{"id":2790,"date":"2013-06-27T00:32:35","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T04:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=2790"},"modified":"2013-07-03T18:04:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T22:04:30","slug":"ontario-needs-to-step-up-to-lower-hospital-parking-fares-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/ontario-needs-to-step-up-to-lower-hospital-parking-fares-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario needs to step up to lower hospital parking fares: Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Aurora Council gets its way, it will cost you less to visit family, friends or loved ones at your local hospital.<\/p>\n

But the buck stops at the Province of Ontario.<\/p>\n

Councillors could pass a motion at Council this week which would request the Province to take necessary measures to allow local hospitals, such as Southlake, to \u201creduce and cap\u201d parking at a fair rate.<\/p>\n

The motion stems from last week\u2019s General Committee meeting where John Hazelwood, representing FairHospitalParkingCharges.org, spoke of his group\u2019s advocacy to encourage municipalities to pressure the Province into making fair parking at hospitals a reality. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel it is both fundamentally and morally wrong,\u201d said Mr. Hazelwood of the \u201cexorbitant\u201d parking at local hospitals.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hazelwood\u2019s group is a small collection of people from Whitchurch-Stouffville and Markham with the ultimate goal in making a difference at Queen\u2019s Park and helping people at \u201ctheir most vulnerable moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sick, the injured, the aged, the disabled, the chronically ill, the frantically worried and the poor cannot advocate for their need when personal healthcare crises are before them,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the midst of this challenging and sometimes tragic circumstances, Ontario hospitals and governments must not download budgetary pressures on the hospital clientele. We believe that hospital budgets can be achieved in a much more compassionate way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s work, he added, was not a campaign to \u201cundermine\u201d the work of hospitals, but a matter of seeking what they believe is fairness across the board. <\/p>\n

The motion to ask the Premier and the Minister of Long Term Care to upload whatever necessary to make this a reality was formed by Councillors at the table. While it has the majority support of Councillors going this week, their support was not without conditions. <\/p>\n

While debating the motion, Councillors were cautious about the ramifications of such a motion, concerned that the users and taxpayers could be adversely impacted. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be careful the impact doesn\u2019t come back on the province with respect to how they fund this and they look at the overall program and [make sure] it is balanced so it doesn\u2019t come back,\u201d said Councillor Sandra Humfryes. \u201cThey\u2019re going to have to find the money somewhere, but it is important to look at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Geoffrey Dawe, for instance, sits on the Southlake Board. He told Mr. Hazelwood that parking is an important revenue source for the hospitals and what he suggested could be alternative funding. Mr. Hazelwood said he understood that, and that\u2019s why they are taking it to the province to that planning.<\/p>\n

He has taken his group to meet with MPPs and CEOs of hospitals within York Region and beyond and their answer is simple \u2013 they don\u2019t want to see the parking revenue depleted, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cSouthlake is running at a budget deficit and closed beds and laid off nurses,\u201d said Mayor Dawe. \u201cThat revenue is important, so if you take the revenue off the parking it has to come from somewhere else. There is only one place it is coming from \u2013 the taxpayer. Anything else and we\u2019re fooling ourselves. We have to accept that is how it is going to happen and I really think the whole issue of hospital funding has to be investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the perspective of Councillor Evelyn Buck, it is going to be the users who are going to feel the impact in the end. People pay for it as users, pay for it as contributors to provincial health care, and pay for use of facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe pay, and we pay, and we pay,\u201d she said. \u201cI am surprised it has taken this long for families of ill patients, seriously ill patients, and not all of them old, that there hasn\u2019t been some sort of movement within our community before now to demand that the province pay attention to this very serious human problem in our province. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to support this resolution if it was better informed, if some time was spent learning exactly how our hospitals function and who is responsible for the decision we\u2019re joining in a protest against, and that is the high fees charged for parking while you are visiting a very ill relative.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir If Aurora Council gets its way, it will cost you less to visit family, friends or loved ones at your local hospital. But the buck stops at the Province of Ontario. Councillors could pass a motion at Council this week which would request the Province to take necessary measures to allow local […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-J0","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 09:53:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}