Our LPAT hearing is at Windsor City Hall next week!

Tuesday, October 8 - Thursday, October 10, 2019  Start time is 10:00 a.m. If you plan to attend, please check CAMPP's Facebook page at www.facebook.com/megahospital for start times and other updates each day We need $23,000 to reach our $100,000 fundraising goal -- to pay the legal costs of this historic appeal If you've been waiting to make your donation, now is the time!

Thank you to each and every one of you who contributed so generously to our legal fund since we launched this campaign in February 2019. Some of you have made multiple donations. One of our donors even shared a modest lottery win with us! Many of you donated anonymously because you didn't want your employer to know.

Click here to contribute to or share our GoFundMe

If you've enjoyed reading our weekly eblasts and would like a reminder of the content we've sent your way, we've put them in a blog for you. If you missed any of them, you can see all thirty that we wrote in 2019 at this link:

Click here to read our blog

Recap: About the Local Planning Appeals Tribunal (LPAT) Process The role of LPAT is to review whether a municipal decision complies with its own Official Plan, and with Provincial Planning Policy. If LPAT finds the municipality hasn't complied with these policies, the decision being appealed will be sent back for reconsideration. City decision-makers and local residents should trust this appeal system as a necessary part of the checks and balances to ensure informed and consistent municipal decision-making. LPAT ensures transparency and good governance! For six years, hospital planners have only welcomed positive opinions, while disparaging all public expressions of concern. Please encourage friends and neighbours to learn about the importance of the LPAT process, while this independent tribunal reviews the facts of our case. 28 participants were approved to join CAMPP's LPAT challenge of Windsor City Council's approval of the project. With the exception of Windsor Regional Hospital, NO OTHER pro-CR42 parties were approved to participate in the legal proceedings. This is democracy in action!

In their own words: Weekly round-up of comments from our friends and neighbours

"Do you want to know the best way for us to reduce our dependancy on fossil fuels and fight climate change? Build towns and cities in a way that don’t require us to drive to every destination in our daily routine. It’s that simple."

"A new hospital isn't the debate and one poignant story doesn't mitigate the disaster of ripping critical infrastructure from the core. Local elites have made this a win/lose proposition from beginning for benefit of developers."

"Urban sprawl is the name of the game for Windsor. First the arena, now the hospitals. Farm land being destroyed at a rapid pace, already developers are planning for all the areas south of County Road 42, more subdivisions are planned. Medical offices will leave downtown to be near the hospital furthering the downtown decline. Our city leaders will never change. There are so many areas near the core that are ripe for redeveloping. Walking the streets of downtown is depressing compared to other lively cities - where did we go wrong. Surely could have used a downtown arena and entertainment centre, Need to rethink city planning. All this spreading out and paving over more land will only bring more problems with flooding."

"Planting trees is fantastic, but with regards to sprawl, its like putting a band-aid on a tumor."

"I believe most in the know believe more manufacturing and industrial jobs will be lost in the coming decade . Sandwich south is like a make work project that will be a tax on Windsor residents and will displace services, reduce access , and add to blight in the city core."

"In a world where climate change is at the forefront of public discussion Mr. Muysj and his team are pushing to build more automobile sprawl on prime farmland... unreal."

"it's not about who is "pleased". It's about the flawed decision process and location." "the biggest reason for not having it at the location is access and a weak transportation system in the whole area"

"Free speech as long as you agree"

"Windsor has more at risk with infrastructure costs, which the county won't be paying for. Costs to service the area, which the county won't be paying for. Also factor in that the hospital will be further for a good portion of Windsor residents. "

"If the CEO had not got rid of 70 workers, maybe it would not have fallen into disrepair. He is letting it go to ruin to get his new hospital. Yes, we want a new hospital but within the city NOT on precious farmland."

"People tend to purchase homes based on their proximity to schools, hospitals etc. There must be thousands of folk out there who bought houses near the current hospitals who now face the possibility of having to travel much further and for much longer than they ever anticipated."

"Old, fat, suburban, white, car-centric, privileged, relatively affluent. Shame on these people for throwing everyone else under the bus."

"Will this mega-hospital actually have the mega-operating budget and mega-staff needed to actually function like a mega-hospital...mega-doubts."

"I'd really like to hear why they feel that this location, with its poor access for Windsorites and all of its quarter billion dollars in infrastructure upgrade costs, solely borne by Windsorites, is so much better than the the next two sites looked at by the committee. Both of those sites have better accessibility and both would cost millions less in Windsor taxpayer funded infrastructure upgrades."

"Build up Leamington hospital to provide better quality and access to people in the County! Nobody in this city is against a “new” hospital but the proposed location will leave much of the population without timely access. The current plan is flawed because it is a shiny new building with no increase in the number of beds and NO new services. This is outrageous for a Region of our size! ALSO the current plan is flawed environmentally... building on greenfield when we should be building on brownfield. It encourages sprawl and it’s going to cost this city millions in infrastructure costs. Money we don’t have to maintain current infrastructure!!! STOP THE MEGA MISTAKE before it’s too late."

Please continue to send us your comments. We love to amplify our supporters' viewpoints.

So where do Windsor-Essex residents stand on this issue?  There's no debate about the need for provincial investment in our health care infrastructure. But the proposed physical location of this investment continues to be the subject of extensive, sustained local public opposition. Since 2014, there have been many excellent examples of the community's widespread disapproval regarding the deeply flawed plan to build a new, single site acute care hospital on active farmland adjacent to Windsor Airport, far from the region's most densely populated neigbourhoods. Here are some: 1) Thousands of Windsor and Essex County households displayed lawn signs protesting the planned mega-hospital location:

Click the image above to view the interactive map that shows where our lawn signs were installed.

2) A recent CTV News poll showed a clear majority does not favour the exurban hospital site:

3) At the nine-hour long, August 13, 2018 Windsor City Council meeting at which the hospital zoning was approved, 37 of the 45 attending delegates voiced factual concerns about the proposal. Of the 8 remaining delegates supporting the proposal, 7 were developers, representatives of developers, or landowners. Only one delegate who favored the proposal was a resident without any apparent financial interests in the location. More than 20 written submissions expressing negative concerns about the site were also presented to Council during that meeting. 4) 33 delegates spoke of their concerns, for the location of the hospital at the April 25, 2016 Windsor City Council meeting at which the tax levy for the 10% local share of the cost of the hospital was approved. They included subject experts, as well as socio-economic demographics. 5) 28 participants were approved to join CAMPP's LPAT challenge of Windsor City Council's approval of the project. 6) Four Business Improvement Associations (BIAs) pledged their financial support for the LPAT challenge on behalf of their member businesses with concerns about the impact of the loss of two institutions (employing more than 4,000). How much more evidence is needed to prove the community's widespread resistance to this flawed plan?