Media Advisory - Media conference to announce Brockville will step up its campaign against hospital cuts

BROCKVILLE, ON, April 9, 2015 /CNW/ - Unions and community groups will hold a media conference on April 10 at 10 a.m. at the Brockville Convention Centre to announce a rally April 13 and a public meeting on May 28, both part of an escalating, campaign against cutbacks at the Brockville General Hospital.

The hospital is cutting services and closing its laundry, in the face of a 5-year funding freeze imposed by the provincial Liberal government. Hospitals need a 6% increase in funding each year to keep pace with their costs, which are rising faster than the general rate of inflation due to the costs of drugs, medical technologies and doctors' salaries. The freeze has cut Brockville General Hospital's budget by 24% in real terms. Ontario hospitals were already the most efficient hospitals in the country with the fewest beds and staff and the shortest lengths of stay going into the budget freeze.

" Across eastern Ontario, hospitals are aggressively cutting services in the face of the funding freeze. In Almonte, Ottawa, Renfrew, Winchester, Cornwall and in nearly every other community, services are being cut and staff laid off " says Louis Rodrigues, eastern Ontario Vice-president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE.

" Together with the Ontario Healthcare Coalition, we are planning an escalating campaign across eastern Ontario to push the provincial government to fund hospitals like ours properly.  A town hall meeting will be held in Brockville on May 28 at 7 p.m. at the Brockville Convention Centre and a rally against the hospital cutbacks is planned for April 13 " says Martha Godin, president of the CUPE local at the hospital.

SOURCE Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (CUPE)

please contact: Martha Godin, President, C.U.P.E. Local 5666: [phone]; Louis Rodrigues, Eastern Ontario Vice-president, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE: 613-531-1319