Bruce County Council passed a resolution calling on the Ministry of Health to pause all planned and future service level reductions at hospitals within the region.
The notice of motion was prepared by South Bruce Mayor Mark Goetz and Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau, in response to the removal of beds from Durham Hospital.
The county councillors noted that the region already supplies 30 percent of Ontario's electricity and pointed to the major projects being developed in the region to expand that production, including Bruce Power adding a new reactor and the possible deep geological repository in South Bruce.
Charbonneau said if the federal and provincial government want to expand nuclear production, they need to conduct a review of local healthcare first.
"We're seeing lots of impacts to local healthcare and while that is happening, we're being asked as a region increasingly to support nationally significant projects," he told council. "But it requires I think a broader analysis of services like healthcare to make sure that while we're trying to have those projects happen in our community, we can have the services here necessary to support the people who are moving here."
Goetz says the hospital closures also hurt their ability to tackle housing issues.
"Something like this can have a huge impact on our goals that we set here at a County level to work on the housing crisis that we face," he said. "Talking with the Mayor of West Grey, he's got quite a subdivision at the north end of Durham and that can help immensely with the situation we're dealing with here. But if you lose your hospital, I'm not 100 per cent sure that you're going to have a real attractant there to attract people to that community, along with the need to attract those people to help with those big projects we're working on."
The resolution will now be circulated to the Prime Minister, Premier of Ontario, and the Deputy Premier and Minister of Health; as well as all municipalities in Bruce, Grey and Huron Counties.