Algoma-Manitoulin NDP MPP Michael Mantha told Doug Ford Thursday that his government must stop blocking two new doctors from practicing in Blind River, after the Conservative government said they will not be able to practice for most of the winter.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThese two doctors are already practicing in Ontario, have their CPSO number and billing number, but they have to wait for the ministry to approve them while the ER is full and flu season is around the corner,\u201d said Mantha.<\/p>\n
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\u201cNorthern and rural communities are struggling enough as it is to recruit and retain doctors. These two doctors relocated to Blind River in hopes of helping to relieve the pressure on the community.\u00a0 Now they are told to stay on stand by for 20 weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Mantha had written to Health Minister Christine Elliott about the issue and received no response, before he raised it in question period Thursday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is unacceptable and if there is no immediate change, it will hurt the recruitment prospects of future physicians in Blind River and the area. This process could be streamlined in a matter of a few days,\u201d said Mantha. \u201cThis government must fast track the process for these two physicians in Blind River and restructure the current process to meet the needs of northern communities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Algoma-Manitoulin NDP MPP Michael Mantha told Doug Ford Thursday that his government must stop blocking two new doctors from practicing in Blind River, after the Conservative government said they will not be able to practice for most of the winter. \u201cThese two doctors are already practicing in Ontario, have their CPSO number and billing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":4519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-district"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 21:46:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25330,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25329\/revisions\/25330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}