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Allan said similar provincewide campaigns have had significant impacts in the past, such as stopping health-care privatization plans. He said the most recent referendum the Ontario coalition organized pertained to allowing private clinics to conduct some hospital surgeries, "and we collected 100,000 votes on an issue that I don't think is quite as well known as the cuts to our hospitals." "This is a much bigger issue, and I think we can get an even bigger vote," Allan said. "We need to collect the votes, send them offto the legislature, we need to do it collectively right across the province and send a very loud message. I think we can send an extremely loud message in Port Colborne because of the circumstances that we're looking at here." The meeting was organized to discuss the provincial government's plans to close hospitals in Port Colborne, Welland and Fort Erie and replace them with a single new hospital in Niagara Falls.

Niagara Health System in an e-mail to The Tribune Tuesday said Angela Zangari, executive vice-president and project lead, and NHS president Suzanne Johnston "have been across all NHS sites over the past few weeks sharing the preferred designs for a new south hospital at Lyons Creek and Montrose roads and a new ambulatory care/urgent care and longterm care development in Welland at King and Third streets. "We believe it is important to share information with our staff, many of whom have been engaged in planning activity for the projects. "Dr. Johnston is committed to working with staffto discuss planning on a regular basis. In addition she will be continuing to meet with community leaders to plan forward." At Wednesday' night's coalition meeting, several residents shared concerns about access to health-care services, including Aubrey Foley. "I don't want to offend anyone from Welland, but I live in Port Colborne, my hospital is in Port Colborne and this is where it should remain," the 71-year-old said.

He said his city of 19,000 people has a "deplorable walk-in service for health care." "It is not acceptable. There is no reason for it to be the way it is today," he said, while noting Dunnville, a town of 11,000 people, has a "fully functional hospital with free parking." "If Dunnville can do that, we can do this very easily," Foley said. Former mayor and regional councillor Bob Saracino said he will do whatever he can to save the Welland hospital, but the community must also work together to keep the urgent care centre running in Port Colborne. "When it comes to health, we must be one," he said.

Saracino said health care "is not a privilege, but it is a fundamental right that we have under the Canada Health Act." While Hotte said she agrees Niagara Falls needs a new hospital, "it should not be at the expense of people in Port Colborne, Welland, Wainfleet, Pelham - over 94,000 people losing access to hospital services." "No way! We need to keep the hospitals open and access to services," Hotte said.

About 80 people attend Wednesday night's meeting at Guild Hall about the planned closure of Port Colborne hospital. • Photos By Allan Benner, Tribune Staff / Ontario Health Coalition board member Doug Allan speaks at a meeting to discuss efforts to save Port Colborne hospital.

oronto – From across Ontario representatives from dozens of communities facing devastating cuts to their community hospitals carted thousands of ballots to the Ontario Legislature. The votes – 93,840 of them as of last night – were cast in a province-wide voluntary “referendum” on Saturday May 28 and in lead-in advance polls held in the last two weeks. Since last night the coalition has received hundreds more votes, putting the total over 94,000. Hundreds of votes continue to be sent in to the coalition every few hours. To put the size of the vote in perspective, a very large petition presented to the Legislature might have 20,000 signatures at most.

Canada ranks lowest for number of hospital beds, with Mexico and Chile

Only Mexico and Chile have fewer hospital beds per resident in the developed world.

the impact of Liberal health-care policy in southern Ontario is "bad enough." The model Mehra said the province is using to centralize services into fewer communities is especially detrimental to the North. "That doesn't work for the south," she added. "It definitely, in no way, works for Northern Ontario." The state of Northern health care was brought to the floor of Queen's Park this week when, on Wednesday during Question Period, NDP health critic France Gélinas called on the government to stop continued cuts to care in the region. Funding based on volumes doesn't jibe with regional population distributions, Mehra said. "It just doesn't make any sense at all," she said, adding Northern Ontario has many common complaints with small, rural southern Ontario communities.

The coalition argues the entire Ontario system has received short shrift for years and is below the Canadian per capita average by about $350 per person. The provincial Liberals ended a four-year hospital base funding freeze in its latest budget, pledging to spend $60 million on hospital budgets, along with $75 million for palliative care and $130 million for cancer care. The Ontario Health Coalition - and Sault and Area Health Coalition - are not impressed. The local group argues on a regular bases, 22 admitted patients often wait in SAH's Emergency Department for inpatient beds and admitted patients stay in emergency for as long as five days. Patients are lined along hallways on the floors or put in areas that were designed to be stretcher storage areas or lounges with no call buttons, oxygen, out of the nurses' usual treatment areas. Late last month, the Ontario Health Coalition launched an Ontario-wide, unofficial referendum to raise awareness about what it contends is a system in critical condition. The unofficial referendum asks Ontarians if they're for or against the idea: "Ontario's government must stop the cuts to our community hospitals and restore services, funding and staffto meet our communities' needs for care." Ballot boxes will be distributed to businesses, workplaces and community

centres across the province before May 28, when votes will be tallied and presented to Premier Kathleen Wynne. "We have to make it so visible, and so impossible to ignore, the widespread public opposition to the cuts to local public hospitals so the province cannot continue to see all those cuts through," Mehra said. Similar public OHC-led lobbying helped limit and "significantly" change policy in a past Sault Area Hospital bid to usher in publicprivate partnerships (P3s), she added. "The referendum is a way to make that so visible, so impossible to ignore by the provincial government, that we actually stop the cuts," Mehra said. Other speakers Thursday included Sault coalition member Peter Deluca, who spoke of the many challenges his elderly parents have endured thanks to what he dubbed less-than-stellar hospital experiences. "We deserve the truth, we deserve answers, not just political talk," said Deluca, adding concerned citizens must band together in order to prompt change and halt healthcare cuts.

Sharon Richer, of Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE, said as a Health Sciences North employee, she's seen "first-hand" how cuts affect health care. "There won't be change if we don't make a ripple," she said. Laurie Lessard-Brown, president of Unifor Local 1359, told the meeting of how SAH's recent "wiping out" of the personal support worker classification is wreaking havoc on staff and patients, alike. Registered nurses and registered practical nurse must now pick up the slack, she added. "Morale is lowest I've ever seen," Lessard-Brown said. And, as recent as last Tuesday, Unifor learned of a further four full-time RPN positions being cut while supervisor positions were being added. "Cutting front-line workers is not acceptable," Lessard-Brown said. jougler@postmedia.com On Twitter: @JeffreyOugler © 2016 Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved.

Natalie Mehra, Ontario Health Coalition executive director, decries what she describes as the profound lack of funding being divvied out to Ontario hospitals during a town hall meeting Thursday evening, hosted by the Sault and Area Health Coalition at Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 25.

Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas is calling for improved health care funding to stem the cuts to jobs, beds and patient care at hospitals in Northern Ontario. "Health care in the North is the silent crisis of this Liberal government. Patients know it. And families feel it. But the premier refuses to listen," she said in the legislature Wednesday.

Such settlements clearly indicate that even its friends in the unions don't think the NDP will be back anytime soon, meaning that they will have to contend with the Wall government's P3/privatization agenda. Contracting out is already hammering laundry workers in SEIU-West, which also represents LPNs, janitorial, clerical and foodservices staff in hospitals.