NDP leader Andrea Horwath promises third hospital for Brampton

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath said she will build a third hospital in Brampton if her party forms the next provincial government.

Speaking to a Brampton audience today, Horwath said a third Brampton hospital will be part of her overall “fix” of healthcare in Ontario that also includes more training, increasing staff and providing universal mental health care.

The NDP plan calls for taking Brampton from one hospital to three by making Peel Memorial a full hospital with a 24-hour emergency room and “building the brand new hospital Brampton desperately needs.”

She reiterated that Ontario’s healthcare system is “broken” and only her party has the plan to make it right.

“When your mom is in the hospital, you want her to have privacy and a nurse call bell — not a gurney in a brightly lit hallway,” said Horwath. “When your little one is sick, you want them to be admitted right away — not spend hours or days waiting for a bed to open up.”

Horwath said she would end “hallway medicine” in Ontario and “fix what’s broken” to make sure healthcare is there when people need it.

The NDP’s plan includes:

• Training and hiring 30,000 nurses, 10,000 personal support workers and more doctors and other frontline health care heroes to end long waits for care. One part of the plan to recruit, retain and return health care workers is repealing Doug Ford’s low-wage policy, Bill 124.
• Increasing hospital budgets to exceed health care inflation, population growth and the unique needs of the community around it so hospitals grow with the community around them.
• Expanding operating room hours over evenings and weekends so people don’t wait in pain for surgery.
• Helping seniors live at home longer by overhauling home care.
• Launching universal mental health care so anyone can get counselling or therapy in the community, instead of ending up in the hospital in crisis.
• Recognizing the credentials of 15,000 internationally-trained nurses.
• Building and expanding much-needed hospitals in places such as Brampton.

“Doug Ford cut healthcare, and he’ll cut even deeper if we give him the chance. And the Liberals with Steven Del Duca in cabinet froze hospital budgets and fired 1,600 nurses. We can’t keep going like this, and we don’t have to,” said Horwath. “Together we can fix health care and end hallway medicine.”