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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 20 June 2019

Ontario's Health and Long term Care Minister Christine Elliott is losing a big chunk of her responsibilities as long-term care is passed over to Dr Merrilee Fullerton and Michael Tibollo takes on mental health and addictions. 

Fullerton and Tibollo also join the inflated 28 strong Cabinet, with salaries and staff to match.

Elliott is delighted about the cut in her workload, effusively congratulating Ford earlier today and telling us she is looking forward to working closely with her new Cabinet colleagues.

Ford likes Elliott's congratulations!

Ford tweets that he likes the fact that Elliott is congratulating him! 

I don’t know if the burden of being Minister for Health and Long-term Care was too much for Elliott to carry alone. Maybe she asked Ford to lighten her load.

On 26 February 2019 Elliott was speaking about her new “People’s Health Care Act” lambasting the alleged fragmentation of the health and long-term care system she inherited. She told us:

“Too much time and attention is spent on maintaining a siloed and fragmented system… Right now care is fragmented, particularly at transition points, for example, from hospital to home care.”

“We envision a community-based health care delivery model that connects care - and includes primary care and hospitals, home care and long-term care, mental health and addictions supports, just to name a few.”  

Help required

She didn’t say then that she needed help to deliver her vision.

But she does. And she is grateful.

I shall be interested to see how the Ministry’s organisation chart is divided up to reflect all the new responsibilities and who deals with the inevitable overlaps.

Oops! Almost forgot. 

Caroline Mulroney was demoted.

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Background paper considered by York Region on 20 June 2019 on the health service restructuring as proposed by Christine Elliott. The map is here.

Update from the Toronto Star: The day Ford blew up his Cabinet to save himself. And how the Globe and Mail sees it.

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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 17 June 2019

In her winter newsletter PC Deputy Leader Christine Elliott told her constituents in Newmarket-Aurora there would be no cuts to front-line services and no job losses. 

That promise may be difficult to sustain.

On Thursday (20 June 2019) York Regional Council will be considering a report from the Regional Treasurer, Laura Mirabella, who says the provincial funding reduction this year is estimated to be $10.86 million with the largest direct impact on Community and Health Services.

Child care and paramedics will see significant cuts in the years up to 2022.

Christine Elliott's achievements

Elliott has been hard at work tweeting about her Government’s Olympian achievements. Hardly a day goes by without a new announcement about a milestone reached.

The Government House Leader Todd Smith (who is responsible for managing the business at Queen's Park) breathlessly tweets on 7 June:

"Our Government has accomplished more in 12 months than any other Government in Ontario's history."

This reminds me of the old Soviet Union which regularly boasted about increased tractor production when harvests were failing.

The Toronto Star has a different take on the first anniversary of the Ford Government giving us a list of the casualties during a year of slash and burn. 

Elliott has also been championing Bill 108 (More Homes, More Choice Act 2019) which has been roundly condemned by Aurora’s energetic Mayor, Tom Mrakas. 

The Government introduced Bill 108 on 2 May 2019 and it got Royal Assent on 6 June 2019. The consultation period ran for less than one month. That’s the way Ford likes it. Laws should be made fast with no messing about! He doesn’t want people to bother with the small print. 

Developers don't like development charges

The Bill was supposed to promote new home ownership and rental housing but it also makes big changes to how municipalities determine and collect development charges. 

Development charges are paid by developers to municipalities theoretically to offset the costs of growth – the new roads, lighting and infrastructure that new communities need.  

Like Mrakas, Newmarket’s Mayor John Taylor has expressed major concerns about Bill 108’s likely impact. A staff report going up to today’s Committee of the Whole (17 June 2019) says this at page 253 onwards: 

“The proposed changes in Bill 108 represent a dramatic change from the planning and development financing landscape that has been consistent in Ontario since 2007.” 

The report goes on:

“Bill 108 contains limited evidence that its central objectives, making it easier to bring housing to market and accelerating local planning decision, will be achieved. The proposed changes could have significant impacts on how the Town attempts to achieve its strategic goals…” 

“From the evidence provided, proposed changes will dramatically change the development financing landscape. The changes will create additional administrative costs, increase price uncertainty for developers, and may reduce municipalities’ ability to continue to provide the same level of service in the face of growth without finding additional sources of funding.”

$300 million

York Region estimates Bill 108 could cost the Region $300 million over the next five years. 

Why so much? 

The Region says Bill 108 further limits a municipality’s ability to recover growth-related costs through development charges. 

Municipalities across Ontario are fearing the worst. But until the Regulations are published we don’t know how big the hit is going to be to municipal budgets. 

The developers will, of course, be laughing all the way to the bank.

They like Buck-a-Beer and he likes them.

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Update on 19 June 2019: More than 400 administrative health sector workers to be laid off in Ontario. 

Update on 20 June 2019: Doug Ford: Year one. (From the Globe and Mail.)

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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 15 June 2019

The Globe and Mail tells us a ban on handguns and assault weapons isn’t going to happen – not under this Liberal Government.  

The Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction, Bill Blair, says:

“I believe that would be potentially a very expensive proposition but just as importantly, it would not in my opinion be perhaps the most effective measure in restricting the access that criminals would have to such weapons, because we’d still have a problem with them being smuggled across the border.”  

Oh dear! 

Same old busted rhetoric. 

Blair’s announcement comes days after a fatal shooting in Ottawa’s Byward Market that happened on a Friday night at 9.30pm when the area was packed with people. So far this year there have been 31 shootings and three gun related homicides in the capital. And Blair looks the other way.

Phoney consultation

I find the Liberal Government’s position deeply disappointing but utterly predictable. I wrote twice to Bill Blair but didn’t get the courtesy of a reply. Only later did I realise that people like me - who chose to write to him directly - did not have their views taken into account in the report on the Government’s consultation on a possible ban on handguns and assault weapons. Yet this phoney consultation allowed people to vote multiple times in the on-line survey.

When the next massacre comes we shall hear politicians offering their thoughts and prayers. But there will be no action.

I thought the slaughter of so many innocent children at Sandy Hook would be a watershed moment for the United States but I was wrong. The United States – as dysfunctional a polity as one could ever imagine – continues to tolerate an epidemic of gun violence which has now, to a large extent, been normalised. 

What will it take?

Here in Canada I am left wondering what it would take to get the Federal Government to act to ban handguns and assault weapons. 

Perhaps a Christchurch-style massacre in the Prime Minister’s Papineau riding, leaving 51 people dead? 

Or a deranged gunman in Bill Blair’s Scarborough Southwest mimicking the Danforth shooter, Faisal Hussain, who killed two people and shot and wounded 13 others? 

Tragically, I don’t think even that would be enough.

Our politicians are not protecting us from the mad and the bad and the angry sociopaths. Or from people with no previous criminal record who, for whatever reason, just flip. 

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Update on 17 June 2019: the useless Bill Blair passes the buck to the cities. If they want tighter controls on handguns it will be up to them to act. 

Update on 18 June 2019: 4 injured in shooting near Raptors rally in Nathan Phillips Square.

Update on 19 June 2019: Star Editorial: Trudeau's Liberals wrong to duck a handgun ban.

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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 13 June 2019

Yesterday Doug Ford celebrated the newly expanded Etobicoke General Hospital - as if he had anything to do with it.  

These things take years to plan and deliver and this hospital expansion goes way back into the Wynne era. 

But that doesn’t stop Buck-a-Beer claiming credit.

"We made a promise to end hallway health care and to protect what matters most to the people of Ontario… Today, we are taking another step toward delivering on those commitments with the grand opening of the new four-storey patient tower at Etobicoke General Hospital that will provide better access to patient services, including emergency, maternal, and newborn care. With hospital projects like this one, we are making sure everyone in Ontario has access to the high-quality care they expect and deserve."

Ford embraces the project as clear evidence of his Government’s determination to get more hospital projects up-and-running.

"This project is part of our plan to invest $27 billion over the next 10 years in hospital infrastructure projects to build more capacity throughout Ontario."

Infrastructure Ontario gave details of the project and its financing in March 2016.

You gotta laugh.

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