Windsor's mayor asks the province to build a new interchange at Highway 401

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens has submitted a pitch to a provincial parliamentary committee for a new $100 million interchange to connect a Lauzon Parkway extension to Highway 401.

Dilkens was one of several speakers at a pre-budget committee meeting in Windsor Monday. He said the extension would allow for the creation of a new industrial park in the Lauzon Parkway corridor and, help new and existing industry get to the new Gordie Howe International Bridge.

"When constructed, this industrial park will be the closest industrial park to the U.S.-Canada border on the Canadian side," Dilkens said at a downtown hotel. 

Dilkens said he expects the project, including the Lauzon Parkway extension, to take five years. He said the city would be spending $100 million on extending the parkway.

He told the committee the project would not only benefit Windsor, but the province and the country as well.

Meanwhile, health care was top of mind for many of the 21 delegations that attended the day long consultation by the standing committee on finance and economic affairs.

The committee is made up of MPPs from the New Democrat, PC, Liberal parties, as well as independent members.

MPP Lisa Gretzky, who sits on the committee with NDP Economic Development Critic Terrence Kernaghan, criticized the province for its plans to use private clinics to provide some services. She says the province should be spending money on providing the services in hospitals rather spending money going to court to defend the provincial wage restraint legislation Bill 124.

"While this government is talking about expanding into the private for profit health care, saying we need to do that in order to somehow shore up public health care, they are actually taking nurses in publicly funded health care to court in order to suppress their wages," said Gretzky.

She also said there are operating rooms sitting idle that should be funded.

"ERs are closing. There's a surgical backlog that people are waiting a ridiculous amount of time for really important surgeries. And now they're providing us the only option, allowing private, for-profit companies to make money off of our health-care system," said Kernaghan.

But Windsor-Tecumseh MPP Andrew Dowie says the province isn't planning to do anything that hasn't already been done for decades.

"Our doctors are private corporations. Our in vitro fertilization clinic: a private corporation. The clinics are operating the with the ones proposed are similar to the Windsor Surgical Centre where you have a partnership with the local hospital," said Dowie, who also sits on the committee.

The committee will wrap up consulations on Feb. 10.