Lisa Gretzky, Windsor West MPP, has spoken out against the recent pressures paramedics and frontline workers are facing.
On Monday, the County of Essex declared a local emergency in response to ongoing delays faced by EMS in offloading patients at area hospitals.
This emergency comes following consistent 'Code Blacks' that Essex Windsor EMS have been facing, meaning no ambulances were available to respond to emergency calls because paramedics are waiting to off-load patients.
Gretzky posted a statement to Twitter on Tuesday, saying healthcare workers and paramedics are doing everything they can to provide urgent care and that it is time to repeal Bill 124 and provide hospitals with adequate funding.
Bill 124 was introduced and passed in 2019 by Premier Doug Ford. The bill limits wage increases to a maximum of one per cent total compensation for each of three years for registered nurses, nurse practitioners, health-care professionals and other public-sector workers.
Gretzky says repealing Bill 124 can help with the cycle of not having enough frontline workers.
"What the government needs to do is to immediately repeal Bill 124 to ensure that we retain the nurses that we have, and so that we can shore up our staffing in hospitals and other health care settings so that we have the nurses there when ambulances are coming into the hospital, we have the nurses there to be able to facilitate those patient transfers in a timely manner."
As of October 14, a total of 491 'Code Blacks' had been issued by Essex Windsor EMS during October, compared to 116 in all of September.
She says this number is extremely alarming, and proves that Ontario is in a health care crisis.
"That really sends a scary message. But I also think it highlights something that our paramedics and health care workers within the hospital and the Emergency Department, something that they have been sounding that alarm bell on for a long time now, which is a crisis that we're facing within our health care system."
Gretzky says what she and the New Democrats have been pushing for.
"From the moment that Bill 124, from the moment that it was introduced, myself and my NDP colleagues have been fighting it. We have been pushing the government to just not pass it, period, but now that they have passed it we've been pushing alongside those frontline workers to repeal it. That's something that we're going to continue to do."
Gretzky encourages the community to reach out to the Conservative Members of Parliament and Premier Doug Ford to express concerns to lack of funding towards health care.
She says the government needs to invest money into health care before the crisis worsens.