Ontario healthcare workers gather at Queen’s Park to protest emergency centre closures

CHCH News 14 May 2025

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“Urgent care and emergency room closures are hurting Ontario patients” – that’s the message 150 healthcare workers, led by the Ontario Health Coalition, brought to Queen’s Park.

Around 150 healthcare workers from across Ontario gathered at Queen’s Park Wednesday protesting the closure of urgent care centres.

They are demanding the Ford government to take action and stop the closure of emergency departments, including in Port Colborne and Fort Erie.

“No more closures!,” said Heather Kelley, who works at the Fort Erie Healthcare SOS. “Let’s take care of the people first, then we’ll arrange how are we going to take care of the people in each area.”

“Urgent care and emergency room closures are hurting Ontario patients” – that’s the message 150 healthcare workers, led by the Ontario Health Coalition, brought to Queen’s Park.

The coalition says in 2024, there were 1,117 times that emergency rooms across the province had to shut their doors.

It’s an issue that hits close to home in Fort Erie and Port Colborne, where the urgent care centres are already operating on reduced hours, and are slated to close fully in 2028, when the new South Niagara Hospital is built.

“The people of Port. Colborne are really frightened of what’s going to happen if the decision is not reversed,” said Barbara Butters, the co-chair at the Port Colborne Health Coalition. “If the urgent care centre closes, we’re going to be isolated and denied care in a way that we’ve never seen before.”

Local Niagara Region MPPs Jeff Burch and Wayne Gates posed the same questions to Ontario’s Health Minister in Wednesday’s question period.

“A busload of Fort Erie residents are here today to ask this government why they’ll spend $9.4 billion – billion – on private, for-profit nursing agencies, while refusing to invest the $10.4 million needed to keep the Douglas Memorial Urgent Care Centre doors open 24/7,” said Gates.

“Only in an NDP alternate reality is a 30 per cent increase to a healthcare budget be characterized as a ‘cut’,” said Sylvia Jones, the Ontario Health Minister. “We are adding 600 hospital beds in the Niagara Region because of those investments.”

Jones was referring to the new Niagara Falls hospital set to finish construction in 2028, and the West Lincoln Memorial Hospital expected to open its doors in the fall.

However, advocates say it’s still too far for small town residents to travel for care, many of which don’t have a family doctor.

The opposition is looking to see more dollars going to healthcare in the provincial budget, which is set to be unveiled Thursday.

“I want to see a budget tomorrow that commits real dollars to keeping those emergency room doors and urgent care doors open,” said Marit Stiles, the NDP leader of Ontario.

Healthcare is something people will be watching closely for when the budget is unveiled Thursday at Queen’s Park.