Opposition party candidates toured The Scarborough Hospital’s General campus surgical suites last week, coming away with the impression local healthcare needs are not being met there.
In interviews, four candidates spoke about the operating rooms, built in 1957 and oldest in the province, which have been slated for a renovation project since 2009.
Staff have to do extra work to maintain safety in the suites, which have "holes in the floor, tiles missing on the walls," and are half the size of operating rooms designed today, said Carol Baker, running for the New Democrats in Scarborough Centre.
Ontario’s health ministry placed the $250-million renovation project on hold during the year TSH and Rouge Valley Health System studied a merger, but it has been reinstated as "active" since.
Alex Wilson, NDP candidate in Scarborough-Agincourt, said physicians at the hospital are baffled by the lack of progress towards construction.
"They make their proposals, and it just dies," he said.
Baker, who said TSH "consistently fighting a losing battle" as they compete for surgeon to work in such rooms, added she blames Brad Duguid, her riding’s Liberal incumbent as well as the party’s other Scarborough MPPs.
"They’ve had the opportunity to get things done, and they haven’t done it," she said.
Nita Kang, running for the Progressive Conservatives in Scarborough Southwest, also found the operating rooms were sub-par and lacked proper equipment, though all three candidates, plus New Democrat Jessie Macaulay of Scarborough Southwest, stressed hospital staff were doing their best to cope.
"We have really committed doctors working in this hospital, but it’s really unfair Scarborough’s been put on the back burner in this way," Kang said.
"We just don’t have MPPs that are advocating strongly enough for Scarborough."
Before the merger collapsed in March, Scarborough’s Chinese Outreach Committee produced a map showing provincial investments in Greater Toronto hospitals and arguing Scarborough had been left out while its hospital facilities were aging and overcrowded.
On Tuesday, Duguid said it’s not correct to say Scarborough hospitals received "zero funding" for capital projects, but added hospitals are being built to serve places in the 905 area code because it was necessary.
"It’s not a case of hospital envy here. Brampton needed a new hospital to meet the needs of their growth," Duguid said.
The Liberal government, he said, recently completed a $94-million overhaul of the General’s critical care and emergency wing, "but we fully recognize there’s a need to do more," and that parts of Scarborough’s three hospital campuses are aging and outdated.
Duguid added he and his Liberal colleagues in Scarborough "are absolutely determined" to build the new operating rooms, while the PCs "are a threat to our hospitals because they’re going to cut workers out of our hospitals."
Kang said her party’s approach will be to divert cash from a "bloated bureaucracy" to pay for hospital equipment and other needs. She said she’s confident a PC government will find efficiencies, and health care in Ontario will see "modest increase" in spending.
Baker also argued the PC party’s proposed public service job cuts will affect health care, "making a bad situation worse."
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