of all candidates because they do not want to defend their medical care history in an environment in which other parties will challenge them to voters and the media.
He was at a meeting of all the candidates organized by a local radio station on Monday night that moved online due to the strong snowfall of last weekend. McGregor said Thompson also did not attend that meeting.
“There is a pattern of not appearing in the rural area of Ontario, and treating the rural Ontario as if it were a fact, as if they were just to obtain those votes regardless of what,” said McGregor. “They do not appear to the debates of the candidates, especially in medical care … shows that they really do not want to talk about it.”
Both currents have been PC strengths for years. Thompson knocked out the liberals in 2011 and has had the Huron-Bruce seat for 14 years. Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has voted PC since 1999.
