In rural Ontario where health-care is hurting, voters decry PC candidates missing debates
CBC
Tonight health care will once again be top-of-mind for residents of Walkerton, Ont.
With eight days to go before a provincial election and only four weeks after hundreds of people lined up in the cold for a chance to secure a family doctor, candidates will gather for a health-care focused all-candidates debate at Victoria Jubilee Hall.
While candidates from the Green, NDP and Liberal parties have all said they'll be there, incumbent Huron-Bruce PC candidate Lisa Thompson has told organizers she won't attend due to other campaign obligations.
In a statement sent to CBC News, Thompson said the invitation to attend the Walkerton meeting "was received when I had already committed to other events."
"As your candidate, and as your MPP, I am also always available to talk to any resident about any of their concerns," she said.
Brenda Scott is moderating the meeting, and said the absence of PC representative at Wednesday's meeting and others in the region, is starting to get noticed by voters in a part of Ontario where access to health care is a top-of-mind issue.
"People in the town are very upset," said Scott. "A lot of people in these rural communities, they've had the dirty end of the stick and they want to hear from the people in government. They want to hear what they're going to do about it."
In addition to organizing the debate, Scott is a member of the Chesley Hospital Community Action Committee, a group fighting back against moving beds out of that small hospital.
A similar story played out last week in the adjacent riding of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound.
On Feb. 10, PC candidate Paul Vickers also missed an all-candidates meeting put on by the Grey-Bruce Health Coalition at the community centre in Durham.
In a statement sent to CBC News on Wednesday, Vickers didn't explain why he didn't attend the Durham meeting.
He did say that if elected he will " continue to work with South Bruce Grey Health Centre as they navigate their decision to focus on the Durham hospital's role on delivering primary and urgent care and be there to support consistent and reliable care, through primary and urgent care, by ensuring it remains available in Durham and surrounding communities."
Jana White helped organize the Durham meeting and chairs a committee fighting to restore beds and emergency room hours at the town's hospital. Last fall South Bruce Grey Health Centre announced it would be moving 10 in-patient beds out of the Durham hospital to hospitals in Walkerton and Kincardine.
White told CBC News she was hoping Vickers might show up to answer questions about the future of health care in the area. White estimates about 200 people showed up.
Impotent fury. European leaders are frothing.
Police have arrested 20 people for a series of break-and-enters in York Region and around the Greater Toronto Area, involving groups they say came into the country with the sole intention of committing crimes.
Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge announced Thursday the government's plan to overhaul CBC/Radio-Canada to shore up an institution she said is "at a critical crossroads" but one that is necessary as the country faces American threats to its sovereignty.
Production in the White Rose oil field in offshore Newfoundland and Labrador will resume in the coming days, while an expensive satellite project called West White Rose is also on target for first oil in 2026.
Omobolanle Abajingin says she was always an entrepreneur when she lived in Nigeria, and kept that up when she moved to Canada in 2018, and eventually settled in Sudbury.
Nova Scotia's auditor general is urging the provincial government to withdraw amendments to the law that governs her work, which she claims would seriously erode the ability of her office to continue to do its work.
As Premier Susan Holt prepared to deliver her State of the Province speech last month, a handful of Progressive Conservatives were two blocks away, pondering the state of their political party.
More than five kilometres of the Gardiner Expressway suffer from severe congestion that doubles travel times in Toronto during rush hour periods.
A candidate for leadership of the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives says there are books describing bestiality and incest in school libraries.
The Saskatchewan Cancer Agency (SCA) says it is working to ensure women in the province have access to breast cancer screening and biopsies in as timely a manner as possible, but some patients say the system isn't working fast enough.
The City of Edmonton is developing a wildfire strategy to mitigate risks within the municipality and help neighbouring regions, the city's emergency advisory committee heard Wednesday.
About 20 workers, students and local MPP candidates gathered outside Hamilton's Mohawk College Wednesday — where a fifth of full-time jobs have been cut since December — to call on the province to better fund post-secondary education.
In a busy race to Queen's Park, nine candidates are vying for the Sarnia—Lambton seat — a riding that's been conservative for nearly 20 years.