Budget cuts from the Ford Government were the focus of a town hall meeting in downtown Windsor.
Close to 100 people filled the University of Windsor's Alan Wildeman Centre for the Creative Arts on Park St. and Freedom Way Thursday night. Twenty speakers talked about how the cuts will effect education, health, and legal-aid services.
The event was hosted by Legal Assistance Windsor, that will be seeing a 30 per cent drop in funding.
"That's going to affect direct client services and staffing. How we're able to help people with their legal problems," says Executive Director Marion Overholt, who mediated the discussion.
She says the hope is to start a dialog before the cost to restore services gets out of control.
"We're trying to help the government understand what the impacts of these cuts are. This is the first year for their government, they have three more years to govern and we don't want them to have to make huge expenditures in the second and third years to make up for cuts they made in the first," added Overholt.
People from every walk of life are speaking up, according to Overholt.
"The government is going to be changing some children's benefits that will directly affect parents' ability to feed their children. Also, the quality of education and the Health Unit plays such a vital role in our community; there's been a lot of discussion about that. What will that mean if it's regionalized and how will they access services," she says.
Overholt met with Chatham-Kent-Leamington MPP Rick Nicholls Friday. She's hoping the Ontario PC will deliver concerns gathered at the meeting to Premier Doug Ford.