Ontario NDP leader vows to improve health care
Horwath blames Liberals for not funding operation of existing beds in hospital
Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath called out the Liberal government Friday for inadequate funding of health care and vowed to establish both a separate ministry for mental health and addictions and a pharmacare system. Horwath spoke in Windsor outside Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, where she was joined by MPPs Taras Natyshak (Essex), Percy Hatfield ( Windsor-Tecumseh) and Lisa Gretzky (Windsor-West). The NDP leader said many beds that could be used for mental-health patients sit unused — including 89 at Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare — while hospitals deal with overcrowding and long wait times. She put the blame squarely on Premier Kathleen Wynne, saying the government has been “shortchanging ” hospitals for too long. “The beds exist,” Horwath said. “The government has been doing capital funding but the capital funding goes not very far if you don’t have the staffing in place, the operational dollars, to staff up those beds.” Hotel-Dieu Grace has not received operating funds to open the beds in its new geriatric transition unit that would handle patients with complex mental-health needs, including dementia. “It’s shocking when you think about the stress that our hospitals are under,” Horwath said. “Windsor families are struggling with a mental-health system that is in crisis and these beds could alleviate that pressure as well. But Kathleen Wynne is letting these beds remain closed.”
Gretzky said she and Natyshak toured Hotel-Dieu Grace’s new turn-key-ready unit recently. She estimated $6 million to $8 million in operational funding is needed. A second wing is under renovation. “The importance of having these beds open is that we’re finding people (with mental-health concerns) are going to (Windsor Regional Hospital) sitting in an emergency room waiting to be seen,” Gretzky said. “Often they ’re seen by a medical residency student and then sent home and then they go back (to the ER) at another time or they’re getting put in acute care beds.” Many seniors end up staying in acute care beds because long-term beds are unavailable. Horwath said more than 32,000 people are on wait lists across the province. “It’s shameful that after 15 years we still have such a shortage in long-term care beds,” she said, adding for those in long-term facilities, “We have a standard of care that is not meeting people’s expectations.”
She said the NDP has committed to a full public inquiry into longterm care and will take a find-and-fix approach.
“So as we identify the systemic problems … that leave not only our residents but our workers in longterm care vulnerable, we will fix them as we go along.”
As for the mental-health crisis, Horwath agreed strides have been made in destigmatizing mentalhealth issues but said it is unacceptable there are 12,000 children on wait lists for services. “The services simply aren’t there for people,” she said. “Ontario continues to have a patchwork of services that is not meeting people’s needs. That’s not an acceptable system by anybody’s standards.” Hatfield pointed out that for the past 15 years, the base funding for Maryvale, a mental-health treatment centre for youth, has not increased.
“The policy of this Liberal government is children and youth mental health is a discretionary service, not mandatory,” Hatfield said. “So they don’t get the money they need. They have to go to the community and raise funds.
“If you don’t get the young people early, and work on their problems early, they get compounded very quickly.”
Horwath vowed to establish a separate ministry for mental health and addiction services to deal with the crisis.
As well, she said Ontario is the only jurisdiction with a medicare system that does not have a companion pharmacare prescription drug system in place. “Everybody should be able to get their prescription drugs covered,” she said. “You should not be going to your doctor, getting a prescription, leaving that office and putting it in your purse or your pocket because you simply can’t afford to fill the prescription. Millions of people are doing that in Ontario today and it’s not acceptable.”
It’s shameful that after 15 years we still have such a shortage in long-term care beds.