Ray Spiteri wrote in Hudak 'won't give up' on ER in Fort Erie, (Niagara Falls Review, Apr.30, 2010):
"If elected premier in 2011, Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak says he would restore emergency room services in Fort Erie "if the community was still asking for it."
"I just fundamentally disagree with (Premier) Dalton McGuinty's decision to close down that ER," Hudak said Thursday during a stop in Niagara, including a speech to about 60 people on the front lawn of Douglas Memorial Hospital.
I will continue to fight to keep it open."
When asked if it's not too late - the Niagara Health System having downgraded the ER at Douglas Memorial Hospital to an urgent-care centre last year as part of its controversial system-wide restructuring plan - Hudak said: "I'm not going to give up."
Severe emergency and trauma cases in Fort Erie are now directed out of town to fully functioning emergency departments in Niagara Falls, Welland or St. Catharines.
Approved by the provincial Local Health Integration Network in early 2009, the NHS plan also calls for the maternity ward in Niagara Falls to be closed in favour of a centralized site -known as the centre of excellence -at the new St. Catharines Hospital in 2013.
Hudak wouldn't commit to reversing the maternity decision.
"I want to see us maintain our front-line health-care services - prioritize health-care dollars that will actually go to patients and that's why I've said that these LHINs, the regional health bureaucracies, are an abuse of tax dollars," Hudak said.
"We've seen some $200 million come out of front-line patient care to go into the LHINs. They've got a spanking brand new office in Grimsby. We've seen the number of staff making $100,000 a year double, while they're cutting services in our hospitals.
"I'd prioritize front-line care first." Hudak was critical of the government's recent decision to delay, for at least a year, a mandatory review of Ontario's 14 LHINs, a provincial agency created by the McGuinty Liberals in 2006 to oversee health-care funding and planning in communities across Ontario.
But he never directly answered whether the NHS, an amalgamated, regional hospital board created in 1999 by then Conservative premier Mike Harris, should also be reviewed, as has been requested by Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor.
"There's no doubt that we've seen more health bureaucracy from the McGuinty government," said Hudak. "Dalton McGuinty's turned the health budget into his own personal slush fund. We'd put it into front-line care."
Dr. John McAuley, regional chief of emergency medicine for the NHS, said the conversion of the ER to an urgent-care centre was done "to improve quality of care."
"This decision was based on what is considered to be the gold standard today in emergency service delivery, which includes on-site access to CT and 24-7 access to specialist physicians," McAuley said in an email to The Niagara Falls Review. "These services were not available at the Fort Erie site prior to the conversion. Future discussions about converting the (urgent-care centre) back to an ER would have to consider these requirements."
Craitor said he shares some of the same health-care concerns as Hudak. Craitor feels, however, that Hudak's recent criticisms has more to do with party politics.
"It's a little too late Tim," Craitor said. "He had his chance when Mr. Harris was premier to step up and say the NHS would create problems for Niagara-area hospitals. But he didn't. He stood there while Niagara residents were told the NHS would provide the best health care they'd ever receive."
Meanwhile, Craitor said Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin met with Craitor and Health Minister Deb Matthews in Toronto Thursday, where the three "discussed proposals to improve health care in Fort Erie." "
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WHAT exactly was the result of this "meeting" with Martin and Matthews - Craitor didn't say! (Probably the same kind of toxic hot-air which had been spewed when Liberal-groupthinkers Smitherman, Vance Badawey and Jim Bradley had their 'meetings to improve health care' several years ago... which directly led to Liberal Smitherman closing down Port Colborne's hospital emergency room! It's a fact: ask Badawey about all that.)
Take note of Craitor's smug response to Hudak's pledge - a pledge better than anything any McGuinty Liberal - including Craitor himself! - has bothered to make; and anything the NDP has yet to make!
A wildly-spinning Craitor full well knows - but can't bring himself to admit - that the NHS DID NOT create the LHIN's. Craitor refuses to admit that Craitor's own Liberals created the LHIN's. It was Craitor's Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty who gave the LHIN's millions of our tax dollars to build their swanky new offices and institutionalize their new monopolist bureaucracy.
Yet: Craitor is spinning it that somehow the NHS and Harris are to blame! WTF, Kimmy... really? [Seriously - this f*cker is Niagara's MPP?] Craitor had a chance to accept help for his constituents - yet instead, he chose to get all political about it!
Craitor blatantly ignores the fact that George Smitherman (the Liberal hack of a former health minister) ordered the NHS to cut their spending; which led to the Kitts 'HIP' report, which led to the two subsequent Niagara ER closings!!
Kim Craitor knows this, yet Craitor keeps on spewing his false meme, his disingenuous lefty-hack narrative, pretending that the NHS somehow, out of the blue, one day just decided to carry out these cuts all on their own - in a vacuum, without LIBERAL government approval!!
The truth is, that the NHS was told to make hospital cuts - BY CRAITOR'S OWN LIBERALS!!
Furthermore, this Liberal scumbag keeps on dredging up Harris - desperately trying to divert our attention from the bald truth that CRAITOR'S OWN LIBERAL GOVERNMENT ordered the NHS cuts!
And Craitor also wants us to forget another subsequent truth: that it was Craitor himself who just "stood there" while HIS OWN LIBERALS were closing ER's in Niagara, screwing him and his riding in the process.
Craitor wants us to forget that it was Craitor's OWN squawking about the NHS's governance model which led his own Liberal colleague Smitherman to force the HIP upon the NHS, thereby forcing the closure of the two Niagara emergency rooms!
In other words, the HIP's paternity can actually be traced back to Craitor - not even remotely to Harris!!
Liberal hacks Kim Craitor - along with George Smitherman - fathered the Niagara HIP.
We know (contrary to Craitor's despicable spin) that it was NOT Harris, and it was NOT the NHS, who had ordered the HIP health care cuts: it was Liberal MPP Craitor's own Liberal government! Craitor's own Liberal government ordered that cuts be made at the NHS [by forcing the NHS to come up with a 'HIP' - 'Hospital Improvement Plan']; and Craitor's own Liberals then forced the NHS to implement those cuts!!
Not one Liberal health minister (neither Smitherman, nor David Caplan, nor Deb Matthews) bothered to stop or to reverse the HIP plan!
Craitor propagates a preposterous fantasy by blaming others for his own Liberal government's health care incompetency!
The Smitherman-created LHIN bureaucracy (which is the Liberals' new provincial overseer of the NHS) ordered the NHS to find places to cut; and then the same Liberals ordered the hospital to make the cuts!
What part of the chain of command does Craitor not understand here??!
The NHS complied with what its Liberal political masters demanded.
There were three Liberal health ministers - first Smitherman, then David Caplan, and now Deb Matthews - who were doing McGuinty's dirty work - yet now this incompetent Liberal boob Kim Craitor squawks that it's "too late"?! What a dirtbag.
Both Caplan and Matthews had plenty of time to reconsider and to reverse the Smitherman-instigated Niagara HIP - but they didn't; meanwhile, loyal Liberal partisan hack Craitor 'just stood there' and didn't make a peep about that.
(We have to openly wonder: what the hell was this reporter Spiteri actually doing, while Craitor was spouting this horseshit? Spiteri didn't challenge any of it.)
Here's a question which Spiteri chose not to ask: Why isn't Craitor calling for a review of his own Liberal-government-created LHIN's?!
Craitor's party of Liberal liars have just cancelled (see here) a review of the LHIN's - a review which had been promised by none other than Premier Liar McGuinty!!
Apparently, the daily lies coming from his own Liberal party don't bother Craitor at all!!
Why doesn't Craitor call for a review of the utter failure of single-payer health care monopolism in Dalton McGuinty's Ontario?
What patients really need is choice - and not to be trapped and beholden to the whims of an ideological, single-payer-pushing, incompetent lying government and its pandering politicians - no matter what party they're from.
And, exactly what is "too late"? Is Craitor just repeating what his Liberal bosses have already told him?
Is it "too late" to fight for the Fort Erie ER, Kim - the same place which YOUR OWN Liberals closed?
Yet strangely (since 2003... seven years after Harris!) apparently it's never too late for Liberal Craitor to blame Harris - for what Liberal McGuinty did!
Craitor's feat of Liberal bullshitmanship is simply awe-inspiring in its audacity... simply precious... what sublime Liberal healthcare duplicity!
This greasy Grit phony, Craitor, didn't bother to quit his own party in protest; why, McGuinty's Liberals are so good that this clown Craitor is planning to run again!! Craitor's new slogan: "It's too late. I give up."
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"If elected premier in 2011, Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak says he would restore emergency room services in Fort Erie "if the community was still asking for it."
"I just fundamentally disagree with (Premier) Dalton McGuinty's decision to close down that ER," Hudak said Thursday during a stop in Niagara, including a speech to about 60 people on the front lawn of Douglas Memorial Hospital.
I will continue to fight to keep it open."
When asked if it's not too late - the Niagara Health System having downgraded the ER at Douglas Memorial Hospital to an urgent-care centre last year as part of its controversial system-wide restructuring plan - Hudak said: "I'm not going to give up."
Severe emergency and trauma cases in Fort Erie are now directed out of town to fully functioning emergency departments in Niagara Falls, Welland or St. Catharines.
Approved by the provincial Local Health Integration Network in early 2009, the NHS plan also calls for the maternity ward in Niagara Falls to be closed in favour of a centralized site -known as the centre of excellence -at the new St. Catharines Hospital in 2013.
Hudak wouldn't commit to reversing the maternity decision.
"I want to see us maintain our front-line health-care services - prioritize health-care dollars that will actually go to patients and that's why I've said that these LHINs, the regional health bureaucracies, are an abuse of tax dollars," Hudak said.
"We've seen some $200 million come out of front-line patient care to go into the LHINs. They've got a spanking brand new office in Grimsby. We've seen the number of staff making $100,000 a year double, while they're cutting services in our hospitals.
"I'd prioritize front-line care first." Hudak was critical of the government's recent decision to delay, for at least a year, a mandatory review of Ontario's 14 LHINs, a provincial agency created by the McGuinty Liberals in 2006 to oversee health-care funding and planning in communities across Ontario.
But he never directly answered whether the NHS, an amalgamated, regional hospital board created in 1999 by then Conservative premier Mike Harris, should also be reviewed, as has been requested by Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor.
"There's no doubt that we've seen more health bureaucracy from the McGuinty government," said Hudak. "Dalton McGuinty's turned the health budget into his own personal slush fund. We'd put it into front-line care."
Dr. John McAuley, regional chief of emergency medicine for the NHS, said the conversion of the ER to an urgent-care centre was done "to improve quality of care."
"This decision was based on what is considered to be the gold standard today in emergency service delivery, which includes on-site access to CT and 24-7 access to specialist physicians," McAuley said in an email to The Niagara Falls Review. "These services were not available at the Fort Erie site prior to the conversion. Future discussions about converting the (urgent-care centre) back to an ER would have to consider these requirements."
Craitor said he shares some of the same health-care concerns as Hudak. Craitor feels, however, that Hudak's recent criticisms has more to do with party politics.
"It's a little too late Tim," Craitor said. "He had his chance when Mr. Harris was premier to step up and say the NHS would create problems for Niagara-area hospitals. But he didn't. He stood there while Niagara residents were told the NHS would provide the best health care they'd ever receive."
Meanwhile, Craitor said Fort Erie Mayor Doug Martin met with Craitor and Health Minister Deb Matthews in Toronto Thursday, where the three "discussed proposals to improve health care in Fort Erie." "
*
WHAT exactly was the result of this "meeting" with Martin and Matthews - Craitor didn't say! (Probably the same kind of toxic hot-air which had been spewed when Liberal-groupthinkers Smitherman, Vance Badawey and Jim Bradley had their 'meetings to improve health care' several years ago... which directly led to Liberal Smitherman closing down Port Colborne's hospital emergency room! It's a fact: ask Badawey about all that.)
Take note of Craitor's smug response to Hudak's pledge - a pledge better than anything any McGuinty Liberal - including Craitor himself! - has bothered to make; and anything the NDP has yet to make!
A wildly-spinning Craitor full well knows - but can't bring himself to admit - that the NHS DID NOT create the LHIN's. Craitor refuses to admit that Craitor's own Liberals created the LHIN's. It was Craitor's Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty who gave the LHIN's millions of our tax dollars to build their swanky new offices and institutionalize their new monopolist bureaucracy.
Yet: Craitor is spinning it that somehow the NHS and Harris are to blame! WTF, Kimmy... really? [Seriously - this f*cker is Niagara's MPP?] Craitor had a chance to accept help for his constituents - yet instead, he chose to get all political about it!
Craitor blatantly ignores the fact that George Smitherman (the Liberal hack of a former health minister) ordered the NHS to cut their spending; which led to the Kitts 'HIP' report, which led to the two subsequent Niagara ER closings!!
Kim Craitor knows this, yet Craitor keeps on spewing his false meme, his disingenuous lefty-hack narrative, pretending that the NHS somehow, out of the blue, one day just decided to carry out these cuts all on their own - in a vacuum, without LIBERAL government approval!!
The truth is, that the NHS was told to make hospital cuts - BY CRAITOR'S OWN LIBERALS!!
Furthermore, this Liberal scumbag keeps on dredging up Harris - desperately trying to divert our attention from the bald truth that CRAITOR'S OWN LIBERAL GOVERNMENT ordered the NHS cuts!
And Craitor also wants us to forget another subsequent truth: that it was Craitor himself who just "stood there" while HIS OWN LIBERALS were closing ER's in Niagara, screwing him and his riding in the process.
Craitor wants us to forget that it was Craitor's OWN squawking about the NHS's governance model which led his own Liberal colleague Smitherman to force the HIP upon the NHS, thereby forcing the closure of the two Niagara emergency rooms!
In other words, the HIP's paternity can actually be traced back to Craitor - not even remotely to Harris!!
Liberal hacks Kim Craitor - along with George Smitherman - fathered the Niagara HIP.
We know (contrary to Craitor's despicable spin) that it was NOT Harris, and it was NOT the NHS, who had ordered the HIP health care cuts: it was Liberal MPP Craitor's own Liberal government! Craitor's own Liberal government ordered that cuts be made at the NHS [by forcing the NHS to come up with a 'HIP' - 'Hospital Improvement Plan']; and Craitor's own Liberals then forced the NHS to implement those cuts!!
Not one Liberal health minister (neither Smitherman, nor David Caplan, nor Deb Matthews) bothered to stop or to reverse the HIP plan!
Craitor propagates a preposterous fantasy by blaming others for his own Liberal government's health care incompetency!
The Smitherman-created LHIN bureaucracy (which is the Liberals' new provincial overseer of the NHS) ordered the NHS to find places to cut; and then the same Liberals ordered the hospital to make the cuts!
What part of the chain of command does Craitor not understand here??!
The NHS complied with what its Liberal political masters demanded.
There were three Liberal health ministers - first Smitherman, then David Caplan, and now Deb Matthews - who were doing McGuinty's dirty work - yet now this incompetent Liberal boob Kim Craitor squawks that it's "too late"?! What a dirtbag.
Both Caplan and Matthews had plenty of time to reconsider and to reverse the Smitherman-instigated Niagara HIP - but they didn't; meanwhile, loyal Liberal partisan hack Craitor 'just stood there' and didn't make a peep about that.
(We have to openly wonder: what the hell was this reporter Spiteri actually doing, while Craitor was spouting this horseshit? Spiteri didn't challenge any of it.)
Here's a question which Spiteri chose not to ask: Why isn't Craitor calling for a review of his own Liberal-government-created LHIN's?!
Craitor's party of Liberal liars have just cancelled (see here) a review of the LHIN's - a review which had been promised by none other than Premier Liar McGuinty!!
Apparently, the daily lies coming from his own Liberal party don't bother Craitor at all!!
Why doesn't Craitor call for a review of the utter failure of single-payer health care monopolism in Dalton McGuinty's Ontario?
What patients really need is choice - and not to be trapped and beholden to the whims of an ideological, single-payer-pushing, incompetent lying government and its pandering politicians - no matter what party they're from.
And, exactly what is "too late"? Is Craitor just repeating what his Liberal bosses have already told him?
Is it "too late" to fight for the Fort Erie ER, Kim - the same place which YOUR OWN Liberals closed?
Yet strangely (since 2003... seven years after Harris!) apparently it's never too late for Liberal Craitor to blame Harris - for what Liberal McGuinty did!
Craitor's feat of Liberal bullshitmanship is simply awe-inspiring in its audacity... simply precious... what sublime Liberal healthcare duplicity!
This greasy Grit phony, Craitor, didn't bother to quit his own party in protest; why, McGuinty's Liberals are so good that this clown Craitor is planning to run again!! Craitor's new slogan: "It's too late. I give up."
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