Defend Public Healthcare

The private owners of the bridge from Windsor to Detroit have been waging a long fight to stop the development of a second bridge across the border, annoying the Conservative government of Stephen Harper and enraging Canadian business.   Perrin Beatty, head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce (which represents tens of thousands of Canadian businesses) has called   the new crossing “the single most important thing we can do to improve the functioning of the border” and complained " what you have is massive amounts of money being poured into a campaign to spread misinformation.”   The for-profit bridge owners are now collecting signatures  for a referendum to get a constitutional change to prevent Michigan from supporting a second bridge without another referendum. Privatization of what is properly a public amenity has led to the creation of a powerful vested interest opposing the expansion of the service.  Other businesses are completely vexed, and even the Harper government,

Canadian banks have usually  preferred  to limit their P3 (public private partnership) involvement to [a]  financial advice, and [b] financing  over the construction period  for the public facility being built (i.e. two to three years of financing rather than the twenty to fifty years of P3 financing required after construction). European banks (whose problems you may have been reading about lately) however have been a major player in the long term financing of P3 deals in Canada.  The 2008-9 financial crisis raised more questions over the claim by the banks and the rest of the P3 industry that the extra costs associated with P3s (compared to normal infrastructure procurement) was offset by a “risk transfer” to the private sector.   (To offset the large financing cost advantage of normal government infrastructure development, P3 supporters have to claim that considerable risk is transferred to the private sector  -- and that the public should pay a LOT of money for the risk tran

In May, Hotel Dieu Hospital in Windsor was seeking to establish 18 hospital beds in a private nursing home in Amherstburg.  The beds are so-called "assess and restore" hospital beds, designed to help patients transition from hospital back to home (or, failing that, a nursing home).   Assess and restore hospital beds are supposed to relieve pressure on more expensive to operate acute care beds, while also providing the special services needed to help patients make the return to home.  The hospital itself already operates 15 such transitional beds. In early May, the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care told the Windsor Star , that they were reviewing the proposal, as such a change needs approval under the Public Hospitals Act .   The private nursing home is operated by Seasons Retirement Communities, headquartered in Oakville.  Seasons Retirement   Communities  is a privately held partnership  created  in 2009 which owns and operates over 1,000 independent and assisted l

As noted yesterday, there has been very significant growth in the number of nurses. Moreover, Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs -- or 'LPNs' outside of Ontario) are growing three times more quickly than Registered Nurses, with 22.8% growth between 2006 and 2010 versus 7.4% growth for RNs. While over 60% of 'LPNs' work in just two areas ("Medicine/Surgery" or in "Geriatrics/Long Term Care"), those areas have actually seen slower than average growth (11% and 14.7% between 2006-2010). Really rapid growth was in other areas. The big areas of growth have been in "Operating Room/Recovery Room" (152.1% growth), "Emergency Care" (128.5%), "Community Health" (59%), "Maternity/Newborn" (35.2%), "Home Care" (49.1%), and "Paediatrics" (40.5%). Registered Nurses have grown in most categories -- the exceptions are "Geriatrics/Long Term Care", "Ambulatory care" and "Occupation