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The NDP wants MPPs to return to Queen’s Park.

They are asking Premier Doug Ford to recall the legislature to deal with the increased pressure the health care system is facing.

The hospital in Marathon was the latest to shut down its emergency room because of a lack of staff.

Ornge’s air ambulance service also reports transporting over 540 kids under the age of 18 in the last two months.

“Doug Ford should not be closing down the legislature when critically ill children are being flown all over the province in search of an empty ICU bed,” says the NDP Interim leader Peter Tabuns in a release.

“It’s scary to have a sick child and no hospital nearby with capacity to help, and it would be unthinkable to let this crisis go unanswered by the government for weeks and months over the winter as viruses circulate.”

“Northern communities have broken access to health care to begin with,” adds NDP health critic Frances Gélinas. “It’s frightening when one hospital shuts down its ER and the nearest one is 70 kilometres away.”

MPPs are not expected back in the legislature until the middle of February.