Health is an investment. Healthy citizens are productive, peaceful, creative, and giving; all things that help make a strong community. This investment comes back to society 100 fold over the years in the form of quality of life as well as dollar savings.

Unfortunately our health care system in Ontario has been in crisis for some time now for a number of reasons. These include our aging population, our failure to protect air, water, and soil from pollution, a lack of focus on physical activity and proper nutrition, and the fact that too many politicians look at health care as an expense, rather than an investment.

In speaking to local citizens during and since my tour of the riding, I am amazed at the creative and practical ideas being offered by Grey/Bruce citizens to help make our health system better. It is time to revolutionize the way we administer health care in Ontario to make it serve the changing needs of our people.

Some would have you believe that further privatization of our public health services would bring better results. This is simply not true. There is no model in the world that demonstrates that going further down that road would benefit Ontario citizens, except for the few lining their pockets at your expense.

Instead we need to make our publicly funded system more comprehensive and sensitive to the dual needs of providing timely care for the sick and injured, and focusing far more on disease prevention and general wellness.
The following are some of the healthcare reforms I will be pushing for within the government if elected:

• Provide fully refundable tuition for new family doctors, educated in Ontario, based on each year of school and each year of work in under-serviced areas.
• Provide $350 million over 4 years in additional funding to expand primary health care by increasing the use of nurse practitioners. Nurses have the knowledge and skills to provide more care at less cost and help reduce doctor shortages.
• Provide additional choice for health care users by implementing a health care ‘debit style’ provision in the amount of $1,000 per year, per person, to purchase prescription drugs and access care from chiropractors, physiotherapists, naturopaths, dentists, dietitians, midwives, optometrists, and other practitioners regulated under the Regulated Health Professionals Act (RHPA).
• Increase the budget for the Ministry of Health Promotion from 1% to 2% of the total healthcare budget. Health promotion is fiscally prudent and will lead to better wellness.
• Increase the emphasis on mental health by expanding pilot projects to fund family doctors to have dietitians, psychologists, and counselors on staff.
• Provide home care patients with a choice to have to a trained professional contract employee or CCAC approved informal caregiver, compensated at minimum wage, to provide home care and assisted daily living. This should allow for not only increased number of hours of care by reducing costs, but it will also enable family and friends to afford to provide basic, compassionate care for loved ones.
• Mandate that 50% of hospital boards are composed of health care professionals.
• Provide more support to mothers and babies by increasing the funding of midwives by $10 million over 4 years. This should allow women more choice by providing approximately 70 additional midwifes to service 1500 extra mothers per year.

In addition to these reforms we need much stronger protection of water, air, and soil quality in Ontario. Currently air pollution kills 1,900 Ontarians a year, asthma rates are twenty times higher today than they were 20 years ago, and unsafe water causes 90 deaths every year in Canada. The Ontario government recently released a study revealing that smog alone adds $6.6 billion dollars to the Ontario health care budget. The links between the health of our environment and the health of our people are undeniable. As we take care of our vital resources we take care of ourselves and healthcare costs begin to drop.

This is why the Green Party of Ontario treats all policy areas as interconnected, rather than stand-alone issues. Too often a party’s policy in one area directly contradicts their policy in another. The Greens believe in a coherent and pragmatic approach to solving problems. For the complete Green Party platform, follow the "policy" link above.