Ontario NDP’s promises 350 northern doctors, Northern Command Centre

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Ontario’s NDP leader is promising to recruit 3,500 new doctors provincewide, expand Northern health care and create a Northern Command Centre to ensure residents have the access they need.   

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Marit Stiles stomped in Sault Ste. Marie Friday with local candidate Lisa Vezeau-Allen and Algoma-Manitoulin candidate David Timeriski.   

Stiles unveiled her family health-care guarantee that will see an Ontario NDP government fast-track solutions by the first 100 days in office by creating more family health teams, shorter specialist wait times and flexible care options.   

The plan will connect all Ontarians with team-based primary care providers, she promised.   

Over the longer term, Stiles said she will recruit and support 3,500 new doctors across the province over the next four years.   

Specific to Northern Ontario, she will ensure 350 new doctors are hired, including 200 new family physicians and 150 specialists. The proposed Northern Command Centre will be used to manage capacity across the North and rural areas and co-ordinate responses to help prevent ongoing issues like emergency room closures.  

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“It is time the people of the Sault and across the north have the respect and the care they deserve,” she said.   

Cutting red tape by adding more administrators will allow physicians to spend more time with patients, fast-track internationally trained doctors and increasing residency spots across Ontario round out the program.   

“We can’t trust Doug Ford or the Liberals to fix what they broke,” Stiles said. “Even with an MPP who sat in Ford’s cabinet, Sault Ste. Marie was ignored and abandoned.”  

Last year 10,000 Group Health Centre members were derostered due to a shortage of family practitioners, an issue that remains ongoing.   

Stiles said she has been fighting for residents, steelworkers who built the GHC, and the community at large.   

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The most recent statistics from the Ontario Medical Association show that there are 24 vacant physician positions in Sault Ste. Marie, six of which are family doctors.   

OMA says there are now 12,447 people in Sault Ste. Marie without a family doctor.   

“I’m here today to say we can fix this,” Stiles said. “An Ontario NDP government will connect every Ontarian with team based, primary care.”  

The program will cost $4 billion over four years to fill the physician gap.  

She said the major shift will make primary care easier and faster to get the care Ontarians need.   

“I’ll make the quickest, most effective changes from day one,” Stiles promised.   

Stiles said she knows there are candidates wanting a spot in medical school and residency programs, but their careers have been paused due to lack of space.   

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“That’s why we’re working with the OMA and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine to make sure we have a target that is realistic and possible,” she said. “We have to increase the number of spaces in medical schools and residencies and that needs to be done right here in Northern Ontario to keep people in Northern Ontario.”  

Stiles said she knows hospitals, including Sault Area Hospital, are cash-strapped and having difficulties staying in the black, which has resulted in reduced hirings of front-line health-care staff, including nurses.  

“We are spending more now and getting less than we ever have and part of that is because we are privatizing part of the system,” she said.   

Stiles said nurses and health-care providers are stressed and burned out and had to face a government that took them to court to suppress their wages.  “I see this in hospitals all across Northern Ontario,” she said. “We are hemorrhaging health care dollars into private nursing agencies. That costs more and it doesn’t help us at all. We need health care workers here who know what they’re doing, feel respected and feel supported.”  

Stiles said she knows, especially in border communities, that people are opting to travel into the U.S. for the care they need, when they need it.   

“New Democrats built this health-care system in Canada. It’s what made us and our strong values as Canadians,” she said.   

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