Questions raised about transparency as board of new health super agency meets

Thestar.com
March 14, 2019
Teresa Boyle

The newly appointed board of directors of the Ontario Health super agency held its inaugural meeting on Monday with no advance notice or invitation to the public, raising questions about transparency.

Meantime, more than 200 board members of 20 smaller agencies that are being swallowed up by Ontario Health were abruptly and quietly sacked last week, leaving some with hard feelings.

Those agencies include 14 local health integration networks (LHINs) and Cancer Care Ontario, which always held open board meetings, and posted agendas and minutes online.

“We were unceremoniously let go with no public thank you or acknowledgement,” said a former LHIN board member who asked to remain anonymous so he could speak freely.

The board of the super agency should not be meeting “in secret, behind closed doors and with no public knowledge,” he said. “Given that it is a super agency, you want even more eyes on it.”

The health ministry confirmed on Wednesday that Ontario Health held its first board meeting two days earlier at an undisclosed location in Toronto.

It was “largely an orientation meeting” and was not open to the public, said a statement from the ministry’s communications branch.

“Ontario Health board meetings are not required to be open to the public but the board recognizes the need to engage Ontarians in continually improving their health-care system. The board will be required to establish mechanisms for public engagement to ensure openness and transparency,” read the statement

Health Minister Christine Elliott issued a news release Friday afternoon, announcing the board of Ontario Health, the umbrella agency that will run the province’s health system.

The new chair is Bill Hatanaka, a former professional football player with the Ottawa Rough Riders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Hatanaka currently serves as a corporate director of Invesco Canada, RP Investment Advisors and ICE NGX Canada Ltd.

The directors of Ontario Health have also been appointed to take over the boards of the 20 smaller agencies, which will eventually be dissolved under the Ford government’s health transformation plans.

In addition to the LHINs and Cancer Care Ontario, these agencies include eHealth Ontario, Trillium Gift of Life Network, Health Quality Ontario, HealthForceOntario and Health Shared Services Ontario.

Former deputy health minister Dr. Bob Bell said Ontarians should not be learning about meetings of the Ontario Health board after the fact.

Transparency was a legislative requirement for the LHINs, he said, explaining that all board meetings had to be publicly announced in advance and open to the public. There were limited reasons for the boards to go in-camera.

Bell said there is no such transparency requirement in the enabling legislation for the super agency: “There is no mention of whether board meetings should be open to the public. Will all board meetings be like the first on Monday? Unannounced and closed to public?”

Transparency is a basic principle of Ontario’s health system, Bell said.

“Decisions should not be made behind closed doors and all Ontarians who want to understand the process of health-care decision making should be able to attend board meetings,” he argued.

Bell noted that the super agency legislation has only had second reading and questioned whether Ontario Health even exists right now.

The ministry said the organization has been incorporated under the name of Health Program Initiatives as a non-share capital corporation. It will become a Crown agency when enabling legislation is passed.

More than 200 members of the 20 smaller boards learned their appointments had been terminated on Friday, shortly after the news release naming the new super agency board was issued. These individuals, typically community leaders, served on boards in a voluntary capacity.

The former LHIN board member interviewed by the Star said he and his colleagues were emailed letters signed by Elliott stating that their order-in-council appointments had been revoked and thanking them for their service. They were blindsided by the move, he said, adding some have been volunteering on the boards for years and felt disrespected.

Bell said the new super agency is not off to a good start: “Making this abrupt change in governance without informing Ontarians and doing it before legislation has been passed is arrogant.”

Premier Doug Ford revealed on Wednesday that management-level jobs will be lost in the planned merger of the 20 health agencies, The Canadian Press reported.

During last year’s election campaign, Ford often promised that under a Conservative government not a single job would be lost in a bid to trim a multi-billion-dollar deficit.

But in recent weeks his government and ministers have shifted that message from no job losses to no front-line job losses.

“You know who’s going to lose their jobs, unfortunately, are the people in the LHINs -- the CEOs that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars, the big silos they have there, the big executives, presidents and vice-presidents making outrageous amounts of money,” Ford said.

“We’re going to take that money and put it to the front lines.”