Andrea Horwath hosts health-care town hall in Kingston

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath toured four cities Sunday in her campaign for June 7 provincial election.

Among the stops was Kingston, where she hosted a health-care town hall at the Tett Centre where she spoke to the community about their concerns with health-care services in the city.

“Health-care challenges that families are having in order to get what they need from our health-care system doesn’t have to be this way,” Horwath said.

Horwath pointed out that concerns with Kingston General Hospital are on the rise.

“Cuts to health care that have left the Kingston hospital in a situation where they are having to operate beds that they are not funded for, they’ve been operating over a 100 per cent capacity for some time now and beds that are not funded means that people are stuck in places where they shouldn’t be receiving health care. Weather that’s a hallway, or that’s a converted office or a lounge.”

If elected, Horwath plans to invest $19 billion over a period of 10 years towards health care in Ontario. As part of that funding commitment, Horwath says an NDP government would expand several hospitals, open 2,000 new hospital beds, make way for 2,600 new jobs in the mental health sector and invest in 30,000 new supportive housing units for mental health and people living with addictions.

Among the questions members of the audience asked were how the NDP plans to deal with long-term care for seniors and how they plan to make sure people live with safety and dignity.

“There are serious systemic problems in long-term care,” Horwath said. “We not only have a shortage in long-term care but there are 32,000 people on the waiting list to get into long-term care.”

Horwath says if she wins the election, the NDP will add 15,000 long-term care beds over the next five years.

Horwath continued her four-city tour with a stop in Napanee.