Patrick Brown, the leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives, is being accused of flip flopping over healthcare. During a debate at Queen’s Park, Brown said the Liberals are hurting northern healthcare because they’re under-funding the system. However, health minister Doctor Eric Hoskins side-stepped the issue by raising Brown’s record to have binding arbitration settle the doctor’s dispute.
Hoskins claims over the summer Brown told physicians he opposes binding arbitration. But Hoskins says only a few weeks later, the media quoted Brown as supporting binding arbitration which puts him onside with the Liberals. Before the debate got sidetracked, Brown said the Liberals have degraded healthcare so much in places like Thunder Bay that wait lists are now the norm in the north.
He says in Thunder Bay, people wait 28 days for cancer diagnosis, three months for elective MRI’s, three years for an ophthalmologist, four years for spine surgery, and six years for crisis mental health equipment. Brown says the north is going through an exodus of specialists and called on Hoskins to reverse the trend.