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Letters

Health Minister Adrian Dix:

In early December 2017 you were hand delivered a letter I wrote with regard to health care on the Sunshine Coast. So far there has been no response to my correspondence, a situation I find surprising and unacceptable. However, having stated my concern, I will try again.

As I’m sure you are aware, the Sunshine Coast, Sechelt and Gibsons to be exact, is involved in an ongoing dispute between Coastal Health and Protect Public Health Care (PPHC) with regard to the creation of a new and sorely needed extended care hospital for the area. Unfortunately, it has been a one-sided undertaking insofar as any control of the action is concerned. Coastal Health and the former Liberal government did the planning in private, while hundreds of citizens, including elected officials, were left in the dark. I can assure you that officials and citizens alike were furious when they were told that a deal had been signed with a private company. This information was passed on to a standing-room-only crowd that overflowed the Seniors’ Centre during the summer of 2016.

So let me summarize. We do badly need a new facility on the Sunshine Coast in order to house citizens who require ongoing care but are not ill enough to need acute accommodation. We do not support the model that undermines and moves to privatize our precious Canadian health care system.

Therefore, we urge you to use your power as the Minister of Health to terminate this arrangement, move us back on the path to a publicly funded and accessible to all health care system that will include a new government owned and controlled extended care hospital on the Sunshine Coast. This, after all, is what the NDP claims it has always supported.

Ruth Houle, Gibsons