"Your Highness! The people have no bread!" they cried.

"Let them eat cake!" proclaimed his wife. We all know what happened to Marie.

Fast forward to the 21st century and the cry could very well be:

"Prime Minister! Premiers! The people no longer have universal health care or a hospital!

The present day monarchs have proclaimed to the people of Niagara ...

"Let them travel to the furthest corner of the peninsula and they will receive succour. Oh yes. Tell them to bring money."

Exaggeration? Hardly. This is what we have come to in our province and in similar degree across this great country.

Some time back, a picture captured by a chance camera, appeared in several major U.S. newspapers. It could have been any American hospital charity ward. A disoriented older woman, still garbed in a hospital gown was spotted wandering down the street pushing a portable intravenous apparatus. It later was reported that an orderly had steered her towards the exit and left her to her own devices.

That picture was indelibly imprinted on the Canadian consciousness and we applauded ourselves that this could never happen in Canada, the home of a carefully crafted universal health care system available to every citizen.

The astounding numbers of enraged citizens that have just assembled in Fort Erie in protest of Fort Erie's hospital closure should alarm those responsible for this discredited, immoral decision.

Many of us have always suspected that the revenue draining LHINs were a clever ruse designed to insulate the governors from the governed.

The people are alarmed by the extent of deterioration of what was once a superb public health-care health system and the stealthy switch of accountability now intercepted and handled at the overpaid LHIN level. That is, if you can locate these elusive government appointed individuals.

It is time to lay it on the politicians now seeking our vote!

Helen Sentek

Welland