Essex. The only current delay on proceeding with planning is the necessary $3 million from the Province of Ontario.

Premier says he'll be '800-pound gorilla' fighting for new Windsor hospital Brian Cross - Windsor Star - Publishing date - Aug 14, 2020 •

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/premier-says-hell-be-800-pound-gorilla-fighting-for-new- windsor-hospital/wcm/5d90d658-8d75-416f-9864-5916dd9d40ec/

- Meeting with the region’s mayors has spurred Ontario’s premier to emphatically declare that a new $2-billion hospital for Windsor-Essex is his “No. 1 priority.”

- At the Erie Street’s Nico Taverna attended by every local mayor. Ford said he listened to them all and every one said the same thing that the new acute care hospital— still in the planning stages after eight years— is desperately needed.

- “Since it’s their No. 1 priority, my No. 1 priority now is to give proper health care to Windsor-Essex, the entire region,” Ford said. “I’m going to battle for them.”

- Every local mayor, including Chatham-Kent Mayor Darrin Canniff, talked about the importance of the hospital project moving to the next step of the approval process,

- Dilkens said “We have one of the oldest hospitals in all of Ontario; we have rooms where there are five patients and no bathroom in a room. And when you have a pandemic and you’re trying to isolate people, you don’t have the majority of rooms that are individual rooms,” he said, suggesting that the aging hospitals made it more difficult to stop the spread of the virus.

- An hour later, Ford told reporters “it’s not fair” that people in Windsor must attend century-old hospitals. “They’re in desperate, desperate need of this,” he said of the new hospital.

- “Message to the finance minister, president of treasury, minister of health: I’m coming. I just have to support them, folks, simple as that.”

Thank you once again for the opportunity to participate in the 2020 Consultation Process and trust you will find our concerns and needs to further invest in frontline health care and protecting families to remain a priority for our Windsor Essex region and to be included in the next phase of Ontario’s Action Plan.

Sincerely, On behalf of “CITIZENS for HEALTHCARE”

Karl P. Straky Sr. karlstraky@sympatico.ca 1-519-966-2073