Shortsighted and small-minded are terms that come to mind when we hear arguments against giving our taxpayer dollars to the regional cancer centre in Barrie.
People right here in Huntsville and Lake of Bays will travel to Royal Victoria Hospital to fight a very nasty and debilitating disease.
The regional cancer centre will also offer counselling and other types of support through sister organizations and services to help those facing the disease as well as their family, loved ones and caregivers.
We understand Lake of Bays Mayor Bob Young may be frustrated with having to fund health care in general out of municipal coffers, but trying to convince his fellow councillors to stop doing so is the wrong approach. He could better spend that energy on a letter campaign to the province, rather than pulling lifesaving funding contributions.
Somebody should remind the mayor that he also has a responsibility to respect those who went before him. Township representatives like him, some with perhaps much more experience, tolerance and a better understanding of the role their township plays in Muskoka, opted to commit $300,000 to the treatment facility over 10 years.
The suggestion of rescinding such a commitment without finding out who would use the centre or who has been recently diagnosed with cancer among your constituents is unconscionable.
It also puts into question Muskoka’s integrity. How can you trust a region that makes a commitment and then rescinds it when newly elected hotheads prevail?
Certainly fiscal responsibility is part of the mayor’s role as overseer of his corner of Muskoka. But Lake of Bays is not an island onto itself, it forms part of a community and its residents enjoy privileges that they would not otherwise enjoy or be able to afford. Living on an island, secluded from the world and its demands on you might sound wonderful, until you have to get off it to get medical treatment, groceries and other necessities. So Mayor Bob Young may want to climb a very tall mountain and ponder what cessation from the rest of Muskoka might really look like for his municipality.
He may also want to consider the need of all his constituents including those who do not travel to and from big centres on a regular basis.
For a community, which has been lobbying for more health-care services for some time, it’s amazing that its own mayor won’t support that very same initiative within our own region and Local Health Integration Network.
We will never have a centre like it in our own backyard nor should we. We simply don’t have the population, but we should be glad we have access to it and ought to make sure it is available if we need it. Sometimes we can achieve a lot more when we pull our resources together.
TdV