Mr. Speaker, Welland Hospital, in my riding, is under threat of closure. Last month, about 70 people gathered at the Welland Civic Square for a meeting organized by the Niagara Health Coalition and launched a petition to save Welland Hospital.
I fully support the efforts being made to save Welland Hospital and the services people rely on. I would like to thank the many people who have taken the initiative and been involved in the campaign.
Welland Hospital serves 51,000 city residents, as well as the communities of Port Colborne, Fort Erie, Pelham, and Wainfleet, meaning that almost 100,000 people rely on Welland Hospital.
The Niagara Health System says it is too expensive to maintain the number of existing hospitals in the Niagara region. Having two hospitals or maybe just one will save millions of dollars in operating costs, it says. It might be true, but it shows that we are not making health care the priority it really deserves to be.
We are beginning to see in Welland and Niagara the impact of the continuing neglect of health care by successive governments, both Liberal and Conservative, here in Ottawa. The Conservative government's $36 billion cut to health care transfer payments is affecting real lives in my community.
We need better health care. We need to give it the attention it deserves. A healthy, productive community relies on easily—