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Ontario Green Party leader talks rural health care in Chesley, Hanover
Posted: February 1, 2025
(January 31, 2025) By: Rob Gowan, Owen Sound Sun Times
Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said Friday in Chesley he is committed to investing in health care in rural Ontario.
Schreiner and Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound Green Party candidate Joel Loughead spoke to about 15 people outside the Chesley hospital, which has been representative of health-care challenges in rural Ontario in recent years.
“The Chesley hospital here has had more emergency department closures than pretty much any hospital in the entire province of Ontario, and we have heard from folks who live here how important it is to access health care here,” Schreiner said. “I am just reiterating the Ontario Green Party’s commitment to ensure that everyone in Ontario has access to a family doctor, that we will invest in rural health care to ensure hospitals like this one remain open.”
The Chesley hospital has been without overnight and weekend emergency department service on a continual basis since late 2022, with sporadic ER shutdowns and service interruptions going back years before then. South Bruce Grey Health Centre, which operates the hospital, blames staffing shortages.
Other SBGHC hospitals have been affected. The Durham hospital ER closed overnight and Walkerton also seeing disruptions in the past. In mid-2024, SBGHC moved its inpatient beds out of the Durham hospital and to its sites in Walkerton and Kincardine to stabilize operations due to staffing shortages.
Schreiner said his party would invest in doctors, nurses and other health-care workers to make sure staff is available.
“We have a commitment that everyone will have access to a family doctor, nurse practitioner, primary health-care provider within three years. We are going to make the investments to do that,” Schreiner said. “Secondly we are going to increase funding for our hospitals, so that they remain open, and especially invest in staffing.”
Schreiner said the Green Party has also committed to investing in long-term care, home and community care and mental health care to take pressure off hospitals.
He said the PC government has failed in health-care staff retention.
“So many doctors, nurses, health-care workers have retired early or left the profession because they feel disrespected, they are underpaid and overworked,” said Schreiner. “The unconstitutional Bill 124 has done so much damage to our health-care system by making it illegal for hospitals like this one to actually pay workers more even if they wanted to, because it would have been against the law.
“Thank goodness that has been declared unconstitutional, but the Ford government has done the damage and now we have to fix that damage by making the investments in health care.”
Schreiner mentioned the Ontario Place “mega spa” redevelopment, the idea of a highway tunnel under the 401 and decisions to remove bike lanes in Toronto as examples of Ford’s priorities instead of keeping hospitals open.
“Health care, education, housing – those are like the foundational responsibilities of a provincial government,” Schreiner said. “Doug Ford has abandoned them.”
The PCs did announce on Monday that they would commit $1.4 billion in new funding along with $400 million already committed to connect two million more people in Ontario with a primary care provider. The funding is to help the province’s Primary Care Action Team led by former federal health minister Dr. Jane Philpott implement a plan to create or expand 305 primary care teams in Ontario.
The government has said that since 2018, the province has added more than 15,000 new physicians to its health-care workforce, opened two new medical schools and increased the number of medical school seats.
The government has also said that since its first majority government in 2018, a record-breaking number of new health care professionals have joined the workforce, including almost 100,000 new nurses, with another 30,000 studying at colleges and universities in the province. It says it has added 6,500 new spaces in nursing programs over the last three years and is investing hundreds of millions of dollars more to meet health-care staffing needs.
Schreiner said the Ford government has had seven years to make the necessary investments and they have failed to do so.
“It is not fair for rural communities, it is not fair for the people who live here that they don’t have access to basic health care,” he said. “The Ontario Greens are going to fight for fairness, for communities like this to keep hospitals open and make sure they have access to good quality health care.”
Schreiner was also in Chesley, and later in the day in Hanover, to support the Green Party’s candidate in the riding. Loughead is making his first foray into provincial politics after being elected to Grey Highlands council in 2022.
Schreiner said the party has had a strong history in the riding in the past and he thinks Loughead is re-energizing that support.
“Joel Loughead is a fantastic candidate who will be your advocate at Queen’s Park, not Mike Schreiner’s advocate in the riding,” he said. “He can stand up, mobilize with the community and keep hospitals like this open.” Article content
Loughead said he was glad to have Schreiner in the riding supporting him just a few days into the election campaign. Ford called the snap election Tuesday. Ontarians will head to the polls on Feb. 27.
“It goes to show how much Mike cares about rural and small-town Ontario and Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound,” Loughead said. “He has been hugely supportive of my campaign and he has been hugely supportive of this riding as long as I have been in politics and longer.”
Loughead said health care is a most important issue in the riding and one that affects everyone .
“Who is going to move to and invest in small-town Ontario unless we have hospitals, family doctors and nurse practitioners?” said Loughead. “It doesn’t make any sense at all to move these to big city centres and invest in big city centres.”
Loughead said it is still early in the campaign, but so far it has been quiet with the election not really on people’s minds.
“Why are we having an election right now?” Loughead said “This is supposed to be 16 months from now, this is $200 million of taxpayers’ money being spent on this needless campaign.”
Brenda Scott was at Schreiner’s stop in Chesley along with other members of the Chesley Hospital Community Action Committee, a group of citizens who have been working to ensure the hospital remains open and serving the community.
Scott, who is also co-chair of the Grey Bruce Health Coalition, which is an affiliate of the non-partisan, non-profit Ontario Health Coalition which advocates for public health care, said they plan to make health care a top issue in the campaign.
“We plan to be really active through the whole campaign,” said Scott. “We are trying to set up some all-candidates meetings specifically about health care.”
Chesley resident Doug Walsh spoke to Schreiner about the importance of the Chesley hospital to the community. He credited the hospital with ensuring he received the care he needed quickly when he had a stroke in 2012.
Walsh, who is a United Senior Citizens of Ontario board member, said his organization works directly with upper levels of government to improve the health and tax benefits of the province’s seniors.
“When we held our rallies down in Queen’s Park, (Schreiner) was one of those who came and spoke to us,” said Walsh. “To see a party leader take an interest into what is happening in rural Ontario and rural hospitals is very nice to see and we welcome it and we will welcome all party leaders that come to speak to us.”
Walsh said he is hopeful that the health care concerns of rural Ontario are heard during the campaign.
At a campaign stop in Mississauga on Thursday, Liberal Party leader Bonnie Crombie noted the recent scene that unfolded in Walkerton, where hundreds lined up in the snow hoping to land a family doctor.
On Jan. 15, people lined up outside the Royal Canadian Legion in Walkerton hoping to get in on the 500 spots on the patient list of Dr. Mitchell Currie. There was a waiting list for 500 more.
Crombie called the situation “shameful,” with seniors with walkers and wheelchairs and young mothers with babies and children in strollers.
Walsh said the current government doesn’t seem to see what is happening in rural communities, but seeing the attention rural issues are getting from other parties gives him hope.
“It gives us a feeling that somebody out there recognizes the problem as well as we do,” Walsh said. “Whether they can do something about it, we can only hope.”
