SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
April 10, 2024 09:00AM

Well, first, what I will tell the member is, you’re darned right. Elliot Lake and actually Team Ontario—there are so many individuals that pool together to support Elliot Lake with Hockeyville, and I tell you, it was great for the community to win the $250,000, but what you can’t put a price tag on is the sense of community that came out of that initiative for Elliot Lake and the fact that it brought people together—not just Elliot Lake, but the region, like, from Gore Bay all the way up to Wawa. I got calls from people in Windsor who said, “Listen, I’m voting for you.” Heck, I even got a call from a member of the opposition saying, “We’re voting for you, Mike. We’re going to get this done.” Again, I want to thank you for supporting that initiative.

You’re right, there are some things that are a reannouncement. What I made in my initial comments is, yes, there are going to be funds for the swing bridge on Manitoulin Island. Yes, there’s $50.5 million that the government permitted me to do the official announcement about in Blind River, which I was surprised there was no official government representative there at the announcement. But it just goes to show you that—

I don’t know how much clearer I can put this to this government, but northern hospitals, they are in crisis, and this government needs to take action in order to assist them.

At the last hour, once again, we got this government to extend the locum incentive program. But by the time you made that announcement for the hospitals, those hospitals, who were looking forward to hopefully securing that funding, were trying to secure doctors, but those doctors that would have been available to the communities have now moved on, are now scheduled for other communities. So they’re scrambling, once again, to make sure that their hospitals and their emergency departments stay open over the course of the summer.

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