Ontario municipalities unite in opposition to public health cuts

Thestar.com
May 8, 2019
Marieke Walsh

Ontario’s big city mayors were joined by some of their rural cousins Monday to amplify calls for a reversal of planned public health cuts.

The cuts, buried in Premier Doug Ford’s April budget, will see the province download funding responsibility for vaccinations, infection prevention and control and well-baby programs (among many others) on to the municipalities.

At the same time, the province is also whittling down the number of health boards in Ontario from 35 to 10 -- but other than saying Toronto will have a stand-alone health agency, it hasn’t said what the boundaries of the new health agencies will be or who will run them.

All of this leaves municipalities unable to respond to the cuts they know are coming, according to municipal officials from York Region, Peterborough and Eastern Ontario who spoke at a press conference at Toronto City Hall.

“We don’t have any information to even begin to make decisions,” Kerri Davies, the vice-chair of the Peterborough Board of Health told reporters.

She, and the other officials at the press conference called for the cuts to be reversed and questioned the wisdom of amalgamating health boards, a move they said would lead to “taxation without representation” because the new boards will represent much bigger geographic areas with dozens of municipalities in each.

Health Minister Christine Elliott has repeatedly said that the cuts won’t affect programs and could instead be realized through efficiencies, but officials at the press conference rejected that suggestion.

“We would like to better understand how a 20 per cent reduction in public health cannot result in a loss of services,” Davies said. “We would like to see the plan. Especially challenging since municipal boards of health have already set their current budgets.”

Denis Doyle, the mayor of Frontenac Islands and chair of the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Board of Health, warned that the cuts will could lead to the next SARS or Walkerton crisis -- something provincial officials have previously rejected.

“We simply cannot afford to have any infectious outbreak, like SARS, or water contamination event, like Walkerton. These events kill Ontarians and cost us millions. To the government of Ontario I say: you cannot be open for business if you aren’t preventing illness and promoting health,” Doyle said.

“History tells us the next threat is just around the corner. We ask the province to please reconsider the funding cuts. Our hospital hallways cannot take the pressure and our businesses cannot succeed in the face of these threats. I can foresee many unintended consequences.”

Over the next three years the province will transition from funding 75 per cent of public health programs, run by municipal agencies, to 60 per cent. In Toronto, though, the province will transition to a 50-50 cost share.

The province is also moving programs that it used to fully fund to a cost-shared model, 50-50 in Toronto and 60-40 for the other municipalities.

Health Minister Christine Elliott already told reporters last week that she won’t reverse the cuts, but officials told reporters that the province hasn’t told them that.

In an email exchange, Elliott’s spokesperson wouldn’t give any timeline for when the municipalities will get more details on the amalgamations and their impact on individual regions’ bottom lines.

“The boundaries of the new regional health units will be finalized in consultation with municipalities through technical working groups, which we expect to launch shortly,” spokesperson Hayley Chazan said.

“Through these technical working groups, we will also work with our municipal partners to design governance and delivery models that protect and preserve the voice of all municipalities. In doing so, we will ensure that public health investments better meet the needs of local communities.”

Chazan wouldn’t confirm if the amalgamation will take place in the current budget year.

While other municipalities added their voice to the opposition, Toronto Mayor John Tory pledged to make his voice louder. He promised to present his case ward by ward and with MPPs and businesses across the city.

Tory used a lunchtime speech in front of a business audience to argue against cuts that go beyond public health to affect transit funding and child care.

“There is no way I can accept a proposition which says we must weaken Toronto and make it less affordable for local taxpayers as the principal means of fixing provincial finances,” Tory said in his speech, according to a copy provided to journalists.

“I have a documented history of working well with two prime ministers and a previous premier,” he said.

“But so far there has been no willingness whatsoever to have those discussions and that’s why you’ll see me standing up for Toronto day in and day out when the province refuses to work with us on many of these issues, seemingly preferring instead to send frequent emails and letters informing us of unilateral cutbacks.”

The direct attack on the province was a significant change in tone for Tory, who in the past has been loathe to directly attack other levels of government.

The municipalities say they have yet to look at contingency plans should the province refuse to back down, and are instead focused on lobbying Ford to reverse the cuts.

“We are not prepared to choose between cutting breakfast programs or cutting vaccines in schools, and thus we are calling on the province to reverse these cuts.”