GUELPH — MPP for Guelph Mike Schreiner released the following statement in response to news that current wait times in Ontario’s emergency rooms are some of the longest on record — including during the COVID pandemic.
“Under this government, crisis has become the norm – and nowhere is this more obvious than in our crumbling healthcare system.
When you’re waiting in the emergency room, minutes and seconds matter. They can be the difference between life and death.
By refusing to step up with real, investment-backed solutions to the crisis in our hospitals, this government is failing every single Ontarian.
I call on the government to:
- Stop the privatization of healthcare and invest in our public healthcare system instead of putting private profits before patient care;
- Treat frontline healthcare workers with the respect they deserve with fair wages, benefits and better working conditions, and impose a cap on the use of private staffing agencies;
- And properly fund all healthcare sectors – primary care, long-term care, home and community care, mental healthcare and hospital care to bring our per-capita healthcare funding up to national standards
What our hospitals – and our workers – need is a government that sees the value in public healthcare. But this government treats healthcare as a commodity.”