John Tory says PC “right-to-work” policy scaring voters

Posted on September 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

Former Ontario PC Leader John Tory says his successor should take “the right to work stuff and get rid of it.”

Speaking last night on TVO’s The Agenda, Tory says Tim Hudak should treat the PC labour white paper as no more than an opportunity for discussion. “It is not going to give them (Ontarians) a sense of hope and common purpose to go forward to create jobs and attract investment,” he said.

Tory said the policy was “scaring voters and is causing the Party to be anxious in some quarters.”

“People are looking at this policy and saying maybe it’s going to provoke a war (with labour) and that’s the last thing we need.”

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Scarborough: The first and last VP of Patient Experience

Posted on September 20, 2013 | 2 comments

John Wright, The Scarborough Hospital’s (TSH) former CEO once proudly told staff that they were among the first in Canada to have a Vice-President of Patient Experience. While there is much rhetoric around patient-centered care, it appears the Scarborough Hospital was at least trying to walk the talk.

TSH may have been among the first in Ontario to establish such a position. It is also among the first to eliminate such a position.

One of the first projects that VP undertook was a revamping of the food served to patients at the hospital. As we reported last week, the TSH had engaged a consulting chef and invested in equipment to be able to serve patients fresh local foods. Now that project, like the former VP who spawned it, appears to be on the way out according to a discussion paper generated by a merger committee between the TSH and Rouge Valley Health System.

We get it that money is tight.

The two hospitals admit that together they need to find $28 million next year to weather an ongoing freeze in base funding to hospitals. This is not a one-time event, but a long road of deliberate fiscal restraint. The amount needed could be even higher should the two hospitals decide to make a recommendation to formally merge. Mergers generally do not save money. They cost more.

TSH has gone through recent community battles over potential changes to services. It is one of the reason merger discussions are leaving out any issues around location of service delivery, however, that “elephant in the room” is getting increasingly difficult to avoid as working committees try to determine what a merged or “integrated” hospital might look like.

The demographics around such a merger are particularly sensitive. It is one of the most diverse multicultural areas in the GTA. It is where many new immigrants first arrive – the 2006 Census indicated 57 per cent of the area’s residents were born in another country. Poverty in Toronto is also moving east. Eight of 13 priority Toronto neighborhoods identified by the United Way are in Scarborough.

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Trailer — Made in the USA

Posted on September 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

We’re getting pretty excited about a new short documentary that OPSEU will be releasing tomorrow on the impact of the mis-named “right-to-work” movement in the United States. The Ontario Conservatives are promoting such a scheme under the name of economic development, but the reality is such legislation undermines both workers’ rights AND the economy. The evidence does not support the claims of PC leader Tim Hudak and his party. Watch our trailer here:

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Fraser got it wrong — StatsCan says little real difference in public-private absenteeism rates

Posted on September 19, 2013 | 5 comments

Contrary to the much publicized Fraser Institute press releases accusing the public sector of abusing sick leave allowances, earlier today Statistics Canada issued a report suggesting there is in fact very little real difference in absenteeism rates between the public and private sectors.

Statistics Canada says that when you factor in age and gender differences as well as the higher rate of unionization in the public sector, the actual adjusted rate of difference amounts to less than a day – in fact 0.8 of a day.

“The difference can be attributed to several factors, as the public sector workforce tends to be older, more female and more unionized,” StatsCan states in today’s The Daily.

The rate of unionization is obviously important given non-union workplaces can make it much more difficult for a worker to take legitimate leave for illness or family care. Some have no provision for illness. If you are sick, you don’t get paid. That also increases the opportunity for illness to be spread about a workplace.

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More Ontarians per job vacancy than rest of Canada

Posted on September 19, 2013 | 1 comment

Kathleen Wynne should pay attention to recent reports that jobs are becoming a growing issue in Ontario.

Earlier this week Statistics Canada noted that the number of unemployed people per job vacancy has been increasing in Canada with Ontario the most notable.

For every job vacancy there are 6.3 unemployed Canadians, up from 5.2 a year ago. In Ontario, the numbers are much worse – now there are 8.6 Ontarians out of work for every job vacancy, an increase from 6.8 a year ago.

This comes at a time when public sector austerity is costing good jobs. In the health sector we have reported on job losses at many Ontario hospitals this year, the largest – such as The Ottawa Hospital and Hamilton Health Sciences — shedding hundreds of positions each. The CCACs and their agencies may be hiring but it is nowhere near this scale of job loss.

Recently we reported on Kingston Providence Care (Mental Health) shedding nearly one in five jobs as part of their downsizing efforts. While Deb Matthews has stood in the legislature telling us not to worry — that such mental health services are transitioning to the community — there has been no corresponding plan to hire these workers at the most logical community destination — Frontenac Mental Health.

Stats Canada suggests while the overall numbers of unemployed Ontarians have not changed much over the last year, the job opportunities are considerably fewer.

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Incendiary Video: When it comes to food, less bad is not good

Posted on September 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

Earlier this year we posted a link to a video presentation by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff that was supposed to be delivered to the food industry. The Ontario Medical Association got asked to send a representative to speak on what the food industry could do to improve public health. That presentation never got delivered — they cancelled out on Freedhoff. The Ottawa family doctor decided that if the food industry didn’t want to listen, perhaps the rest of us would. Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have logged in to view that presentation on YouTube. Freedhoff has been tweeting this week about a new rant challenging the findings of a report that suggests kids today are marginally more healthy than their counterparts 10 years earlier. While we were on his Weighty Matters site, we noticed that there is a follow-up video to that original food industry presentation that suggests what public health should do, including stop appointing food industry representatives to sit on public health panels.  Deb Matthews’ Ontario Healthy Kids Panel is one such example. Freedhoff also shows that the Heart and Stroke Foundation Health Check program is less than reliable, including an endorsement of grape juice that the OMA suggests should have a warning label much like we attach to cigarettes. As for children’s hospitals and schools — maybe these public institutions should stop promoting pizza sales especially at a time when childhood obesity is a growing concern. Absolutely incendiary, check out Freedhoff’s 15-minute rant from last February on the role of public health:

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Chef says Scarborough-Rouge merger could be bad news for good food

Posted on September 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

Last week we wrote about a possible Scarborough-Rouge Valley hospital merger that threatens an innovative local food program.

We tweeted our story to Toronto chef Joshna Maharaj , a rising star in the culinary scene who served as a consultant on The Scarborough Hospital food service initiative.

Maharaj has posted her own comments, calling this potential situation “bad news for good food in hospitals.”

She writes on her blog “We cannot let business decisions stand in the way of what is truly best for patients in this case. We cannot continue to allow our health care system to serve its budgets before it serves the people.”

We couldn’t have said it better.

You can view Joshna’s complete post by clicking here.

You can also participate in one of two open telephone town halls the two hospitals are conducting. You do need to sign up in advance (click here). The first town hall is on September 24 at 7:10 pm, the other October 8 at 7:05 pm.

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Short Takes: Hillier’s remarkable labour conversion, the battle of the inequality authors and more

Posted on September 16, 2013 | Leave a comment

It is somewhat astonishing to see PC Randy Hillier vote against a Tory private member’s bill that would free construction giant EllisDon from a 55-year-old obligation to hire only unionized labour. This is the same Randy Hillier who, as the opposition labour critic, drafted a White Paper that advocates opening the door to any individual bargaining unit worker to opt out from paying union dues, taking advantage of the collective agreement without actually contributing to the cost of negotiating it. Recently an Indiana judge overruled such a local State law recognizing that it was unconstitutional to force an entity to provide service without compensation. Before losing his critic portfolio, Hillier complained that the Tories were introducing the bill in the hopes of enhancing party donations from the Liberal-friendly construction giant. EllisDon makes considerable financial contributions to the Tories but even bigger ones to the Liberals. Hillier wrote in an e-mail: “Our opposition will cite this example at every opportunity to demonstrate that we are only fighting unions to make big business richer.” Does he not think the rest of the PC labour platform already reflects that reality? While Hillier may appear to be supporting labour today by voting against the EllisDon bill, keep in mind that such action also brings embarrassment to PC leader Tim Hudak who may be the real reason Hillier has chosen to become a dissident on this issue. TVOntario host Steve Paiken recently blogged that such disloyal behaviour is a case of “what comes around goes around.” Paiken noted Hudak’s own disloyalty to former leader John Tory at a time when the former Rogers executive was seeking a safe by-election seat after losing his chosen constituency in a general election to Kathleen Wynne. According to Paiken, Hudak was said to be quietly urging his fellow MPPs not to give up their seat to allow Tory into the legislature. Now several of Hudak’s MPPs are encouraging a new leadership vote, the PCs having only won one of seven byelections since 2011. One of the MPPs encouraging such a review is Randy Hillier. We don’t know who left the comment on Paiken’s BLOG, but one reader duly noted that Hudak is the proverbial dog that don’t hunt. We’re not sure about the rest of the provincial PCs and their policies either.

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Is CFIB willing to shoulder health costs resulting from prescription for more inequality?

Posted on September 16, 2013 | Leave a comment

At a time when the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) is advocating an end to “defined benefit” (DB) pensions, the latest retirement index suggests that the alternate “defined contribution” (DC) pensions are struggling and will not produce the kind of income seniors need in their retirement years. DC plans on average presently replace 22.3 per cent of pre-retirement income. How many of us could successfully live our retirement years off less than a quarter of what we presently earn?

By contrast, a typical DB plan will replace between 50 and 70 per cent of pre-retirement income. Seventy per cent is considered by financial planners to be the target for Canadians wishing to maintain their existing lifestyle. That’s a big gap between 22.3 per cent and 70 per cent.

The CFIB believes making it more difficult for public sector workers to retire is the solution rather than improving retirement income for the two-thirds of private sector workers without a workplace plan. This is idiotic.

Unions have advocated for improvements in the DB Canada Pension Plan to better assist all workers, although the CFIB also opposes this. The CFIB would also have us do away with early retirement.

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Regulatory changes suggests hospitals soon to divest outpatient procedures

Posted on September 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

In the dead of summer the province gave notice that it intends to bring the independent health facilities (IHFs) under the Local Health Integration Networks.

The change in regulation states their intention to shift “low-risk ambulatory services from a hospital to a community-based setting.” Oddly, that “setting” could simply be a satellite facility run by an existing hospital.

Previously the LHINs were not able to formally transition services from hospital to the IHFs because there was no way to transfer funding outside the LHIN’s jurisdiction. Funding for the IHFs had previously been handled directly by the Ministry.

This change could, for example, give the Champlain LHIN the opportunity to formally transfer funding from The Ottawa Hospital to private clinics to perform the endoscopies hospital CEO Jack Kitz no longer wanted. That will likely not help the hospital’s bottom line.

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