Mr. Speaker, on May 23 the Ontario health minister, Tony Clement, announced that the heart and vascular surgery unit of the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario will close in April 2003.
When the CHEO unit closes, eastern Ontario children requiring vascular surgery or emergency cardiac procedures will have to travel approximately 400 kilometres to Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children to receive the medical attention they so desperately require.
CHEO serves a population of approximately 1.5 million people in eastern Ontario. Why would 140 children per year who require cardiac or vascular procedures travel to Toronto when an effective unit exists already at CHEO? Not only will this put some children at risk, it will worsen the almost unbearable stress already experienced by these children and their families. Centralization is not the best way to improve health care delivery in Ontario.
While he attempts to explain this most recent announcement to eastern Ontarians, I wonder if Mr. Clement will declare that Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children will offer its services in both official languages, as the CHEO has been mandated to do.