In this year-end review view with Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, we ask him about the city’s growing problem of healthcare access. The city’s population is estimated to grow significantly in the near future which will put added pressure on our frontline healthcare workers and hospital infrastructure.
The Mayor says that city council has made clear requests to the provincial government to get the same per capita funding as the rest of the province. He says Brampton is getting $1,000 less per resident and half of the hospital beds per capita compared to the provincial average.
The request to the province is to see a 3rd hospital designated and the immediate announcement for phase 2 of Peel Memorial. The Mayor says “there are areas of the hospital that aren’t at full utilization” and
” we could put hospital beds in right now.” He says the city needs to have our proper funding to hire the nurses and physicians in the existing healthcare facilities.
While the Mayor and Premier Doug Ford have yet to have a face to face meeting, a visit with Health Minister Christine Elliott is in the works to happen by the end of the year. The Mayor says that “the Health Minister has responded to my petition and has agreed to do a tour of Brampton Civic before the end of the year. I am going to be going with Christine Elliot showing her our Emergency Department, showing her some of the areas where there is real gridlock… I think she’ll be sympathetic to the crisis we are facing and it is why I wanted her to see it first hand.”
Mayor Brown did not hesitate to put the provincial government on alert saying “if they don’t fix this…if they don’t fix healthcare in Brampton, if they don’t fix hallway medicine in Brampton, well the government will have failed miserably on their commitments.” He added that “they haven’t done anything in the first year… they know the clock is ticking and we’re watching, and we’re not going to be quiet.”
