Ontario Hansard - 05-October2006

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES

Ms. Laurie Scott (Haliburton-Victoria-Brock): I rise today to tell the people of Ontario that, though the Minister of Health says he's fixing health problems in Ontario, patients continue to suffer.

Recently the minister, in another one of his famous photo ops, proudly stated that the Trenton hospital will be receiving a CAT scanner. The hospital in Belleville has sent back the money you gave them for new CAT scanning equipment, saying that they don't have enough radiologists to deal with the backlog of cases in Belleville. Minister, it is the same group of radiologists in Belleville who will be reading the images coming from the CAT scan in Trenton.

If the minister truly cared and listened to their concerns, he'd know that where they clearly need help is in obtaining radiologists. For a hospital to send back money is an unprecedented move and is indicative of this government's poor planning and its attitude of simply throwing taxpayers' money around with no real plan but to hope it gets them past the next election.

I respect the member from Prince Edward-Hastings. He's a tireless advocate for the people of his riding. I don't blame him for not running again. His own health minister refuses to do what's needed to help patients in Belleville and Trenton.

This government and this minister will say anything or do anything to get elected. The minister likes to cover his failure and his lack of concern for health care in Ontario by trying to be clever and saying that previous DNA makeup has caused the issues which he fails to properly address. I agree that there's clearly a DNA problem, but it's actually the Minister of Health doing nothing about it.