To: The Honourable Rod Phillips Minister of Finance c/o Budget Secretariat Frost Building North, 3rd Floor 95 Grosvenor Street Toronto, ON M7A 1Z1 Email: submissions@ontario.ca

Cc: Stan Cho - Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Finance Rick Nicholls – MPP (Chatham-Kent—Leamington)

From: Karl Straky Sr Citizens for Healthcare, Windsor-Essex

Re: Fall 2020 Ontario Budget Consultation "Share your ideas" Windsor-Essex Hospital Systems Plan - Stages 2 & 3 Funding

The Hon. Rod Phillips

Thank you for the opportunity given us to participate in the upcoming 2020 Ontario Consultation process and to share with you our concerns and needs for immediate funding action for our new Windsor-Essex Hospital Systems plan.

The dreadful effect of the Covid19 Pandemic has further highlighted the significant physical limitations of our very outdated healthcare system, and further emphasizes the immediate need for action to get our new Windsor-Essex Hospitals system built.

Planning for our new W/E Hospitals Systems plan was started in 2012 by the previous government and in late 2017 the plan was approved for Stage 2 funding with RFQ’s to be filed in 2021.

Your new government was elected to power in June 2018, and our project was put on hold pending your government’s action. In the latest September 2020 - P3 Market Update report our project is now listed with an RFQ date of more than 5 years which now delays our project for a minimum of 6 years with no new hospital being completed before 2031.

That would be some 19 years from when the hospital plan was started and based on past records, most major hospital systems similar to our project would be completed within 15 years.

This is a devastating forecast for our most vulnerable citizen’s in need of better healthcare.

The completion of Stage’s 2 & 3 are critical for moving our project forward and to be completed in a more reasonable time frame and before 2028.

We are hereby requesting the following funding considerations, for Stages 2 & 3 as follows: