Wayne Gates met with crowd for health care in Fort Erie, budget consultations focused on school nutrition, tourism
It was a busy last week for Niagara Falls MPP, between health care and provincial pre-budget meetings.
A few hundred people showing up in Fort Erie demanding around the clock service be returned to Douglas Memorial.
Wayne Gates says the province's Bill 124 must be stopped, which caps nurses wages.
In giving praise to nurses, he repeated a story of one man telling the crowd he almost died of a heart attack at the urgent care centre. "The nurses in that facility worked on him, brought him back to life, sent him over to Hamilton, and he was able to speak tonight. He said these are examples that if I had to go to the urgent care centre and it wasn't open, I would've died."
He says the Ford government is privatizing health care, with private clinics paying nurses much more than the public system.
Provincial pre-budget consultations also heard funding requests for the Shaw Festival, school nutrition programs, and homelessness and mental health problems in Niagara.
Gates says they also heard about tourism, especially after the pandemic. "We lost 40,000 jobs overnight, when COVID was here. We still haven't fully recovered from COVID in the tourist sector, where a lot of jobs are provided... also need to open up more avenues to entice and encourage more international visitors."
He says very compelling presentations were made by various groups appealing for help, including for those needing help against ALS.
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