Curious George in Town

Health Minister George Smitherman visited North Bay today. Photo by Kate Adams, BayToday.ca.

Minister of Health George Smitherman made a visit to North Bay today as part of his Family Health Team tour.

While in the Bay Smitherman took the opportunity to have a first hand look at the site for the new Regional Hospital, before going on to examine the Blue Sky Family Health Team facility.

Smitherman said he was acutely aware that people in the region had their doubts that the hospital would never be built, but Smitherman reaffirmed North Bay's Hospital was always a priority project.

Smitherman also acknowledged that the only hurdle standing in the way of the project was money.

“We had I think about 90 communities in Ontario with this level of expectation, the challenge all along has been the fiscal resource.”

“We’d made this project a priority, and there will be communities in Ontario that continue to struggle through the challenge of not having their projects go forward this is just the reality of not as many dollars as we’d like.”

Facing the financial malady Smitherman pointed out the reason North Bay’s got the green light was because it just made sense.

“It goes back to the point I made earlier about this being a priority project, not just because it had been promised for along time, but because it brings together and allows the North Bay General to operate more efficiently by getting them onto one site and the efficiency that can be gained there and quality of care improvements will be quite noticeable. And also the chance to build from a new and appropriate setting to provide care to people that haven’t been receiving care currently at the psychiatric hospital.”

The minister maintained that it was always the governments intention to have North Bay’s project move forward.

“We’ve managed to do it because we’ve made it a priority and allocated the fiscal resources necessary to get it done.”

The next step in the process to see the shovels actually in the ground and the structure to begin to be erected is to secure the financing.