Petition urges province to help families with hospital parking

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This article was published 29/06/2016 (3432 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Candace Hamilton’s family members were by her bedside constantly during the two years she spent at Health Sciences Centre before dying of cancer in April 2015 at the age of 16.

Each visit meant $10 — minimum — to park their cars.

NDP MLA Matt Wiebe tabled a petition in the legislature Wednesday on behalf of the family, calling on Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen to come up with some sort of transferable low-fee parking pass for families in similar situations.

“It affects everybody, not just my family,” Hamilton’s grandfather, Dennis Alexiuk, said, adding having to walk several blocks and returning to find parking tickets on windshields were not uncommon occurrences.

“It’s ridiculous, trying to run out and feed the meter.”

The idea, he said, would be an affordable pass that could be transferred among family members so they could take turns parking on the street rather than pay expensive parkade rates.

If his headstrong granddaughter were still alive, “She would say, ‘pull up your big-girl panties and get moving.’ That would be her advice to the minister,” Alexiuk said.

Wiebe told the legislature that the family started the petition at Hamilton’s funeral. And while he acknowledged that hospitals count on parking fees, “(Alexiuk is) not asking for the world here. It could be street parking.”

Goertzen said he’s always willing to listen to proposals to improve the health-care system.

“There are many different fees in health care that can be a barrier,” he said, citing high ambulance fees, parking fees and the cost of prescription drugs. “These were all left by the previous (NDP) government.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca