While more government executives are found to be wheeling and dealing with scarce health-care dollars, patients and seniors in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound continue to wait for access to long-term care beds, home-care and surgeries, says local MPP Bill Walker.
Ontario’s air ambulance service, ORNGE, became the Liberal government’s latest spending scandal after it was revealed its executives were misusing public money for personal gain.
“The ORNGE fallout followed on the heels of another spending scandal that exposed ridiculous payouts for hospital CEOs and executives, sanctioned by the regional health agency, also known as LHINs. The LHIN bureaucracy itself continues to come under fire for costing Ontario taxpayers an extra $300 million a year in health-care dollars while not treating nor seeing a single patient. Ontario’s Public Accounts show the LHINs have spent millions of dollars on consultants and salaries,” said Walker in a press release.
“For McGuinty Liberals, who are still licking their wounds from the 2009 spending scandal at eHealth involving $1-billion, it’s a clear indication they continue to remain unfit to manage scarce public dollars,” says Walker.
“Every dollar they squander is a dollar diverted from front-line care for our patients, for MRI exams, for new nurse practitioners and for long-term care,” Walker says. “In our region, and all across Ontario wait lists have grown, leaving more seniors in need of long-term care at home, and thousands more taking up hospital beds with nowhere to go.”
Presently, 1,500 seniors in south-western Ontario and 24,000 province-wide are waiting for a bed, there is a severe shortage of home-care support and over one million Ontarians are still without a doctor, says Walker.
“The problem with having a government plagued by eight years of mismanagement is that it eventually runs out of money, and the people suffer,” he says. "Mr. McGuinty and his government are responsible for our province having a $16 billion dollar deficit. We’re at a tipping point and need the government to make decisions that are going to provide taxpayers with value for their money. I’ll watch the spring budget with great expectation to see if Mr. McGuinty and his Liberal colleagues have the resolve to make the decisions to get our province back on track, and will hold their feet to the fire."
