Defend Public Healthcare

The attack on community control of local hospitals continues.  This time in Northumberland, where the hospital board, which backed Liberal government cuts in local services, is using a new nomination process to prevent local hospital members from electing new hospital board members.  Instead the board has simply chosen five incumbent board members as the successful candidates! Former Coburg Mayor Angus Read finds it strange that members of the hospital board would be those deciding who should fill five board vacancies -- in essence "voting on themselves". The hospital board and its chief executive officer "want full control and they are leaving the people of Northumberland out of it," said local businessman Bill Patchett in an interview with Northumberland Today. Patchett, who helped with fundraising for the construction of the new hospital, adds "We're contemplating legal action." Here, as elsewhere, the new ideology is a 'skills-based board

The New Brunswick government has proposed in April to make amendments to existing legislation so that half the board members for the province's hospital authorities will be elected by the general population by 2012.  The province may be trying to head off a constitutional challenge from french language groups. We could do with a little bit of hospital democracy in Ontario.  Ontario hospitals were born out of local communities, but the Ontario Liberal govenrment has consistently moved to undermine local community control of hospitals and local hospital opposition to the cutbacks. And don't get me started on the emerging role of hospital CEOs as government flak catchers... dallan@cupe.ca