This petition aims to help save St. Josephs Hospital in Dalhousie, New Brunswick. In June 2004, New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord announced that the hospital would be downgraded to a Community Health Centre and that 25\% of the beds in Region 5 (serving Restigouche County, Gloucester County, and parts of Quebec) would be eliminated.

This will place remarkable strain on the health care system in northern New Brunswick. It will place additional stress on the providers of health care the doctors and nurses and cycle patients through the hospital quicker than ever. It will result in layoffs of these very important medical staff, making retention and recruitment efforts in the future much more challenging. In addition, many hospital staff will be laid off.

Patients will have to travel longer distances, and so will visitors. The impact on emergency care is still not defined. Nursing beds in this part of the province will not be expanded. It is unclear as to what will be the outcome for seniors who are in hospital awaiting nursing home beds. Premier Lords government has stated that ill seniors will be put in beds where they can be placed this may be away from their families, which may help their conditions deteriorate further.

As northern New Brunswick is a largely industrial region, with many citizens at or near retirement age, we believe that health care services should be expanded, not eliminated. We need our beds, and we need the government to see how important they are to us.

Sign this petition to show Premier Lord that his cuts to St. Josephs Hospital and Region 5 are unjust and unsafe! Premier Lord, there is no evidence that cutting beds will improve health care. We call on you to do the right thing, and keep St. Josephs Hospital open!