The Ontario budget isn’t sitting well with Andrea Horwath.
After speaking to officials at the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association conference in Thunder bay, the NDP Leader claims local communities will suffer due to changes to health, education, and ministries like Indigenous Affairs.
“All of these things are going to have a much bigger impact on northwestern Ontario, and it is gonna hurt,” says Horwath.
Horwath also spoke out against a plan to reduce the number of paramedic services in the province, saying it will hurt rural and remote communities.
She points out there are many communities in the north “where there’s no 911 service, places where you can’t even really access a reliable GPS signal,” adding the large distances between communities would be challenging to cover with fewer ambulances.
After a recent announcement that OHIP will no longer cover emergency care outside of Canada this fall, Horwath argues not everyone will have private insurance to fall back on.
She claims it will “create, unfortunately, I think situations where people are not even going to bother to get insurance, then they could be in big trouble when they travel.”
