Blake Ellis/Local Journalism Initiative

Grant McDonald doesn’t want to travel more than he needs to access health services.

He says Charlotte Eleanor Englehart Hospital in Petrolia is a good health facility and it should be maintained as a public facility.

The 80 year-old was one of about 400,000 across the province who voted in the Ontario Healthcare Coalition’s referendum on privatizing health care services.

McDonald voted in front of Heidi’s Independent Grocer Saturday. The voting booth had been set up in front of the grocery store on both Friday and Saturday as part of a citizen-led referendum to send a message to Premier Doug Ford and his government.

It comes after the Ford announced the government has plans to have 14,000 cataract surgeries conducted in private facilities under the proposed Bill 60. This is 25 percent of the wait list created during the pandemic.

The next phase will have private clinics offer MRI, CT cans, colonoscopies and endoscopies, with hips and knee surgeries by 2024. Private facilities will be Windsor, Waterloo and Ottawa where these 14,000 cataract surgeries will take place.

It is feared when more services are relegated to private health clinics, the private care providers will pay staff higher wages, drawing them from the public system. That, the health coalition says, will affect service in public hospitals.

The coalition had hoped there will be one million votes against the privation of the health care system to present to the Ford government.

Tuesday, Shirley Roebuck who represents the coalition in Sarnia-Lambton and Chatham-Kent, says the effort drew about 400,000 votes. In Lambton, there were 3,077 paper ballots cast and over 1,500 online votes.

“Ninety-eight per cent of the people do not want their health care to be private,” she tells The Independent.

Roebuck says there were some issues that led to the lower than hoped for turnout. “I think people care a lot (about the issue) but I think it had to do somewhat with voting stations being cancelled at the last minute by the businesses themselves and other people just didn’t know about it.

“That’s a lesson for us. We’re going to keep trying to educate every single person. We are not done.”

Wednesday, the provincial organization will bring the votes to the Ontario Legislature as a symbolic gesture and Roebuck expects it will make an impact.

“We want to deliver our votes to Premier Ford. Quite frankly, any government that doesn’t pay attention to 4000,000 votes of the people they represent, they don’t want to be re-elected.”