Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa has laid out the Liberals' provincial budget highlighted by billions of dollars for healthcare. That includes funding earmarked for Windsor's new mega hospital.
JUST IN - City of #Windsor is getting funding for a new mega hospital. The province has earmarked funds in the 2017 budget. #cklw
— Rob Hindi (@rhindi800) April 27, 2017
Sousa says the government will earmark $9-billion over the next 10 years for hospital construction, such as new facilities in Windsor and the Niagara region.
Windsor Regional Hospital President and CEO David Musyj is ecstatic with the budget.
"A great day for hospital healthcare in Windsor-Essex," Musyj told AM800's "The Afternoon News." "It's like Christmas in April."
Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens says it's a positive news for Windsor-Essex.
"It's a project that a lot of folks in the community have been working on for quite sometime, a number of years now, a lot of community support behind this project and having the city council and the county council come together and all of the senior leadership at the hospital and their working group, over the course of a couple of years to see this day, it's very exciting that it's here, excited we're moving forward to the next step," says Dilkens.
Essex County Warden Tom Bain says he's excited to see the project move forward.
"It's going to mean we're able to move on to stage two with the new hospital and it's going to certainly bring us much better health care so it's just going to be tremendous for us," says Bain.
It's the first balanced budget for Ontario in a decade.
The document includes funds for new child care spaces, money to build schools, measures aimed at seniors and previously announced cuts to electricity bills and plans to cool the housing market.
Ontario is also moving ahead with plans for a high-speed rail corridor between Windsor, London, Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto.
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