WINDSOR, ONT. -- The grassroots group, Citizens for an Accountable Mega-Hospital Planning Process (CAMPP), is set to decide within weeks if it will launch further legal action after having a courtroom setback at the end of July.
Speaking to CTV News, Eric Gillespie, the lawyer who represents the group, says a decision will be made “within weeks” to determine if CAMPP will pursue further legal action to stop the proposed hospital from being built at the chosen site at County Road 42 and the 9th Concession.
“Fundamentally, this is about ensuring everybody, regardless of where they live or who they are, everybody should have accessible healthcare,” says Philippa von Zeigenweidt, the spokesperson for CAMPP.
CAMPP’s chief concern rests with the chosen location for the new hospital which will see it built outside of the city core and on the border of Windsor and Essex County.
Von Zeigenweidt would not comment on the group’s legal considerations but, points to the group’s first memo since its latest courtroom setback as evidence it is not giving up the fight.
An emailed newsletter contains “critical questions” as CAMPP describes them, which include queries as to the services that are to be offered out of the current Ouellette campus of Windsor Regional Hospital under the new Windsor-Essex Hospital Systems plan that will see the new single-site acute care hospital built.
Other questions target the legitimacy of complaints made by local leaders in pushing for a new hospital of Windsor’s currently aged healthcare infrastructure.
According to Windsor Regional Hospital, the average age of current acute care hospitals in the city is 85 years.
CAMPP also questions transit expansion costs, the project’s fiscal stewardship and the transparency of the land deal.
In a statement to CTV News, Windsor Regional Hospital notes many of the questions put forward by CAMPP fall under the Stage 2 planning process — which leaders insist have been delayed due to the legal fight with the group.
“Issues regarding the scope and extent of services at the Ouellette Campus, in addition to the satellite emergency department, as part of the new state of the art acute care hospital will be defined as part of Stage 2 planning,” reads the statement. “This Stage 2 planning has always been contemplated to include direct input from anyone from the community that wants to participate.”
While leaders like Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens and County of Essex Warden Gary McNamara have called on the community to come together to back the project, von Zeigenweidt says CAMPP continues to push for a provincial mediator to help settle the ongoing dispute.
“We would like an independent facilitator to step in and listen to the concerns of the community and listen with an open mind so these concerns can be addressed,” says von Zeigenweidt.
As far as CAMPP is aware, there is little notion from the City of Windsor or Windsor Regional Hospital of going that route.
At the end of July, CAMPP lost its motion for a leave to appeal a City of Windsor zoning decision that paves the way for the hospital to be built at the chosen site, seemingly ending its legal challenges to the project.
