To the Editor
We have all heard or read about Laurie Scott our MPP for Haliburton County sneaking in the back entrance to McKecks rather than acknowledge a group of peaceful local residents who came to protest Doug Ford’s budget cuts. Locked into the PC party line her attitude toward constituents’ concerns has proven to be benign at best a direct reflection of Ford himself who made these cuts with little or no consultation many slipped in under the radar and mandated.
Here’s the thing. We live in the poorest county in the province and the PC government which our riding voted in has cut all of us off at the knees.
Did you know that Haliburton may lose our local health unit? Ford plans to reduce 35 public health units across the province to 10. We depend on Public Health to help prevent people from getting sick by providing water testing vaccinations pre-natal care and education. Ford has made major cuts to ambulances school breakfasts for kids in need a 50 per cent cut to Ontario flood relief cancelled planting 50 million trees made huge library cuts – no more inter-library loans. Four online courses for high school graduation will be mandatory leading to more teacher cuts. And OHIP which we are all dependent on and needs more funding not less is being gouged.
But somehow Doug Ford has found $10 million to give to the horse racing industry.
Yes the budget needs to be balanced but with a strategy that considers the well-being of private citizens not just corporations. Instead Ford’s bullish actions – slashing support of our most basic fundamental and necessary support systems not only render us vulnerable they expose his outright insincerity and inability to govern with care and vision.
Isn’t it time for all of us to reassess our allegiance to a certain party? Sure habits die hard. But consider this: the PC party today is not the same PC party that you once believed in that your parents supported and perhaps their parents before them. It has changed. The writing is not only on the wall its ramifications are coming to Haliburton and right across Canada.
It’s a rude awakening. But we have a chance in six months to be smart. To do our due diligence and not knee-jerk as we did in Ontario and vote someone in who will just make things worse.
Jerelyn Craden
Haliburton