The waiting list to get into a long-term care bed in Lambton Kent Middlesex just got a little shorter.
Infrastructure Minister and Lambton Kent Middlesex PC MPP Monte McNaughton was at Sprucedale Care Centre in Strathroy to announce that three area long-term care homes will share in 49 new beds.
As well, the government is modernizing 203 older beds.
Sprucedale will receive 32, while Craigweil Gardens in Ailsa Craig gets nine new beds and Omni Health Care Ltd. in Komoka will get eight new beds.
The provincial government has pledged to create 15,000 long term care beds in Ontario over five years.
NDP long-term care critic Teresa Armstrong, the London-Fanshawe MPP, says the announcement is long overdue.
"The previous government, they had already announced the first 5,000. So the government needs to come clean when they say they're going to build new beds. The first 5,000 were already there," she says.
"So what that looks like, again, it needs to be transparent and needs to be communicated to the public."
Amstrong says there are 2,200 people waiting for long-term care beds in southwestern Ontario.
