Community Takes Protest to Save Its Hospitals to the TransCanada Highway: Thessalon Wages a Valiant Struggle to Save Its Hospital

THESSALON, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Community members are waging a valiant struggle to save their hospital and restore its services. An hour east of Sault Ste. Marie, just off the TransCanada Highway on the north shore of Lake Huron, the community hospital in Thessalon is a life saver for its residents… literally. Yet, the local emergency department has been subjected to repeated closures. In 2020, the inpatient beds in the hospital were closed “temporarily”. They have not been reopened.

It is almost an hour in the daytime in good weather to get to any of the nearest hospitals in Blind River, Sault Ste. Marie or on St. Joseph Island, and Matthews Memorial Hospital on St. Joseph Island has also faced emergency department closures. It can take much longer in fog, snow, at night with moose and deer on the road, or if there are accidents.

Last week, more than a hundred residents attended a public meeting to make a plan to demand commitments from the political parties in the election to finally take definitive action to stop the closures and restore their services. This week, they are taking their fight to the TransCanada Highway to raise the issue and get clear commitments from the parties.

When & Where: February 19 at 2 p.m. community members will meet at the Thessalon hospital and march to the TransCanada Highway.

Background: The record of lack of support and planning for public hospitals could hardly be worse.

• Doug Ford was elected on a promise to end hallway medicine. Yet, this year, the government’s own internal data shows that 2,000 people per day on average -- more than double the number when Ford was elected -- are waiting on stretchers in hallways as all the inpatient units in most major hospitals are full. Yet closures of existing beds and smaller hospitals’ services have not been reversed and the government’s plan for hospital bed capacity is inadequate to meet population need.
• While they vastly increased funding to for-profit clinics and staffing agencies to privatize public hospitals’ services and staff at significantly higher cost, the Ford government first cancelled the special funding for northern locums, then belatedly reinstated it temporarily and then renewed it temporarily. Wage caps that meant real dollar cuts for public hospital staff were extended until the courts finally struck them down, even as shortages worsened. At the same time, in the most recent budget year, public hospital budgets were set at levels too low to meet demand. New funding was delayed until public hospitals were pushed into deficit and it was too late in the year to hire in permanent local staff.
• Emergency department closures were so rare as to be almost unheard of prior to the Ford government taking power in 2018. The number of emergency department closures broke all records in 2024.

The Ontario Health Coalition has been demanding that the Ford government be held accountable for his record and that all political parties commit to fundamental change, warning that Ontario’s public health system cannot take another four years of this.