A trio of Ontario Liberal leadership candidates have weighed in after Premier Doug Ford blamed the previous Ontario governments under Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGuinty for Brampton’s health-care emergency.

“Keep in mind, we’ve been in power 18 months. This just didn’t happen overnight. This happened over 15 years of mismanagement from the previous Liberal government,” Ford told reporters on Jan. 24.

Scarborough-Guildwood MPP Mitzie Hunter, Don Valley East MPP Michael Coteau and former Vaughan-Woodbridge MPP Steven Del Duca, who are all running to succeed Wynne as leader, mostly defended their party’s record while calling out funding cuts by the current PC government.

“Instead of blaming past governments, the Ford government needs to take responsibility and stop cutting health care,” said Hunter in an emailed statement. “Municipalities should not have to declare a health-care emergency in this province. This is an extreme measure brought on by a lack of attention from the Ford government.”

"There are so many different factors at play but the simple solution is to add more capacity. If I was premier, I would be focusing on (that). I think health care planning and resource management is a larger conversation than just what's taking place in the Peel Region, it's right across the province. And what we see today is a government that doesn't have a plan to lead us into the next decade, the next 20 (or 50) years," Coteau told the Brampton Guardian.

Del Duca laid some of the blame on the well-documented frosty relationship between Ford and Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, who met on Jan. 24 for the first time since Brown became mayor.

“One of the most important ways that we move a province forward is for Queen’s Park and the provincial government to work in collaboration with municipalities," said Del Duca. "Sadly, that hasn’t been the case over the last 20 months or so. We’ve seen unilateral cuts, we’ve seen retroactive cuts, we’ve seen a lot of combativeness (and) that’s not the way to move forward.”

Ahead of Brampton council’s emergency declaration on Jan. 22, health-care advocacy group Concerned Ontario Doctors (COD) called the city the “epicentre of Ontario’s health-care crisis and hallway medicine crisis,” due to chronic underfunding compared to the provincial average.

“The blame lies with Premier Ford and (Health Minister) Christine Elliott and the successive local MPPs within the various governments over the past several decades that have consistently failed to meet the needs of our community,” COD president Dr. Kulvinder Gill told council.

Ford promised his government’s support for the second phase of Peel Memorial just two days later during a Jan. 24 news conference.