Province needs to prioritize hospitals over highways, activists say

Wanting to see health care get more funding is personal for Climate Action Newmarket-Aurora member Tim Greenwood.

Last October, Greenwood said that he went to the Southlake Regional Health Centre emergency department with a severe blood clot. It would eventually cost him part of his leg, but he said he was treated quickly and able to get the care he needed.

It worries him hearing tales of people waiting hours for treatment in emergency rooms, he said.

“We need to have better health care,” he said. “We don’t need these big (new) highways.” 

More than 30 attended a Newmarket rally calling for health care over highway investment Sept. 14. Part of a series of rallies across the province, the rally criticized the upcoming Bradford Bypass and Highway 413 projects, as well as how much the government is spending on those during a time when the health care sector is struggling. 

The rally took place at the corner of Yonge Street and Mulock Drive, near Newmarket-Aurora MPP Dawn Gallagher Murphy’s office. 

Advocacy organization Environmental Defence co-ordinated rallies across the province this week in partnership with local organizations.

The local event was done by the Alliance for a Livable Ontario York Region, a coalition of smaller community groups. Co-organizer Melanie Duckett-Wilson, of Climate Action Newmarket-Aurora, said she was pleased with the turnout.

“Getting the right information out there, not the misinformation, is important to me,” she said, “but also to let people feel that resilience and that sense of hope, because if you don’t have those two things, then people often say, ‘Well, what’s the point? Nothing ever changes.’”

The two highway projects have fallen under scrutiny for environmental concerns, with activists calling their utility into question. As the government spends hundreds of millions to get the highways going, the rallies are meant to note that with the struggles of the health care sector, the hallway health care problem is worse than ever based on patient statistics.

East Gwillimbury resident Diana Lumsden attended and said the more people who speak out, the better, adding that it proved effective in getting the provincial government to back down on Greenbelt development.

“Health care is in a terrible mess. Education is terrible. We don’t need highways like this,” she said. “We need our money spent differently, and I pay my taxes,  and I don’t like how my tax dollars are being spent.”

The province has defended the two highway projects as necessary to accommodate growth and reduce travel times, and said they would come with environmental protections.

“We are delivering on our promise to build Highway 413 with a plan to fix gridlock and get drivers across Halton, Peel and York regions where they need to go faster,” Premier Doug Ford said in April, with the province planning to start construction in 2025.

However, activists have questioned the two highways going through environmentally sensitive land and harming species at risk.

“Our provincial government plans to spend tens of billions of dollars on two unnecessary highways through the Greenbelt,” Stop Highway 413 member Angela Grella said during the rally. “They gotta get with the times … There are better transit alternatives, transportation alternatives.”

Greenwood said rallying like this is important.

“It’s great to be together with these people,” he said. “I just get inspired by being around the folks here … All of us getting here, together, we just encourage each other.”