Ford, Jones in Oshawa for health care announcement

Doug Ford will be in Oshawa Thursday morning for a press conference, though the chances of the Ontario Premier making the long-awaited announcement of the planning grant to get construction started on the even longer-awaited new hospital in Whitby seems unlikely.

Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones will be at LHEARN Centre at the Oshawa Lakeridge Health site at 10 a.m. for the media availability, with no other details made public.

Lakeridge Health selected Whitby to host its seventh hospital in January 2022. But provincial funding – the $3 million planning grant to get the project moving, for a start – is required and until recently there has been nothing but crickets from Queen’s park. Provincial budgets were passed in 2022, 2023 and 2024 (each chock-full of health care goodies) with no planning grant announced.

There were also accusations of backdoor shenanigans from Mayor Kevin Ashe in neighbouring Pickering, who wanted the hospital in his city, despite the planned location being right on the Whitby-Pickering border.

Ford finally declared the hospital would indeed be coming to Whitby earlier this year but there have been no announcements since.

The hospital, which will be south of Highway 407, west of Highway 412, east of Lake Ridge Road and north of Highway 7/Winchester Road, will be the only trauma centre between Toronto and Kingston and will serve residents across Durham Region.

The future site of the new hospital in Whitby