By Doug Draper
In the days since the ouster of Niagara Health Systems CEO Debbie Sevenpifer on Tuesday, January 18, this news site and others, we suspect, have been swarmed with requests from citizens in this region to know what kind of a severance package Sevenpifer is getting.
It is one damn good question, given the fact the Sevenpifer, alone, was siphoning up more than $340,00 of our taxdollars annually in salaries and benefit, while the NHS is forecasting a $7 million annual operating debt at the same time the NHS has been cutting frontline services at hospitals in Fort Erie, Port Colborne, Welland, Niagara Falls and other areas of the region.
So why shouldn’t ordinary taxpayers, including those whose families have had more than their share of hardships around hospital services cuts, demand to know what kind of severance package Sevenpifer is getting?
Well, for your information, Niagara At Large has asked the NHS for this information, via email and a phone call to NHS’s communications people, and has yet to receive a response.
Apparently there is no rush from the NHS to tell the people of this region and province, who pay the tab for its hospital services through our tax dollars, to let us know how much it is costing us to cut such a high-priced bureaucrat as Sevenpifer off.
According to one daily newspaper in this region – the St. Catharines Standard that has almost always been a propaganda rag for anything Sevenpifer wanted to dump out –
A daily newspaper in this region that has always played footsies with Sevenpifer and the NHS – the raggedy St. Catharines Standard – declared in a front-page story this January 21 that the people of this region “might never know” how much of a kiss off Sevenpifer gets.
That is not a good enough answer. Don’t you think we should all know how much of our money is going to Sevenpifer’s send-off package when there seems to be so little left for the frontline hospital services we need for ourselves, our families and friends in this region?
We should all be contacting our members of provincial department and demanding how much of a payout Sevenpifer, who was summarily responsible for the good, bad and ugly of our hospitals services that have occurred to date, and demanding to know what chunk of money that could otherwise go into frontline services Sevenpifer is walking away with.
Please share your comments on this abomination below but also make sure you make your views known on this one to your provincial members of parliament because this lack of disclosure, so far, as how much of our precious few health dollars are going to Sevenpifer’s severance package is an outrage.
Visit Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.
Niagara At Large 
Well lets think about this for a minute. They have paid her $340,000. + her expenses to ruin our health care system , which I might add has resulted in numerous deaths in this region. So let’s see how much reward do we give her for this.
She was receiving on average of $931. 51 aday, so realtivly speaking she would have received about $931.51 x 553 days =$ 515,123. 29 so we could round it off to $516,000.00 for a severance for 18 months pay. But if we divide it by 5 days a week, let’s see, she would have been getting $1307.69 a day which comes out to $5o9,999.10 for 390 days severance. So I think she cut a deal of $500,000.00.
Now we need to get rid of the rest of the bandits that are still there. I cannot believe Betty Lou Souter congratulating her on the new hospital, that is going to have less beds and have to service a larger area. This has also been accomplished with the help of the City Of St. Catharines not making General Motors put in another possible business in the Ontario Street plant, because they need these lands to construct a bypass to get to the hospital, because we will have residents in St. Catharines dying because the emergency vehicles cannot get through the grid lock on 4th avenue to get to the hospital. Maybe we should fire all of these intelligent people and put medical staff into these positions that know what we need, and how to deliver services to save lives.
Then maybe we will find out how much extra we have paid these incompetents to ruin our health services and how much they really have been rewarded for this deed.
Citizens of St. Catharines and the Niagara Region are going to keep the funeral directors busy with funerals because the aging population that we have just won’t be important enough to keep alive.
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Can you just imagine the severance pay that is going to be going out to Debbie Sevenpifer? Money that would be better used to pay for front line health care of many! Two other questions that should be asked are; which budget is it coming out of and, if the statements we hear today are correct, why will the public freedom of information act not give the public the right to know the sum of the severance package?
We all have to look at the facts. Debbie was not the only one making decisions, she had Ms Souter and a strong board of directors that worked with her and had a vote in what was done, so this is really just the beginning, but it is, a starting place.
We blame Deb Matthews, the MOH, and once again she is only the “talking head” of the party and recites what is to be said, so does that mean that she is next in line? She does not listen and when you read her comments in the news, she does not hold Niagara to be important enough to help us. Now, she did go to Petrolia and put a hand out, but with us she grabs it back quickly. I have to think, and take heart in the fact that the Falls begins at the top of the brink, and it is a long sudden drop to the bottom.
Hang in there Niagara we have not, and will not, quit our fight for equal and accessible health care, so put on your yellow shirts and join us. Write to your MPPs and speak out while you have the opportunity.
Joy Russell – Yellow Shirt Brigade
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When people get fired, which seems to be the case here – do they deserve a severance? When her “goons” fired people at the NHS they are very unceremoniously and publicly escorted off the premises by security. Doubt this happened to her. This leads one to believe she wasn’t fired but “let go” with good wishes and very likely did get a nice severance. I wonder what nice little job her cronies have lined up for her behind a desk somewhere else. Perhaps there is no job lined up and she is retiring to palm tree land since, after all, she should have been able to save a few pennies over the last several years.
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Just when you think nothing could top the last RIDICULOUS thing you saw or heard…… sure enough another assinine happening occurs!!!!! HOW DARE THEY SAY THEY ARE NOT PRIVY TO TELL US WHERE OUR MONEY IS BEING SPENT AND GIVEN OUT!!!! After Debbie S. fades into the sunset, if we don’t get our act together and stand up for our rights, many more “BEHIND CLOSED DOORS” deals will be made and because we seem weak & unwilling to call them to task, THEY WILL CONTINUE TO WALK ALL OVER US AND OUR RIGHTS RE: HEALTH AND OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES!!!! PLEASE inform our gov’t that we’ve had enough and they are our spokesmen NOT our bosses. They were voted in to do OUR bidding not what they decide is best for us. We have voiced our concerns & they KNOW we are in CRISIS in Niagara esp. F.E. & Pt.Col. so they have no other choice to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to correct the dilemma THEY have created!!!!
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I sent electronic letters out to local politicians. I hope everyone will do the same. I have also consulted Council Of Canadians for “next steps”.
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Some contact info.:
Malcolm Allen MP (NDP) riding of Welland
Allen1@parl.gc.ca
Peter Kormos (NDP) MPP Welland
pkormos-co@ndp.on.ca
Kim Craitor MPP Niagara Falls, Niagara-On -The -Lake, Fort Erie
Kim@KimCraitor.com
Tim Hudak, Ontario P.C Party Leader
comments@ontariopc.net
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Dalton McGuinty, Ontario Premier (Liberal Party)
Fax: 416-325-3745
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I call your attention to a recently released report…Rural and Northern Health Care Framework…Dec.17, 2010 that can be found at http://www.oha.com
I think the findings and plans are relevant to those of us living in south Niagara. Have a look!
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As one of the many warriors in this fight against Health Care privatization I find it not the least bit startling that the Chairperson and Dictator of the NHS Betty Lou Souter would argue that her bosses (the Taxpayers) do not have the right to know the amount of Sevenpifer’s golden handshake.
So what’s different? She threatened legal action against the doctors when they had every right to move Dr Spragg out as the Chief of Medical Staff for the NHS seeing as how his term had actually expired months before, plus the fact it was revealed he had been harassing and provoking discontent among the staffing doctors. Is the interm CoMS Dr. Hope who came from being a member of the Board still in that position????
This Board of Directors are an appointed hand picked bunch of wanna bee catering to the dictatorial power of their whip and the whole Board should be eliminated immediately including the biggest wanna be Souter
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To Peter — the Rural and Northern Healthcare Panel is finally consulting with those communities covered by their mandate. Niagara is not one of them. We are not regarded as “rural”, presumably because our “hospital” is the NHS. This Panel was not struck until the HIP was in process of being implemented, and the Fort Erie and Port Colborne Hospitals already downgraded to UCCs.
The Ministry of Health and Long Term Care is adamant that there will be no reconsideration of the HIP. All protests — from citizens, medical professionals, municipal governments and local MPPs — have fallen on deaf ears. The Ombudsman’s report into the Hamilton-Niagara-Haldimand-Brantford LHIN, the product of an investigation sparked in large measure by complaints against the NHS, is effectively ignored, as is the death of young Reilly Anzovino.
The Ontario Health Coalition prepared a excellent report following the tour of a panel of experts that this citizen-based organization convened to listen to the concerns of citizens over hospital restructuring. Niagara figured large in the report — and the Minister of Health promised to read it. If she has done so, it has made no difference to her attitude. The NHS continues to close departments and eliminate hospital beds from the system.
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Fiona…..thank you for the update. It certainly points out the apparent disregard to pleas from our area. It appears that only a major crisis will get their attention. When the new hospital completion is delayed, the costs have risen way above estimates, the infrastructure roads are not finished,professional staffing has fallen short, and people continue to die before they can receive emergency care, perhaps then the MOH will take notice, but I doubt it. Toronto, here I come!
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Yes, I agree that the public should know her severance package as well as all the other hospital CEO’s that leave their office.
Why not? Not one bureacrat has replied telling us what value we’re getting for these lavish Golden Parachutes. Has anyone got the intestinal fortitude
to stand up and tell us what value we’re getting for this? I challenge anyone to let us know. But you can bet that I’ll just keep getting silence.
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