As someone who has to frequently and regularly take a family member for treatments at Surrey Memorial Hospital and for lab tests at the Jim Pattison Outpatient and Surgery Centre, I find the parking fees to be outrageously high and exorbitant.
It is $ 4.50 for the first half-hour followed by $3.50 for every additional half-hour. By the time all is said and done, we end up spending close to $20 in parking fees alone at the hospital for each visit.
How can the general public earning a meagre minimum wage and the retirees who are on an unspeakably low fixed income afford a hospital visit to receive much-needed medical care?
Our politicians need to wake up, smell the coffee and start looking at the realities of real life on the nation’s streets and start figuring out how they really are going to help the people of this great country live better lives.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the parking fees include, believe it or not, a 22-per-cent parking tax.
If we, the citizens of Canada, are going to be continually taxed to death by our municipal, provincial and federal authorities, then is there a point in visiting the hospitals in the first place?
Bob Baro