Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie made a passionate Valentine’s Day plea to voters in Minden Feb. 14, promising to reopen the community’s emergency room “as soon as possible” if elected as premier in next week’s provincial election.
Meeting with members of the ‘Minden Matters’ advocacy group at Tim Hortons last Friday, Crombie unpacked her $3 billion plan to rejuvenate public health care in Ontario.
“We’re going to invest to recruit, attract, train and retain new doctors, but also incentivize retiring doctors to stay a little longer. We want to bring more foreign-trained doctors through our mentorship programs, and double the spaces in our residency programs,” Crombie told The Highlander.
She said the Liberals will also focus on building capacity of family physicians, which she believes will take the strain off hospitals.
With the Ontario College of Family Physicians claiming last year there are up to 2.5 million people in the province without a family doctor, Crombie said addressing that shortfall would be her number one priority.
“We have a commitment to ensure everyone, within four years, has a family doctor,” she said. “We have thought this through. We have a plan, we know how we’re going to do it. We’re going to bring in 3,100 more doctors to the system,” she said.
Twenty-one months from the closure of the Minden ER, Crombie said she would get to work on reopening the facility as soon as Feb. 28 – the day after the election.
“We strongly believe the ER needs to reopen, as do other clinics across the province. You can’t attract new businesses if you don’t have health care in your community. People’s lives matter, and in emergency situations, sometimes seconds matter. The 25-minute drive to Haliburton is too far when your life is at stake.
“I would think [we’d reopen] as soon as possible. As soon as we can get the staff back in place and get it going,” Crombie said.
NDP leader Marit Stiles, who visited Minden in 2023 following the closure, has also committed to reopening the facility if elected.
Other priorities
With cost of living spiralling out of control, Crombie said she has a plan to cut costs for low-income earners and the middle class.
“We’re going to cut income taxes for the first $75,000 that you earn. We’re going to drop the income tax by 22 per cent, we’re going to take the HST off home heating and hydro,” Crombie said.
The former Mississauga mayor said the Liberals also want to axe development charges and other taxes levied on builders and passed to buyers, with the province stepping in to “make municipalities whole.” She said this will reduce the cost of building and lower house prices for the public.
She has also committed to permanently doubling benefits people get through the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). Approximately 500,000 people rely on the program as their primary income source, earning a maximum of $1,368 per month.
Crombie did not say how she planned to fund these enhancements, though panned Doug Ford’s plan to spend billions addressing gridlock in the GTA by building a commuter tunnel under Hwy. 401.
“I always ask people, is your life more affordable today than it was before Doug Ford? And of course, it isn’t… we’re going to bring back the basics, bring affordability back to the people.
“When talking about Canadian pride, Ontarian pride given the threat of the tariffs, one thing that makes me so proud is our health care plan… we are not in favour of more privatization. We believe in a strong, universally-funded plan that supports all of our residents equally,” she said.
