A Brief Comment by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
I don’t remember receiving an email inviting Niagara At Large to cover this event, this past Wednesday, October 16th, featuring a talk from the Ontario Liberal government’s hand-picked supervisor of the Niagara Health System, on the future of health care in Niagara.
The Ontario Liberal Government’s hand-picked interum supervisor for the Niagara Health System talks the future in ways that may not be all that friendly to what is left of Canada’s publically funded health care system. File photo by Doug Draper
This talk, hosted by the Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce at a morning meeting of its private business friends in north Niagara, was delivered by Kevin Smith, who took over the Niagara Health System – the organization the former Ontario Mike Harris/Tim Hudak government set up more than a decade ago to amalgamate hospital services across this region – more than two years go from the disgraced former NHS CEO Debbie Sevenpifer.
According to an account o Smith’s address to the Greater Niagara Chamber honchoes published by the Sun Median paper chain’s St. Catharines Standard, he said he sees a “sea change” in health delivery services that ‘could mean like ambulatory clinics, physiotherapy and antibiotic infusions could be provided within the community.’
Smith reportedly went on to mention that hospital systems like the NHS are facing a budget freeze from the province and he may have mentioned, as he did recently in another forum, that the NHS is now facing another $12 million shortfall around its budget as a result.
The Standard story goes on to quote Smith saying; “I would say (we’ll see) a much more integrated health care network, as opposed to a hospitality-centred approach.”
All of this, I would submit, may be interpreted as code for more privatization of our health care services and more downloading of those services on local municipalities that are already facing high costs around ambulance and other services.” And that means more downloading of costs for health care from federal and provincial levels of government, where the funding would come out of progressive income taxes, to local municipalities where the property tax system is regressive and hits people on low or no or fixed incomes as much as it does on people at the higher end of the income spectrum.
Is this fair? Is this where we want our federal and provincial governments want to take what has been one of the world’s great examples of public health care for all?
Finally, let us not forget, and you can research the facts if you choose to, that the former Bob Rae NDP government of Ontario in the early 1990s, and the former Mike Harris/Tim Hudak Conservative government for the rest of the 1990s and early 2000s, cut provincial funding for hospitals in Ontario, contributing to the diminishing services we continue to wrestle with to this day.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
Extrapolating from the words chosen with great precision by Dr. Smith, South Niagara will get its hospital when hell freezes over.
Blaming Mike Harris for consolidating purchasing groups into regional entities or Bob Rae for defunding medical schools or shorting hospital capital budgets does not address the hard cold fact that this current McGuinty-Wynne government has increased the provincial debt by over $120 Billion in these past 10 years with little to show for it. Per the reports of Ontario’s Auditors-General, it is a matter of record that at least $20 Billion of that was shamelessly misspent or just plain lost on boondoggles and failed programs.
Ontario now is one of the highest taxed province – one of the highest cost jurisdictions for electricity, gasoline & diesel, highest cost “adult” beverages, longest hospital waiting times, and so on … over-regulated and under-governed.
Transcending insult to compound the injury, Wynne is now seriously looking at creating another cash pool to splash in – its very own pension fund – its very own piggy bank with which to “invest” in newer better vote getting schemes or to pay for their unfunded liabilities such as 80 cent power.
The need for such an expertly executed tap-dancing by Dr. Smith is a direct consequence of this egregious and possibly border-line criminal mismanagement of Ontario’s economy by Premier Dad and his hyper-partisan enablers.
LikeLike
Do any of us remember when the HIP (hospital improvement plan) was released and it was supposed to balance the NHS budget by 2013? Many of us complained loudly about the HIP….so loudly they sent Mr. Smith down to the NHS to straighten things out. When he arrived, he said he didn’t want to talk about the HIP as it caused too much angst. He didn’t want to talk about the HIP, he just wanted to implement it, which is exactly what he did.
And now we have a $12 million deficit.
Smith now tells us to look for a “sea change” to a broader network of integrated providers….blah, blah, blah. He says many of our services could be provided at clinics provided within the community (rather than at hospitals). Has anybody told Smith, in many cases, the hospital is the heart of the community. Most of these local hospitals have been paid for and no longer carry mortgages. Rather than placing these “private” clinics at various locations and paying a private landlord rent, doesn’t it make more economic sense to locate the clinics in underutilized hospitals and rental revenue can then be turned over to the needy NHS. Rather than hunting all over town for services, it would all be one stop shopping.
Smith fooled some of the people about the HIP, but now I see he is still trying to make us believe we might have a shot at a new hospital in Niagara Falls. Does anybody ever check to see if he is crossing his fingers as he speaks?
LikeLike
You know the old proverb, Fool me once, shame on you…..Fool me twice, shame on me.
LikeLike
Pat, absolutely I remember the HIP. It wasn’t so “hip” after all. Now we have large groups of people that will not be able to access health care because of the shenaningans going on at Queen’s Park and in the executive offices of the NHS. Transportation to medical services is not even yet a fait accompli. I hear from people all the time having to pay a king’s ransom in cab fares to get to the hospital late at night to get tests done as some of the CT scanners and so forth operate 24-7. I can only imagine there must be many people outside of the border of St. Catharines that simply cannot access health care because they either don’t drive or don’t have somebody to wake up at 3:00 in the morning to take them there. I am so tired of being governed by fools that have lived a life that most of us never have here and take all of their privilege for granted. The CEO of NHS should not be paid more than the Prime Minister of this country, which is another idiosyncratic thing about our health care system. How many nurses for example can be hired for that amount of money? As well as how much health care can be delivered for the same amount of money the Liberals just blew on moving a couple of gas plants to save a few seats?
LikeLike