On
Nov. 30, NDP Leader Howard Hampton and Liberal Health Critic Lyn
McLeod joined Critical Care Flight Paramedic Darryl Taylor outside
Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children to protest the government plans
to privatize critical care emergency air ambulance.
The next day, Taylor and other allies were
outside the health minister’s office in Waterloo.
At the Thursday press conference Hampton charged
the government with putting children’s lives at risk in its rush to
privatize. “We shouldn’t have to wait until somebody dies to
realize this is wrong,” he said.
McLeod agreed that privatization was wrong and
dangerous. “Air ambulances are saving lives now.”
Taylor said the air ambulance service saves
hundreds of critically ill children and infants each year. “They are
the most critically ill and privatization puts them at risk,” he
said.
All of the province’s critical care flight
paramedics have opted take a severance package and surplus notice
rather than be party to privatization of their work. This opens the
door to a system staffed with inexperienced people who have learned
from a book, while 300 years of experience are tossed on the scrap
heap.
Hampton and McLeod kept the pressure on in the
legislature with questions to Health Minister Elizabeth Witmer.
The next day, Ministry of Transportation
representatives joined members of OPSEU’s ambulance division in a
show of support at Witmer’s constituency office in Waterloo.
“Until now the minister hasn’t given any
straight answers on air ambulance privatization. Many people have
written to their MPPs and the government says Elizabeth Witmer will be
providing a response,” said Taylor, a steward in Local 628.
“People have come to us because she refuses to
address their concerns. We are here in the Minister’s riding to
remind her that we aren’t going quietly, and that the public deserve
some answers.”
Paul Dunseith, head of the union’s division in
the Ministry of Transportation, emphasized the need for solidarity.
“We’ve had some major hits in our Ministry,” he said. “The
only way we can beat this privatization is to stick together and work
as a unified front.”
Witmer wasn’t in her office and her
constituency staff denied knowledge of her whereabouts.
Both Taylor and Dunseith stressed that
privatization will damage public safety.
OPSEU’s Yvonne Bobb is the January feature on
a 2001 calendar produces by the Ontario NDP Women’s Committee.
The calendar features NDP women who have been
active in their riding associations, unions and communities. OPSEU
members round out the year in December, when the focus is on the women
who work for the caucus, members of Local 593.
The calendar costs $15 and is available from the
NDP Women’s Committee, 33 Cecil Street, Toronto, M5T 1N1.
Original authorized for publication by Leah
Casselman, OPSEU
President
