Letter to NDP MPP Percy Hatfield, by John Holmes
Dear Mr. Hatfield:
As a lifelong, died in the wool NDP’er it saddens me to have to write this email and have held of doing so for quite some time, but I cannot sit by and watch as a select few along with you, and the NDP’s blessing is prepared to side with land developers and other get rich individuals at the taxpayers expense and place a hospital on the very fringes of Windsor on prime farm land.
The expressed concerns over the proposed location of the proposed new acute care hospital should be considered as only part of a larger public discussion that needs to take place about the demand for and location of future health care facilities. There are several major questions that need to be addressed.
Where are the studies that examine the costs and pros and cons of modernizing/expanding the two existing hospitals rather than building a new mega hospital?
Where is the detailed justification for a 60 acre site for a new hospital built on a flood plain on prime farm land, plus the new “bombshell” of rezoning of 500+ acres of prime farm land on the backs of the taxpayers, this with the given fact that new hospitals in large urban areas in Canada and the U.S. typically only require 10 to 20 acres?
Why didn't the site selection criteria include a regard for the importance of maintaining the viability of the City's central core as well as the cost of providing the necessary supporting infrastructure for a more remote site?
And then there's the fearmongering! Past and present elected officials have warned that Provincial funding will be lost if opposition to the new hospital as proposed by a group of unelected health bureaucrats continues. I prefer to think that the government of Kathleen Wynne has the integrity to make funding decisions in a more objective and less spiteful manner or is this the way the NDP conducts business, if so this is no longer my NDP or the NDP of the socially responsible hard working citizens of Windsor and Essex County.
We need a total re-think on this flawed and quite frankly arbitrary decision by a few unelected stakeholders Mr. Musyj and Mr. Cooke at the head, it is insulting to any democratic forward thinking individual how this process has been handled which will have long lasting ramifications for Windsor especially, and Essex County as a whole.
I have always felt and believed that the New Democratic Party was (is) a party that represented the “people” your position has changed that for me and many other NDP supporters, I am asking you along with your (our) party to reconsider support for the location of the acute care hospital, it is truly the right thing to do.
Thanking you in advance for your consideration on this matter.
Yours very truly,
As a lifelong, died in the wool NDP’er it saddens me to have to write this email and have held of doing so for quite some time, but I cannot sit by and watch as a select few along with you, and the NDP’s blessing is prepared to side with land developers and other get rich individuals at the taxpayers expense and place a hospital on the very fringes of Windsor on prime farm land.
The expressed concerns over the proposed location of the proposed new acute care hospital should be considered as only part of a larger public discussion that needs to take place about the demand for and location of future health care facilities. There are several major questions that need to be addressed.
Where are the studies that examine the costs and pros and cons of modernizing/expanding the two existing hospitals rather than building a new mega hospital?
Where is the detailed justification for a 60 acre site for a new hospital built on a flood plain on prime farm land, plus the new “bombshell” of rezoning of 500+ acres of prime farm land on the backs of the taxpayers, this with the given fact that new hospitals in large urban areas in Canada and the U.S. typically only require 10 to 20 acres?
Why didn't the site selection criteria include a regard for the importance of maintaining the viability of the City's central core as well as the cost of providing the necessary supporting infrastructure for a more remote site?
And then there's the fearmongering! Past and present elected officials have warned that Provincial funding will be lost if opposition to the new hospital as proposed by a group of unelected health bureaucrats continues. I prefer to think that the government of Kathleen Wynne has the integrity to make funding decisions in a more objective and less spiteful manner or is this the way the NDP conducts business, if so this is no longer my NDP or the NDP of the socially responsible hard working citizens of Windsor and Essex County.
We need a total re-think on this flawed and quite frankly arbitrary decision by a few unelected stakeholders Mr. Musyj and Mr. Cooke at the head, it is insulting to any democratic forward thinking individual how this process has been handled which will have long lasting ramifications for Windsor especially, and Essex County as a whole.
I have always felt and believed that the New Democratic Party was (is) a party that represented the “people” your position has changed that for me and many other NDP supporters, I am asking you along with your (our) party to reconsider support for the location of the acute care hospital, it is truly the right thing to do.
Thanking you in advance for your consideration on this matter.
Yours very truly,