NDP Leader Andrea Horwath pledges third hospital for Brampton
Published May 6, 2022 at 12:46 pm
Housing and healthcare will be on the NDP’s agenda for day three of the Ontario election campaign with stops in Brampton and Burlington.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath was in Brampton on Friday (May 6) to outline her party’s plan to expand local health care services by upgrading the Peel Memorial Centre and said an Ontario NDP government would get to work on a third hospital in Brampton.
The NDP says its expansion of Peel Memorial would include a 24-hour emergency department.
“People in Brampton have waited too long and they’ve been ripped off,” she said at the Friday announcement hosted outside Brampton Civic Hospital, the city’s only full-service hospital.
“We’re not going to rip off the people of Brampton, we’re going to get these things done because they deserve no less. They deserve to have their healthcare needs addressed.”
Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford also made several health-care focused stops in the city in the lead-up to the election call, including a promise to establish a new medical school in Brampton.
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Last month, the province committed to helping fund a new $365-million cancer treatment centre after a motion by Brampton-Centre NDP MPP Sara Singh passed with bipartisan support.
The new centre will be part of the Brampton Civic Hospital campus and is in addition to the Peel Memorial Urgent Care Centre expansion, which has already received a $1-billion tender from the Conservative government.
Horwath was in Burlington earlier in the day to announce a housing affordability plan, promising to kick start the building of 1.5 million homes, end exclusionary zoning and build 250,000 affordable non-market rentals if elected premier.
Friday’s announcement is the leader’s second stop in Peel Region this week. Horwath was in Mississauga on Tuesday and promised an NDP government would recognize the credentials of foreign-trained nurses and let them start working right away.
RELATED: NDP promise Mississauga, Brampton foreign-trained nurses quick access to jobs
Under the NDP plan, the credentials of 15,000 internationally accredited nurses that are in Ontario would be accelerated with quick job offers for up to 2,000 of the healthcare workers.
Back in January, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives announced the province was working with Ontario Health and the Colleges of Nurses of Ontario to deploy internationally trained healthcare workers and nursing students to help in the fight against COVID-19.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca was in Kitchener on Friday to unveil his party’s education platform, which included reinstate Grade 13 as an optional fifth year of high school, hire 10,000 more teachers and cap class sizes at 20 students for all grades.
Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford was in Bowmanville to promise all-day 15-minute GO service.
Ford kicked off his campaign in Brampton on Wednesday by doubling down on his commitment to build the controversial Highway 413.
All three leaders were also scheduled to speak with Ontario’s Big City Mayors Caucus on Friday.
With files from The Canadian Press
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