We asked: Can public pressure save the Rouge Valley Ajax and Pickering hospital’s mental health in-patient unit? Why or why not?
Thursday’s remarkable response to halt the move of the Ajax Pickering hospital’s mental health ward clearly came as a shock to the LHIN and the RVHS board. It shouldn’t have. You don’t take something away from people without their trust that it will return something better, and no one in sight of this decision has earned any. Whether it’s: our premier telling us health care would be fine without raising taxes, then raising them $600 a year and promising THAT would do it; various officials promising nine new beds at RVAP that vanish three months later; a new hospital board telling us the old board incompetently spent $78 million with no one apparently responsible, then holding secret meetings to spring, fait accompli, closures and staff cuts on the community that needs those services; or, a LHIN pitching all of this as a grand plan for efficiency, then treating the affected community as an afterthought, trust is a deservedly scarce commodity. Not one more bed, nurse, meal or syringe should leave Ajax Pickering until the community knows how every dollar was spent and is going to be spent henceforth. Trust demands accountability and in this community, that’s long past due.
-- Dan Brennan, Ajax
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