The mayors of three rural communities are calling on the province for more support to address staffing shortages at rural hospitals.
Brockton Mayor and Bruce County Warden Chris Peabody, along with Arran-Elderslie Mayor Steve Hammell, and West Grey Mayor Kevin Eccles are joining forces to call on Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones, along with local MPPs to address staffing shortages, which have been leading to temporary emergency department closures.
Peabody says “The three mayors thought that we needed to be a united front. Things have been sporadically closed, so it just sort of snuck up on us. I thought that once summer break was over and summer vacations were over the problem would get better; instead, it’s gotten worse.”
He says that the pandemic putting additional stress on the health care system and contributing to staff burnout was one issue, but says “We have an aging workforce — we always do — that when the baby boomers retired there would be this sort of crisis, whether it was in nursing, or teaching and policing, and we’re definitely seeing it now.”
When it comes to reaching out the to provincial government for help, West Grey Mayor Kevin Eccles says that they haven’t gotten much of a response, saying “You know, there’s been some platitudes toward us, ‘Yeah, we’re looking into it,'” he says. “There has been absolutely nothing as to a concrete plan for how we can further address this issue, or not us, but how the province is going to.”
Over the past two years, mayors of local municipalities throughout Grey and Bruce Counties have been working to call on the province for support in finding staff and addressing things like housing issues that would prevent qualified professionals from moving to rural communities.
Eccles says that Grey County has been struggling.
“I think that the municipalities have a share into this and we can deliver it, but we need the tools and certainly the financial tools opened up to be put into place.”
As Warden for Bruce County, Peabody has been part of discussions when meeting with officials at conferences including the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) and the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA), but no concrete solutions have been found so far.
Peabody says that when he spoke to Jones last year, he didn’t get the answer he was hoping for.
“It was in front of her whole team, her whole staff, several of which were doctors. They asked me what was my solution. I’m a school teacher. I don’t know what the solution is. It’s their job to figure it out. They’re running the ministry.”