Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie launches campaign in Barrie with focus on health care

Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie kicks off her campaign in Barrie with a focus on health care.

Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie kicked off her campaign on Wednesday in Barrie, pledging to focus on health care, and more specifically, ensuring residents have access to a family doctor.

"More than 2.5 million Ontarians don’t have access to a family doctor,” Crombie stated. “That’s unacceptable. My number one priority is fixing Doug Ford’s deadly health care crisis by ensuring everyone in Ontario has access to a family doctor within four years.”

Despite the city traditionally being a conservative stronghold, Crombie said she chose to launch her campaign in Barrie because it has been overlooked in several ways.

“Barrie has some significant challenges that aren’t being addressed,” she said. “There are 55,000 people that don’t have access to a family doctor here, 7,000 families use the food bank, there’s a significant homelessness issue, mental health care and addiction crisis here in Barrie that’s not being addressed by the province.”

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Crombie was joined by Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte candidate and local family physician, Dr. Rose Zacharias.

Zacharias highlighted how the party would achieve its goal of ensuring every Ontarian had a primary care physician, including educating, attracting and retaining thousands of new domestic and internationally-trained doctors.

The party also vows it would improve the Ontario Health Team network, by expanding access to family doctors practicing in teams within four years.

“Doug Ford promised to fix hallway health care, but it’s worse than ever. He didn’t get it done,” said Crombie. “Instead he has left you and your family waiting in snowstorms to just have a chance of getting a family doctor. It’s outrageous.”

This will mark Crombie’s first election as leader of the liberal party after taking the leadership in December 2023.

Also running in the Ontario election are Doug Ford, who previously won majorities in 2018 and 2022 elections with the Progressive Conservatives, NDP Leader Marit Stiles, and Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner.