In this space the Rose City Politics panel will analyze, breakdown, and critique a local political issue that affects each and every Windsor resident.
Rose City Politics
The Stage 2 Mega-Hospital Funding And What It Means For Windsor Essex For the May 2021 edition, the Rose City Politics panel opines on the Ontario government’s announcement of Stage 2 funding for the mega-hospital project and what it means for Windsor and our fellow county residents. The announcement of Stage 2 funding for the new acute care hospital in Windsor was big news, and rightly so. Advancing in this process brings the region closer to a major capital investment and renewal of the local healthcare system. Stage 2 is about functional planning for service delivery. Just as in Stage 1, the second phase of the process includes public consultation. Previous public engagement on this file has been unfortunately divisive and bitter, with leadership taking an aggressive posture towards critics and observers. For all of our sakes, they should strive to do better in Stage 2. Windsor Regional Hospital used a survey to prioritize site selection criteria, invited residents to join the site-selection committee, and conducted more than 70 town halls. Proponents claim this represents an unprecedented level of community engagement. It surely represents a significant amount of activity, but was it truly a state-ofthe-art public consultation? In my view there is plenty of room for improvement. Meaningful and inclusive
Pat Papadeas Proceeding with plans to build a megahospital on County Road 42 will result in the biggest mistake to be made in our region for generations to come. It is important to make clear that I am referring to location and not the need for new hospital infrastructure. Some people are tired of this debate about location and just want to “move forward”.
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public engagements don’t happen on their own. The issue with relying on an opt-in approach is that most Canadians choose not to participate. A 2017 Municipal World survey found that only 20 percent of Canadians have ever participated in a municipal public consultation, and that fraction comes with built-in demographic biases. I spoke with Nader Shureih of Environics Analytics about his work using neighbourhood-level data to help the public sector engage residents from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. He said this approach can help with developing a strong and effective public consultation strategy because “you’re able to effectively align communication and strategies with the populations that are most greatly impacted.” Moving forward, Windsor Regional Hospital and steering committee volunteers should consider how to make the Stage 2 consultation process more inclusive and representative. Bringing a more receptive and less combative tone to the conversation would be a good start.
Doug Sartori is a political observer and organizer. When he’s not recording podcasts or getting people out to vote he runs Parallel 42 Systems, a technology consultancy in downtown Windsor.
Not surprising, given how much (of our) money has been poured into propaganda to wear people down into accepting it. If there was ever a case to be made about choosing one’s battles, however, this is it. Now, about that recent Stage 2 funding announcement in the provincial budget. The funding is not about building a megahospital at that location. There are five stages to get there. The $10 million in funding is to develop a functional program to plan the space requirements. This will need to include the space requirements for hospital services for folks in the most densely populated part of the region. We’ll wait and see. Additionally, $10 million represents only .05% (half of one percent) of an estimated $2 billion project. Note that $2 billion does not include the cost of furniture or equipment nor municipal infrastructure. As for municipal infrastructure, that is not yet budgeted. Any talk of being close to having “shovels in the ground” is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to confound. What to make of the funding
announcement? Really good political theatre and partisan positioning. The ingratiating communications toward Premier Doug Ford coming from Windsor’s Mayor Drew Dilkens have not been reserved solely for this announcement. Indeed, throughout this pandemic, all talking points have been taken from the same playbook and include uncritical acclaim for every move Ford makes. At the end of March, the Premier announced expanded capacity for hospitals in Brampton, stating: “There’s five seats, provincial ridings, we need to get those other three seats to continue having a strong voice down at Queen’s Park. So in the next election, please vote for the PC government in the three other ridings….” The Premier doesn’t need to be as direct with us. We have Windsor’s Mayor working on that. Pat Papadeas is a legal studies professor at St. Clair College and co-author of the textbook Canadian Business Law (Emond Publishing). She is active in organizations that directly or indirectly support a bold and vibrant downtown.
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Doug Sartori