The County of Renfrew and it’s neighbours will be focusing on three main priorities moving forward.
Renfrew County Warden Peter Emon led a recent strategy meeting of the Eastern Ontario Warden’s Caucus, as the group looked into hot-button topics affecting residents across the region.
The Counties have agreed that affordable and attainable housing, long term care, and paramedic services make up the most urgent issues for 2023.
Emon, who also serves as the Caucus’ chair, says that EOWC has set clear goals and “intend to strongly advocate on behalf of our region’s communities and residents.”
Work is already underway to make improvements in those key areas, as the Caucus recently announced their “7 in 7” plan to create 7,000 community rental housing in seven years to help wipe out the wait list in the region that current sits between 12,000 and 14,000 requests long.
The EOWC is also advocating for a way to address staffing shortages in long term care homes in the area including a continued call on the Provincial Government to modernize the long term care funding network and to eliminate staffing agencies that they say “pose an unnecessary and unsustainable resource and cost burden on municipalities.”
They’re also looking to Province to look into changes for paramedic services, advocating for permanent, sustainable and predictable funding to support paramedic services
as well as community paramedicine efforts, a modernization of the dispatch system to improve call prioritization, and ways to reduce offload delays at hospitals.
(written by Kasey Egan)
