The Garden City Refugee

Out of Control

April 15, 2026

An interesting item came up in my feed from Wayne Gates, the Niagara Falls MPP representing the orange faction of Uniparty Ontario. What the people in Niagara Falls see in that guy is another matter. Just like I fail to understand what attracts St. Catharines voters to the obnoxious Jennie Stevens. But I digress.

I could only laugh when reading his diatribe. Like a good NDPer, he rails on Doug Ford’s Liberal government for badly underfunding hospitals and the health-care system. Throw more money at it. Don’t worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon. Because the solution to every problem involves a tax, according to the likes of Gates and the other sheep who keep blindly voting for the Uniparty, whether it’s the blue, red, green or orange faction.

Hire more unionized bureaucrats. Turn Ontario into Manitoba, a province where the NDP is the natural governing party and where they get less bang for their health-care buck than any other province in the country.

The problem is not underfunding. We pay enough taxes. More than enough. Too much, in fact. For all the taxes we pay into the system, in our time of need, we should expect a stretch limousine at our door within minutes to take us to the nearest hospital, where a team of world-class specialists are ready and waiting to diagnose any malady and begin any appropriate treatment immediately.

Instead, we spend hours in ER waiting. And waiting. Waiting for a doctor. Waiting for appointments. Waiting for an MRI. You get the idea.

Rather than throw more money at a broken system, as good, loyal NDPers demand, we need to start asking where all that money is going. Gates is right when he says the crisis in our ERs is out of control. But it’s because the spending at regional health-care providers like Niagara Health is out of control. The blame for which lies squarely at the feet of Ford’s Liberals, not for underfunding, but for failing to provide the necessary oversight of agencies like Niagara Health which have runaway spending problems.

In a rare display of leadership and fiscal responsibility, Ford’s Liberals took control of many of the school boards in the province.

He needs to do the same with Niagara Health and other health-care providers.

Yesterday.