Niagara, Ontario’s Hospital System Finally Annouces A New Board – But How Accountable Will It Be To We The People

A  Commentary by Doug Draper

Going on almost two years following the purging of the former Niagara Health System board – Debbie Sevenpifer, her bunch hacks, Betty-Lou Souter, Paul Leon and so on – the province’s hand-picked supervisor, Kevin Smith, has announced a new board.

St. Catharines MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Jim Bradley has always been a good friend of Sevenpifer, Souter and the Niagara Health System

And what can one say, except that we can only hope it is  not a case of – to paraphrase that old Pete Townsend/The Who song – ‘meet the new board, same as the old board.’

Unfortunately, the new board very well could be just as unaccountable to the public across this Niagara region as the old board it is supposed to serve as an advocate for hospital services for all of us who live in Niagara. There is nothing that this Liberal Kathleen Wynne government has done to make it more accountable.

Did the Kathleen Wynne/Dalton McGuinty/Jim Bradley government respond to any requests from Niagara locals to have an elected Niagara Health System board? The answer is no.

Did they ever think that it might be a good idea to appoint more doctors from the NHS or even one bloody nurse, given the reported stress and burnout nurses are reported to be facing across hospital systems in this region , province and country, to this board? Once again, the answer is no.

And do we know why? The answer might be that old dinosaur politicians like Bradley don’t really want the rest of us to know much about the NHS and its elitist mechanisms. If we did, we might begin to find out why he and Sevenpifer, and others decided that placing the only new mega-hospital Niagara is likely to get provincial funding for over the next half decade would best for his St. Catharines riding in the first place.

The only real insight, other than an elected board that makes sense is legislation that would allow the province’s Ombudsman to investigate hospital systems across Ontario, and  a freedom of information act that lets all of us go and ask for information from ten or 15 years ago that might explain why Sevenpifer was hired in the first place, and why she and her crew at the time insisted on locating the new mega-hospital for Niagara in St. Catharines.

So why in hell would Bradley, who sat in the legislature like a buddha this past week, while members of the opposition were asking for more public accountability around the health ministry file, want to say yes to the Ombudsman having any say over health care issues under his government’s govern? Why would he accept that when it might open the door to the province’s health ministry, including hospital systems like the Sevenpifer/Souter/Bradley  NHS, being open to more scrutiny.  

And who knows?  Would freedom of information requests reveal that some local politicians’ buddies have done quite well off the lands in and around where the new NHS hospital is located? Would it reveal that there were reasons other than the best place in Niagara to locate this new hospital from a health care perspective at play here?

We sure wouldn’t want that to be subject to public scrutiny, now would we? Especially at a time when someone on government cabinet might now be finding out how to get around regular Ministry of Transporation policies to millions of dollars for a new interchange along the Highway 406 to accommodate traffic for this new hospital in this stupid location.

What was disgusting about the old NHS board, headed up by Jim Bradley’s old buddies Debbie Sevenpifer . Paul Leon and Betty-Lou Souter, was that not one of them in the last four or five years of that board’s existence, gave a shit about the public enough to make any information on the real reasons the west St. Catharines hospital site was chosen available. It was all about getting the hospital built in Bradley’s riding.

You would go to their  annual board meetings, and there they would be – sitting their  like zombies until they finally had to say, for whatever bloody reason, what a nice job Debbie was doing. And that would  be the end of the bloody meeting. No one who sat on that old board had the guts to speak up, even if they had a brain of their own!

So now we have a new board, under the same provincial government and a Jim Bradley who shows no apparent interest in opening up hospital systems across this province, regardless of the billions of dollars they collectively spend each year, to Ombudsman’s or any other public scrutiny.

Just sit there Jim, like an old buddah, and say no to any public scrutiny while your Liberal government gutted the legislature for months under a prorogued action that you approved of under the former Liberal premier, Dalton McGuinty.

To quote the late John Lennon, ‘How do you sleep?’

Now here is the list of new board appointees, and why should we give a shit? Are they going to care any more about health care for ordinary people in the region than Sevenpifer, Souter and Bradley did?

Dr. Kevin Smith, NHS Supervisor and the Community-Based Nominating Committee Announce the Appointment of the Board of Directors for NHS

Tuesday, April 09, 2013 – Following a rigorous application process, NHS Supervisor Dr. Kevin Smith, along with the Community Based-Nominating Committee, are pleased to announce the appointment of a new Board of Directors for Niagara Health System.

The complete list of new volunteer community-based Directors is as follows (see biographies below):

Bernice (Bunny) Alexander
Richard C. Baker
Larry Boggio
John Bragagnolo
Marti Jurmain
Ken Kawall
John MacDonald
Catherine Mindorff-Facca
Murray Paton
Cathy Sutherland
Frank Vassallo
Barry Wright
Dr. Sue Matthews (ex officio, non-voting member)
Dr. Joanna Hope (ex officio, non-voting member)
Dr. Andrei Arvinte (ex officio, non-voting member)

Excuse me, and this is coming from Doug Draper again, but when I see a board member whose name is ‘Bunny’, I think of the Easter Bunny, and that is about as believable as any recommendation from Kevin Smith for a new hospital for Niagara’s southern tier.

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