Guest Column: People of Windsor and Essex County have spoken — build the hospital

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The Council of the City of Windsor recently expressed majority support for this project and the County Road 42 location, which was painstakingly selected by a committee of community leaders back in 2016 over more than 20 other competing sites following a comprehensive process with significant public engagement and opportunities for discussion and input. That means there is now support for this project from every municipal council in Windsor-Essex.

All of these political leaders would not have provided such unwavering support for this generational project if it did not make sense for their diverse and growing communities, from Leamington to LaSalle to Lakeshore. And they certainly wouldn’t have done it if their constituents hadn’t been telling them in the coffee shops and corner stores of their communities that they supported this hospital plan and wanted to see a shovel in the ground as soon as possible.

Former Unifor national president Ken Lewenza Sr. told city councillors recently he could give them “100 stories of why we need a new hospital.” There are a great many more than that, tens of thousands of them, stories of physicians and nurses making do with ancient equipment in cramped facilities and stories of Windsor and Essex County residents with young children and aging parents receiving less than optimal care as a result of our outdated hospital infrastructure.

Wassim Saad, Windsor Regional Hospital’s Chief of Staff, calls our current facilities “relics of decades past,” and Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens says they can’t help but deliver “100-year-old health care.” The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed these systemic weaknesses and only heightened the urgency for us to build for the future and come together in support of a project that will transform the delivery of health care in this region for generations to come. Every resident of Windsor-Essex deserves the same quality health care that residents receive in Toronto or London or Ottawa, where there isn’t a shortage of private rooms and the wide use of ward rooms with shared bathrooms down the hall.