TEXT OF COMMENTS MADE AT SCARBOROUGH COUNCIL MEETING

The north end of Scarborough has been shortchanged and is underserviced when it comes to hospital facilitiles. South Scarborough has Scarborough General, Centenary and quick access to East General and the downtown teaching hospitals.

In our area we only have Scarborough Grace – a small hospital with limited facilities. What are our options?

North York General? It has the busiest ER in the city and 6000 births a year. The only hospital in the GTA with more births is Mt. Sinai. The parking is very limited and will remain so for some time to come. As a North York volunteer and member of the Volunteer Board, I am very familiar with how busy it is there in all medical areas. In their immediate catchment area several thousand condominium apartments are under construction which will put even more strain on their facililties.

York Central? It is smaller than North York and has housing developments ongoing in their area.

Markham-Stouffville? The 9^th line area also has rapidly expanding housing developments already in place.

So it is not feasible to propose that we just travel a bit further to find medical care.

It was suggested by one member of Council that most people moving into these condominiums would be seniors and that would less strain on the school system. But it is obvious that seniors are the most frequent users of health care facilities so

an already overcrowded Scarborough Grace Hospital could not possibly cope.

The result? Not just inconvenience but deaths and do you want that on your conscience?

It is irresponsible to even consider adding many more housing units to our area unless the provincial government is willing to fast track a major hospital to service our area and we know that is not even a remote possibililty.

The Developers objective obviously is only to make a large profit and leave the problems and complaints for Council to handle. I pray that Council will have the wisdom and courage to reject this proposal. Failure to do so will mean that this area will be destroyed. Present residents will be enraged and anyone foolish enough to buy one of these proposed condominiums will also be enraged when they discover the lack of hospital facililties.

Margaret Maciver