In the weeks leading up to the Feb. 27 Ontario election, FlamboroughToday is asking local candidates Donna Skelly (PC), Joshua Bell (Liberal), Lilly Noble (NDP), Janet Errygers (Green) and Kristen Halfpenny (New Blue) to weigh in on a series of questions on key issues that matter to our readers.
Today, we want to know how each would work to ensure all Flamborough residents have access to a family doctor. Here's how they responded:
Lilly Noble, NDP
Family doctors are the gateway to care and ensure preventative screening.
Approximately 2.6 million Ontarians don’t have a family doctor. In total, Hamilton needs about 47 more family physicians — 22 of them in Glanbrook and seven in Flamborough.
The NDP realizes the importance of this issue and intend to address it using a number of initiatives:
- Creating additional family health teams, incorporating family doctors and nurse practitioners
- Recruiting and supporting 3,500 new doctors
- Cutting red tape so that current family doctors spend more time with patients and less on paperwork
- Clearing the path for 13,000 internationally-trained doctors to be credentialed
- Increasing the number of family medicine residency spots province-wide
Janet Errygers, Green
As of mid-2024, 2.5 million Ontarians are without a family doctor, projected to rise to 4 million by 2026. Ontario’s healthcare system is in crisis, why? Instead of strengthening public healthcare, the Ford government is diverting funds to privately-owned clinics and staffing agencies. When OHIP “outsources” surgeries to private clinics, or hires temporary nurses, our public system pays.
Research shows that when provinces outsource, wait times are longer and costs are higher, with hip and knee replacements costing taxpayers over double.
Moreover, temporary nurses cost up to $300 per hour. Ford has increased funding for private players while simultaneously decreasing funding to our public institutions. Why is Ontario’s purse paying for the profits of healthcare investors?
Multiple studies have uncovered that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been withheld from Ontario’s healthcare system. Doug Ford is stealing our money to fund an inefficient, U.S.-style system. Donna Skelly is part of a government that’s guilty of 1,200-plus ER closures and the loss of tens of thousands of nurses.
Ontario Greens will cancel Highway 413 and redirect $10 billion into healthcare, ensuring everyone has access to primary care within 4 years by recruiting 3,500 new doctors and expanding family health teams. We’ll fix staffing shortages by increasing wages for nurses, doctors, and PSWs. We’ll fully cover mental health and addiction care under OHIP. Expanding access to community health centres and nurse-practitioner-led clinics will provide non-urgent 24/7 care. Greens will fight for a stronger, publicly funded healthcare system.
Donna Skelly, PC
Our Ontario PC team has increased investments in our publicly funded healthcare system by 31 per cent since 2018 and we are leading the country with the highest number of people connected to a primary care provider, and the largest healthcare workforce.
Through our Primary Care Action Team (PCAT) led by Dr. Jane Philpott, the Ontario PCs are investing $1.8 billion to connect every person to a primary care provider by 2029.
This builds on the action we have taken to add 15,000 new doctors, launch the largest medical school system expansion in 15 years, and historic investments to start up more primary health care teams, including connecting over 14,000more people to primary care in the Hamilton region. Our PC team is also enhancing digital tools, and breaking down barriers for new family doctors through programs like Learn and Stay are supporting 1,360 students in family medicine to start practicing with a full roster, and the Practice Ready Ontario is adding 100 new family physicians in rural and northern communities.
Flamborough-Glanbrook deserves a strong government that will continue to make record investments to protect our economy, create jobs, and connect more people to the care they need. That is exactly what the Ontario PCs will deliver.
Joshua Bell, Liberal
Healthcare and access to a family is your right and not something that you should have to sacrifice. Everyone deserves access to care when they need it most but under this current PC government and Donna Skelly’s watch, 8,875 people in Flamborough-Glanbrook do not have access to the care that they deserve with a family doctor.
Instead of focusing on the issues in our healthcare system, the ER closures, long waitlists for care, or even trying to hire more nurses and doctors, Doug Ford and Donna Skelly are focused on spending that money on a tunnel. The cost of the tunnel: $60 billion. The cost to hire the amount of nurses and doctors we need: $1 billion.
My priority is on you and what we can do to ensure that we no longer have 8,875 people in our community without a family doctor and no care. It is time that our healthcare system gets the attention that it deserves.
If elected, I will work to ensure that we:
- Deliver team-based care with evening and weekend support, integrated home care for seniors, and accessible mental health resources for everyone;
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Educate, attract and retain thousands of new domestic and internationally trained family doctors;
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Improve the Ontario Health Team network, using it to massively expand access to family doctors practicing in teams close to your home within four years;
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Modernize family medicine, put an end to fax machines once and for all, and make appointments available on evenings and weekends;
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And that we stop penalizing you if you have to seek care at walk-in clinics.
Your health and access to care matters - and I am going to ensure that you get the care that you deserve.
Kristen Halfpenny, New Blue
A multitude of experienced nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals were fired and removed from their positions for refusing a medical treatment that never should have been mandatory.
We need to work to restore these professionals back to their positions with compensation for the prejudice they experienced for exercising and defending their right for bodily autonomy by refusing an experimental injection.
It seems the current Ontario leadership would rather spend the money trying to train new workers who have no experience and no expertise. We need experienced healthcare professionals back in their positions in the hospitals and clinics immediately, if we want any hope of clearing the backlog of patients waiting for family doctors, surgeries and scans.
Tens of thousands of people are dying every year across the country waiting for lifesaving diagnoses, treatments and surgeries.
