PERTH – MPP Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington) rose today in the Legislature to condemn the perpetual maze that has trapped the Carleton Place and District Memorial Hospital’s efforts for redevelopment since 2003.
“The population growth in Carleton Place in this time has been significant, and demand for services and beds have increased well beyond the hospital’s ability to serve under its current conditions,” Hillier said in his statement. “The Hospital Board has had to deal with countless arms of the Ministry of Health, yet neither the Champlain LHIN nor the Capital Funding branch of Health & Long Term Care will commit to the Board that the redevelopment will move forward.”
Mr Hillier pointed out that Ministry of Health staff had presented the project to McGuinty’s Cabinet with a recommendation to move forward, but the government still has not proceeded. “This Government has demonstrated that Hospital proposals and promises are nothing more than a political football that can be punted about at a whim in an attempt to score electoral gain.”
The people of Carleton Place and the surrounding communities the hospital serves see the redeveloped hospital as essential to their health care needs. “They [the people of my riding] believe that political and electoral gain ought not to be the determining factors for hospital funding.”
Randy Hillier, MPP Lanark Frontenac Lennox, is a co-founder of the Lanark Landowners Association, which was brought to life to address government imposition on the rights of private property owners, and to address the regressive regulatory impositions that government was bringing down upon farmers and business owners in rural Ontario.
In 2006, Randy resigned as President of the OLA in order to run as a candidate for the Progressive Conservatives. Randy was elected in the 2007 provincial election.
Randy a long-time resident of Lanark County, an electrician by trade and member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), continues to co-publish and edit rural Ontario’s successful magazine “The Landowner.”
