Doug Draper

One could hardly help but wonder how heated things might get in a Niagara Falls auditorium last week where uniformed security officers kept a steady eye on some 200 Niagara residents gathered to express their views on the Niagara Health System's plan for restructuring our region's hospitals.

Would fear and anger overtake the people who gathered in Niagara Falls for one in a series of public meetings on the NHS plan? Would Dr. Jack Kitts, president and CEO of the Ottawa Health System, who's been placed in the unenviable position of reviewing the NHS's plan, be able to navigate his way through the meeting without seeing it swirl out of control?

After all, no one less than Debbie Sevenpifer, president and CEO of the NHS, warned during an editorial board meeting with Niagara This Week this July that "with a vision of change (meaning NHS's plan) there is fear, and fear turns into anger."

Fear and anger? Is that all any plan or vision for the future can inspire?

Seems to me there are plenty of examples of visions of change that have inspired excitement and hope -- especially when the people most affected feel some confidence their views have been taken into consideration and the changes being proposed are in the best interests of the community.

Then there's the plan -- forced out this summer by a provincially appointed Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) which concluded, quite rightfully, that something needs to change in a hospital system now chalking up deficits totaling more than $16 million a year.

Little wonder then that fear and anger have been part of the mix as thousands of Niagara residents have demanded changes to the plan and many, among them, have expressed a lack of confidence in the NHS.

"I have heard time and time again that the people of Niagara Falls have lost faith in the NHS," said Niagara Falls Mayor Ted Salci during the meeting last Friday in his city. Carolynn Ioannoni, a Niagara Falls city councillor heading up a committee of residents and area health professionals looking at hospital services, urged Dr. Kitts to recommend, in his report to the province, "that the administration of the NHS and the board, itself, be disbanded."

Will the provincial government listen? It should because the lack of support for the NHS and its plan, even among frontline doctors and other health professionals across Niagara, is remarkable.

But it's just as likely, if more Niagara residents don't speak up, that the NHS plan, complete with a new hospital complex in west St. Catharines, will be pushed through.

To hell with any idea of locating a new hospital complex at a more central site in Niagara, where the other half of the more than 400,000 residents who live, work and pay taxes in this region have more equal access to it.

Dr. Kitts warned residents at the Niagara Falls meeting that if we the people, who are going to be paying for this hospital, want to open up a new discussion about where it should go, the province might make us wait another 10 years before we get any approval for a hospital at all.

Another 10 years. Isn't that interesting, when we all know that Oakville received provincial funding for a new hospital three years ago while it was still debating over a site for the complex.

Why don't we get the same consideration from the province as Oakville? Are we being gonged here because we're on this side of the Burlington Skyway?

As Ioannoni said last Friday, our new hospital will only be delayed by 10 years if the province allows it to be delayed that long, and there's no way Niagara residents will let that happen.

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Doug Draper can be reached at drapers@vaxxine.com.