Pass the budget or bust
Posted Apr 19, 2012 08:51:05 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews visited Cambridge Memorial Hospital Thursday, for a visit of its new MRI facilities.
However, the discussion was focused on CMH expansion plans.
Matthews said because Ontario is in a minority government situation and the budget has yet to pass, the money for CMH is not yet assured.
She was asked how that is possible if money was promised last year, “we have a plan, a long range plan. It includes this project, but every year there is a new budget and any government can, on a year-by-year basis, make those decisions.”
When asked by if a vote against the budget is a vote against CMH, Matthews said, “Absolutely, this redevelopment project is in the budget, it is part of the budget. There (are) lots of other things in the budget as well, but I think for the people of Cambridge, this project is the number one issue.
Meantime, Cambridge-North Dumfries MPP Rob Leone says that’s not true, “the Health Minister is talking from both sides of her mouth here, and she has to be honest with people; if this is an expansion project that you promised last year, the funding is not going to be removed unless the Liberals say so very directly.”
Directly as in, listed as cancelled in the budget, “the only way this hospital expansion project isn’t going to move forward… is for them to list it, for them to ‘pull the plug’ out of the hospital expansion project themselves, and have to list in the budget.”
“It’s patently false, it’s spreading mis-truths, and I think this budget has to be about the budget,” Leone said.
The Progressive Conservatives are voting the budget down, Leone said, because they don’t believe it addresses the “fiscal and economic realities facing the province.”
The provincial budget will be voted upon on Tuesday.
