The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

w at er lo oc hr on ic le .c a W at er lo o C hr on ic le | T hu rs da y, A ug us t 30 ,2 01 8 | 36 Beginning in April, the City of Waterloo will begin the 2018 fire hydrant inspection, maintenance and flushing program. There are approximately 2500 fire hydrants within the City and all fire hydrants are inspected annually. This program is designed to ensure that our hydrants will operate properly when needed. Due to the complexity of the program, it is difficult to determine which day testing will be conducted in a specific area. Hydrant operation may cause some temporary inconveniences such as poor water pressure and in some cases coloured water. Please check your water before use and if discoloured water is detected, please open a cold, hard water tap (non-softened water) and allow the water to run for 5 minutes. If it does not clear, turn it off, wait one hour and let it run another 5 minutes. Continue to do this until it is clear. Thank you for your co-operation and understanding. Any questions or concerns should be directed to the Utilities Customer Service Representative at 519-886-2310 ext 30239. Hydrant inspection and maintenance program P. 519.886.1550 TTY. 1.866.786.3941waterloo.ca/publicnotices A report released by Ontario Council of Hospi- tal Unions on Aug. 21 fo- cuses on the lack of hospi- tal beds as well as the loss of hospital staff under Doug Ford's regime. "I would say that (Wa- terloo) is significantly un- derfunded when it comes to Ontario," said president of the OCHU/CUPE, Mi- chael Hurley. "Ontario is already at the bottom of the heap compared to oth- er provinces. Waterloo is at a big disadvantage. "Waterloo is about $1,200 under the Canadian average per hospital stay, so they've already got sig- nificant resource prob- lems in the region, and we make the point that there's going to be a significant amount of population growth." Hurley added that there will be greater pop- ulation growth in the higher age bracket, result- ing in increasing medical care required for baby boomers and the elderly. "The stats speak for themselves," said NDP MPP of Waterloo, Cather- ine Fife, in reaction to the report. "Both Grand River and St. Mary's hospitals have been operating at a funding model that has not met the needs or the demographics and the needs of Waterloo Region. To have Mr. Ford double down on cuts on mental health and having no strategy on long-term care means that there will be even more stress on the health-care system." However, PC MPP of Kitchener South-Hespeler insists her party is com- mitted to ending hallway medicine, and empha- sized their focus on "get- ting money back into the front lines of healthcare." "We have people that are treated in hallways and we know that we need to be doing better as a gov- ernment," said Fee, who was elected MPP in June. "Unfortunately, that's the mess the Liberals left this province in, and we are committed to ending hall- way medicine." OCHU, which is a divi- sion of the Canadian Union of Public Employ- ees, crunched some num- bers to analyze Ford's pro- posals, including the effi- ciency program and $7-bil- lion tax plan and balanced budget commitment. The Waterloo region hospitals, which are al- ready underfunded ac- cording to the report, will lag behind even further in terms of staff and beds as well. The report shows that Kitchener hospitals will see a loss between 33 and 60 beds as well as between 156 and 342 jobs. "I think Mr. Ford's lan- guage is fairly hypocriti- cal and contradictory on the health-care file," Fife said. "He has said that there won't be any front- line service cuts, and yet just in Waterloo alone, we're going to see a cut of 342 front-line jobs." Hurley also empha- sized the fact that ending "hallway medicine" doesn't line up with the other proposed changes. According to the report, 3,712 hospital beds and 16,418 hospital jobs could be lost in Ontario to meet the Conservatives' bal- anced budget. "We can end hallway medicine by making in- vestments to meet the needs of an aging and growing population. These additional invest- ments are not permanent, but they are needed for the life of the baby boom gen- eration. Kitchener's hos- pitals, already dealing with overcapacity and years of underfunding, will not be able to main- tain the quality of patient care in the face of demo- graphic pressures without investments," said Hurley. Fee says the Ontario government will be add- ing 15,000 long-term care beds over the next five years and remain commit- ted to putting money into mental healthcare as well. "Healthcare's an abso- lute priority for our gov- ernment," she said. In terms of recommen- dations, the OCHU offered some, including funding hospitals at actual cost; opening acute, complex continuing care; and long- term care beds. "We don't have enough beds, we have too few beds to population, so we're calling for the addition of 8,400 beds. We're calling for additional funding for long-term care for com- munity mental health care and addictions," Hur- ley said. In terms of the actual survey, Hurley says the OCHU tried not be "sensa- tionalist" when calculat- ing the effects of Ford's fis- cal commitment, taking the lower end of the esti- mated amount at $13 bil- lion. "We're just telling you what you think will hap- pen, and based upon our understanding of how the system is funded and the HOSPITAL UNION REPORT SAYS K-W HOSPITALS PROJECTED TO LOSE BEDS, STAFF, UNDER FORD'S PLANS The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, with data from the Canadian Insititute for Health Information, created a graph representation comparing Grand River Hospital and St Mary's Hospitals' cost per stay with the rest of Canada, which indicates a lack of resources, according to OCHU president Michael Hurley. OCHU/CUPE graphic NAMISH MODI nmodi@waterloo chronicle.ca NEWS SIGNIFICANT PROJECTED LOSSES ACCORDING TO DETAILED REPORT Continued on page 37