When Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in power in Ontario, they froze hospital budgets. Now, according to Timmins MPP Gilles Bisson, the Doug Ford Conservatives are doing the same thing.
New Democrat Bisson admits last Thursday’s provincial budget actually gives hospitals a one-percent increase, but their costs are actually increasing by about four percent.
“So we’re going to see more of the same that we’ve seen in our hospitals across Northern Ontario, where they’re going to be trying to manage with essentially the same budget they had last year, with increased costs,” Bisson opines. “This is quite frankly quite a cruel budget when it comes to services for people in and across Northern Ontario in the things they rely on.”
Bisson is also worried about exactly where the money for social services will come from… when the Tories implement their plan to cut funding by a billion dollars over four years.
“That means to say if you have a child with special needs, child with autism services, whatever it might be, we don’t know exactly where the cuts are going to be, but there’s going to be a billion dollars less which is, I think for families, quite concerning.”