In rural Ontario where health-care is hurting, voters decry PC candidates missing debates

Tonight health care will once again be top-of-mind for residents of Walkerton, Ont.

With eight days to go before a provincial election and only four weeks after hundreds of people lined up in the cold for a chance to secure a family doctor, candidates will gather for a health-care focused all-candidates debate at Victoria Jubilee Hall. 

While candidates from the Green, NDP and Liberal parties have all said they'll be there, incumbent Huron-Bruce PC candidate Lisa Thompson has told organizers she won't attend due to other campaign obligations. 

In a statement sent to CBC News, Thompson said the invitation to attend the Walkerton meeting "was received when I had already committed to other events." 

"As your candidate, and as your MPP, I am also always available to talk to any resident about any of their concerns," she said. 

Brenda Scott is moderating the meeting, and said the absence of PC representative at Wednesday's meeting and others in the region, is starting to get noticed by voters in a part of Ontario where access to health care is a top-of-mind issue. 

"People in the town are very upset," said Scott. "A lot of people in these rural communities, they've had the dirty end of the stick and they want to hear from the people in government. They want to hear what they're going to do about it."

In addition to organizing the debate, Scott is a member of the Chesley Hospital Community Action Committee, a group fighting back against moving beds out of that small hospital. 

Vickers skipped health-care all-candidates meeting

A similar story played out last week in the adjacent riding of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound.

On Feb. 10, PC candidate Paul Vickers also missed an all-candidates meeting put on by the Grey-Bruce Health Coalition at the community centre in Durham. 

In a statement sent to CBC News on Wednesday, Vickers didn't explain why he didn't attend the Durham meeting. 

He did say that if elected he will " continue to work with South Bruce Grey Health Centre as they navigate their decision to focus on the Durham hospital's role on delivering primary and urgent care and be there to support consistent and reliable care, through primary and urgent care, by ensuring it remains available in Durham and surrounding communities."

Jana White helped organize the Durham meeting and chairs a committee fighting to restore beds and emergency room hours at the town's hospital. Last fall South Bruce Grey Health Centre announced it would be moving 10 in-patient beds out of the Durham hospital to hospitals in Walkerton and Kincardine. 

White told CBC News she was hoping Vickers might show up to answer questions about the future of health care in the area. White estimates about 200 people showed up.

"The whole meeting was about health care," said White. "Lots of questions were submitted and they were answered by all three candidates except the PCs, which is unfortunate because you could argue that is the party that put us in this situation, so I would have loved to hear from him [Vickers]." 

Both White and Scott say voters in the vast, largely rural, area between the north Lake Huron shoreline and Owen Sound are concerned about health care access. 

The emergency room hours at Durham hospital are currently limited to 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. After that, patients are sent to hospitals in Owen Sound, Kincardine or Goderich.

Those are drives that can typically take an hour or longer when the roads aren't snow-covered, which has been the case in recent weeks. White said it's an unacceptable situation in a community that's home to an aging population and many seniors residences and care homes. 

"If you were to have an emergency after hours, how are you getting to the next hospital?" said White. "Are you going to pay for a cab." 

Nick McGregor is running for the NDP in Huron-Bruce. Last week he issued news releases about rolling emergency department closures in Clinton and Wingham due to staffing shortages. 

McGregor believes the PCs aren't attending the all-candidates meetings because they don't want to defend their record on health-care in a setting where they'll be challenged by other parties in front of voters and the media.

He was at an all-candidates meeting on Monday night that was moved online due to last weekend's heavy snowfall. McGregor said Thompson failed to attend that meeting as well.

"There's a pattern of not showing up for rural Ontario, and treating rural Ontario like it's a given, like they're going to just get those votes no matter what," said McGregor. "Not showing up to candidates' debates especially on health care ... shows they don't really want to talk about it."

Both ridings have been PC strongholds for years. Thompson knocked out the Liberals in 2011, and has held the Huron-Bruce seat for 14 years. Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound has voted PC since 1999.