Parking wars

Goodbye Health Science Parking tickets

By Crystal Cline

There’s almost nothing worse than finding out a loved one has been diagnosed with cancer. When this happened to me, everything began spinning in my mind. Will he be OK? Did the surgery go well? How long will chemo take? Does he have a “good” cancer or a “bad” cancer? The last thing on my mind was, “is there enough money in my parking meter and will there be a ticket waiting for me?”

Last month Eastern Health announced that it will remove parking metres from the Health Sciences Centre and replace them with an automatic pay-on-foot system. I’m thinking something similar to what we see at the St. John’s International Airport. This is much more convenient than scrounging up the Tim Horton’s change in your car every few hours and feeding it to the meter. Maybe it’s impossible to have hospital parking completely free, especially with Memorial University in such a close proximity.

Dr. Rajendra Kale, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal published an editorial in November explaining the reasons why he believes hospital parking meters are a burden to patients and visitors. I tend to agree. I don’t know how many times, after the initial shock of finding out a family member was diagnosed with cancer, I debated with myself if I should go home for a bit since my meter is running dry.

I have to wonder how many visitors just don’t come at all because of parking meters. Visitors help boost a patient’s moral, leading them on their road to recovery. I must have pumped at least 50 dollars in there in the last two weeks. Chucking at least five loonies a day in that ugly gray pole adds up, especially if you’ve become a regular at the Health Sciences.

There is one thing that I don’t understand: why isn’t this happening sooner?

If the healthcare system receives the money from the meters, then I assume it goes towards hospital and parking upkeep. However, in the Romanow Commission in 2002, wasn’t it suggested that in order to sustain healthcare we need to stay away from privatization?

Personally, pumping quarters into a machine that’s considered necessary if you don’t want the wrath of the meter maids, well that seems a little towards privatization. The Canadian Health Care Act guarantees free medical services, however hospital parking is not free—this is not how logic works. It’s possible to claim ambulance bills or doctor’s appointments when you’re from out and around the bay, but does that also apply to that small fortune slowly accumulated by the parking meter?

Tom Badcock took his parking meter tickets to court last fall. The tickets he had stocked piled at the Health Sciences Centre while receiving chemotherapy were dismissed. Badcock argued that the Canada Healthcare Act ensures that Canadians should not face financial barriers to health care.

So take a long hard look at those meters now. If Eastern Health keeps its promise the meters should be gone by the end of this year. Thankfully, the new system will not ticket patients and visitors for expired meters.

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