HUNTSVILLE — Huntsville mayor Scott Aitchison raised his hand as Green Party of Ontario Leader Mike Schreiner took questions from the floor.

Schreiner, who moments before had finished his party platform spiel on a whistle stop in Muskoka on March 28, had just responded in favour of two hospitals for Muskoka after a resident asked his opinion on the hot-button issue.

But Aitchison followed the comment with another question that seemed to suggest simply supporting the idea of two hospitals wasn’t enough.

“One of the issues we have here is that the funding formula for acute-care hospitals favours these assembly line operations in big cities where there are lots of people rolling through and they’re doing dozens and dozens of the same procedure over time,” said the mayor. “Small-town Ontario right now is literally under attack with the health-care funding formula.”

He noted the area already invested in preventive health-care options, such as nurse practitioner-led clinics, community health care and enhanced primary care access, as Schreiner recommended.

“How do you fix the funding formula to address the needs of small-town Ontario — in other words all the medium-sized hospitals in the province — 22 of which are all struggling to keep the lights on because of a funding formula that is geared toward St. Mike’s in downtown Toronto?”

The crowd greeted the question with applause.

Schreiner responded that flawed one-size-fits-all provincial funding formulas and policies threatened not only rural hospitals, but also rural schools and businesses.

“And so we need to have a different funding formula for large urban centres and for rural communities so people have access to the care they need,” he said. “And it needs to account for the fact that you’re not going to have assembly line care here because you don’t have population base here for it, but you still need acute-care facilities.”

An audience member exclaimed, “Hear! Hear!”