Niagara Health System’s Chair Is Moving Out

By Doug Draper

For the second time since the beginning of this year, one of the key figures heading up the Niagara Health System is on the way out.

Betty-Lou Souter, who has served as chair of the Niagara Health System’s board of trustees during a time of controversy and turmoil for this decade-old body that manages most of the hospital services in this region, is, in her words, “wrapping up” her stint as board chair this coming June.

“While there have been some very tumultuous times during my term as chair, there have been a number of accomplishments of which I have been very proud to be a part of,” said Souter in a list of her comments forwarded to Niagara At Large through the NHS.

Interestingly enough, Souter also states that she will “continue to be involved on the (NHS) board in my role as past chair.”

Well, we might all ask, who says so. Who decides who sits on this board, anyhow? And why should Souter be presumptuous enough to believe that she will continue serving on the board past this June, unless this is just some little boy and girls club between a sub-cutlure of elites, where they shuffle each other around. If that, in itself, isn’t a cry for Welland Riding MPP Peter Kormos’s call for an elected NHS board, then what is?

As many across this Niagara, Ontario region know, Betty-Lou Souter served as chair of the NHS board during the past five years under the NHS’s CEO and president Debbie Sevenpifer, who was ousted this past January.

Together, they pushed through a so-called ‘Hospital Improvement Plan’ for hospital sites across this region that was opposed by literally tens-of-thousands of residents at meetings here, and through rallies and petitions to Queens Park. That plan called for the closure of emergency rooms at hospitals in Port Colborne and Fort Erie, and for the consolidation of many of the Niagara’s acute care services in the hospital complex the NHS chose to build in west St. Catharines, rather than in a more central location in the region.

The continued debate over where hospital services in this region should be located, and how best to bring back or save acute care services that are fair and accessible to residents in Niagara’s central and southern municipalities is one of the legacies left over from the Sevenpifer/Souter era. It is a legacy neither one of them should be proud of.

And now here we go, with a Niagara Health System Board that is apparently going to pick a new chair all by itself again, without any input from the Niagara public at large. And Betty-Lou apparently assumes she will retain a seat on the board.

Isn’t that cozy. We should all be outraged and calling our provincial members of parliament demanding to know why this board is not elected by the larger public it is supposedly mandated to represent.

Located below are a few comments the NHS sent Niagara At Large this March 24 on Betty Lou-Souter’s departure from the chair’s seat.

“Betty-Lou is not currently available. Here are the comments Betty-Lou asked (the NHS) to share regarding her role as Chair of the Niagara Health System Board of Trustees.”
·    My term as Board Chair is wrapping up this June.
·    The Board as part of its normal governance process is currently working through a succession plan for the Chair.
·    The Board hopes to have a report on the succession plan completed in April.
·    Change in leadership is healthy – it enables organizations to move ahead.
·    While there have been some very tumultuous times during my term as Chair, there have been a number of accomplishments of which I have been very proud to be a part of.
·    I will continue to be involved on the board in my role as Past Chair.

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