The clock ticks down on the planned June 1 closing of the emergency ward at the hospital in Minden, with little hope in sight for a policy reversal. It is a hospital that services thousands of residents from Kawartha Lakes every year, and so will most certainly affect residents here.

But have the provincial government and the Haliburton Highlands Health Services (HHHS) failed to ensure that, if nothing else, their decisions would do no harm to those they serve?

Who is responsible for this monstrous health policy gaffe? Unfortunately, there is lots of blame to go round.

Premier Doug Ford

Health care is largely a provincial responsibility and funding health care and ensuring its facilities are well staffed is solely the purview of his government and Minister of Health Sylvia Jones, who Ford chose to oversee this multi-billion-dollar portfolio.

Recent reports from government watchdogs at Queen’s Park point out that the Ford funding plan for health care over the next six years short changes the system over $20 billion. Ford has also chosen this time to pass draconian labour legislation that imposes a series of one per cent pay raises on health care workers of all kinds when neighbouring provinces like British Columbia are offering their nurses a 13 per cent pay raise over the next three years.

Ford, who is also strangling post-secondary facilities for funding, shrugs his shoulders and has no answers about health care worker shortages when, at minimum, the province should be opening at least one more medical school and another two nursing schools. Thousands of outstanding young medical school candidates are forced to leave Ontario to train abroad because the number of seats at Ontario medical schools has remained stagnant, even after the lessons learned from COVID-19. Once they have qualified where they are studying, many choose not to come home and those much-needed doctors spend their working careers in England or Australia, helping their citizens instead of ours.

Ford also likes to wring his hands along with the health minister saying they had nothing to do with the closing in Minden, naming and shaming the HHHS. Ford and Jones suggest that this closure is completely on HHHS while in reality, they are only fish trying to survive in the ocean created by the provincial Tories.

It is clear to most that the premier and his backers want private health care. Perhaps the privatization call will come first from communities like Minden which has had important aspects of its public health care ripped way from them while the premier’s summertime hospital in Muskoka is getting millions in additional funding.

Provincial MPP Laurie Scott

It has been hard to watch the pitiful performance of the local member over the last six weeks as she has played “duck and cover” while thousands of people in her riding, many died-in-the-wool multigenerational Conservative voters, have pleaded with Laurie to attend their meetings, speak at their rallies, deliver their petitions to Queen’s Park and speak out against this closing.

The Scott political dynasty in Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton has long been built on the ability of father Bill, and then daughter Laurie, to deliver federal and provincial largesse in the form of better roads, good schools and world class health care to the people of Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock.

It appears that our current MPP, Scott, has utterly failed to represent her constituents on this issue. Apparently 24,000 signatures on petitions can be ignored if you don’t want to earn the wrath of the premier. I am baffled at what Scott thinks she has to lose by opposing the Minden closure, as her federal Conservative counterpart Jamie Schmale has loudly and consistently done, even entering his opposition to this closure into the parliamentary Hansard. Scott has already been demoted from cabinet and exiled to the parliamentary back benches with all the other followers of candidates who opposed the premier in his rise to party leadership. I fail to see how her opposition to this wildly unpopular closing could lessen her standing in the eyes of the premier. That boat has already sailed.

HHHS

In my seven years of covering municipal politics right across the riding I have never seen something as important as a hospital closing botched as badly as this has been by the CEO Carolyn Plummer and her seemingly clueless volunteer board.

From Day One they have made error after error, starting with their rollout of the closing, their flawed rationale, their failure to meet with community groups who might be affected by the closing and their constantly changing message.

I am not a healthcare expert, HHHS, but riddle me this: why are you closing the busier hospital which is fully staffed through the summer season, doing it with indecent haste and refusing to meet or discuss your decisions in all but the most controlled situations?

We have been cottagers in Haliburton since 1947. Its communities are small and folks know folks. I can’t imagine what it is going to be like for all these HHHS members who have to face their neighbours at social events, BBQs, church picnics or standing in line at the grocery store or LCBO. I hope for their sake they live on the Haliburton side of the county because the folks in and around Minden are furious, and that is not going to go away any time soon.

The only way Plummer can save this abomination is replacing the emergency unit with some kind of fully staffed walk-in clinic sooner than later to attend to the basic health care needs of Minden Hills-area residents. Besides losing their emergency department they just lost one of their long-time family doctors who announced their retirement earlier this month.

Wasn’t Broken

My father used to always tell us that if something isn’t broken it doesn’t need to be fixed. The hospital in Minden certainly wasn’t broken, seeing over 12,000 patients last year with waiting times that seldom exceeded four hours.

I cannot imagine what both local and summer people will begin experiencing starting this weekend with everyone now being funneled into the wholly insufficient little hospital in Haliburton.

I cannot imagine what will happen to wait times at Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay when 4,400 patients who used Minden last year are added to their roster because northern residents of Kawartha Lakes are forced by this closing to come south.

I cannot imagine how much worse this will get if Bancroft Hospital is forced to limit their hours or close their emergency ward because the provincial government has so badly handled the healthcare portfolio.

Potential tragedies can be easily avoided with a provincial government that cares, a local MPP who stands up for her citizens and a health service that actually consults with local residents before deciding to close a vitally needed healthcare centre.