Defend Public Healthcare

A great new short video for the September 13 Ontario Health Coalition rally at Queen's Park, produced by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union  (and briefly featuring OCHU's Louis Rodrigues).  Please spread it around! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCaQYjShAJo

Public sector wage settlements fell in July to an annual average of 1.2%, according to new data from the Ontario Ministry of Labour.  The agreements cover 9,073 workers.  The average fell from 1.5% in June. The July settlements are less than half of the current 3% rate of inflation in Ontario. Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservative party claim that public sector settlements are "unsustainable". Apparently, only a more rapid decline in the standard of living is good enough for the Tories.

Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives may be taking Christina Blizzard's suggestion  that they trim their message and focus on attacking public sector "entitlements".    His response to the  Toronto Star's dismissal of the PC municipal program was to attack public sector union settlements and interest arbitration: " Dalton McGuinty’s broken arbitration system has cost municipalities hundreds of million of dollars for excessive wage settlements that hamstring local leaders and burden families who pay the bills. For nearly eight years, Dalton McGuinty has handed out unsustainable collective agreements, which set the benchmark for arbitrations with municipal public sector workers. .... On Oct. 6, Ontario families will face a  clear   choice  between more of Dalton McGuinty downloading the cost of his  broken  arbitration system onto municipalities, or an Ontario PC government that will provide families with relief." Hudak and the PCs may be unaffected

Below is a report from the Ottawa Citizen on what Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak told them about "interest arbitration" -- the system used by public sector employers and unionized essential service workers (like hospital workers, firefighters, and police) to settle contract disputes.  Essential service workers are required to settle contract disputes through interest arbitration and are forbidden  from striking by law. At a meeting this week with the Ottawa Citizen's editorial board, Hudak called the province's arbitration system badly broken.  He said arbitrators do not respect the ability of taxpayers to afford the settlements they hand down, even though the law calls upon them to do just that. Hudak accused the premier of ducking the issue, a key factor driving municipal tax hikes. "Dalton McGuinty will look the other way: he doesn't have the courage to take it on. I do," Hudak told the Citizen . "I can and I will fix the brok

Ontario's 14 Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) have come out with a new report just before the provincial election.  They make five recommendations, notably including a plea for their continued existence and a call for better alignment and formalized relationships between public health, primary care, CCACs, and Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs). The call for recognition of the important role of CCACs is hardly surprising: their sister organizations, LHINs, play a somewhat similar role and they have been sharply attacked, with the Progressive Conservatives damning the LHINs as an ineffective and costly layer of government bureaucracy.  Instead the CCACs insist their role in case management provides a vital "neutral broker" in the health care system, and is not simply another layer of administration. The call for better alignment and a formal relationship is hardly relevant to the LHIN--CCAC relationship -- the CCACs were already restructured to align with t

Contrary to a demand from the leader of Canadian doctors, the federal Conservative government is in no hurry to start negotiations for a new  federal-provincial health care funding accord.   Fair enough: very few governments would want to ink up a deal that commits them to long term funding increases if the economy is in the doldrums. From the point of view of advocates of public health care this also makes sense: it's going to be tough sledding to get a deal with the needed long term funding increases if the economy is tanking.   Also, getting a deal closer to the next  federal election will encourage the Tories to actually think of what the public might want -- and that will encourage them to spend on public health care.   During the past election, the federal Conservatives were forced to promise that they would continue the 6% increases for health care for at least two years after the current funding accord expires in the spring of 2014.  But for how long, and under what c

Here are some of the comments at a Health Coalition town hall meeting earlier this week about the problems at the Niagara Health System hospitals (as reported by the Welland Tribune ): John Degazio, a former housekeeping staff member at Welland hospital, recalled trying to draw attention to problems with the cleaning of hospital rooms after staffing levels were severely cut in the early 2000s. He said he recalled seeing bed linens that were supposed to be clean, with blood and feces stains on them. "At the end of it all, I was forced to leave (my job) for bringing up stuff that was contrary to people's health," he said. Retired nurse Nancy Gladman said more than a decade ago, before cuts, there were enough beds to isolate patients with potentially contagious diseases. "It's just a mess," Gladman said. "Really, I wouldn't advise anyone to use any hospital in Niagara run by the NHS." Registered nurse Cindy Forster, a Welland region