New Operation Maple video highlights corporate tax evasion

Posted on June 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

Thirty Fortune 500 companies didn’t pay any tax in the last three years. Ever wonder why corporations continue to pay less or no tax while governments become more and more destabilized by debt? Our friends at Operation Maple have just released this short video featuring Osgood Hall law professor Neil Brooks and economists Erin Weir and James Henry:

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Summer election may be fought over sneaky clause in budget bill

Posted on June 15, 2012 | 1 comment

Dalton McGuinty is threatening to pull the plug on his own government after the opposition parties amended his budget bill yesterday in the legislature’s finance committee.

Like the Harper government budget bill, the McGuinty government inserted a large number of legislative amendments to create a massive omnibus bill. Many of these the NDP and Conservative opposition stripped out yesterday with their 5-4 majority on the committee.

Among them is the controversial Schedule 28 which would give the government enhanced latitude to privatize public services without returning to the legislative assembly for debate and approval.

McGuinty claims the Schedule is to facilitate the complete privatization of ServiceOntario, itself a mistake. High-profile lawyer Paul Cavalluzzo accompanied OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas to the legislative committee last week to point out that such privatization potentially opens up serious privacy concerns given U.S. subsidiaries would be forced by American law to share sensitive information gathered by ServiceOntario with the American government.

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MPP Bill Mauro introduces 2,000 signature petition to Ontario legislature

Posted on June 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

Liberal MPP Bill Mauro introduced a 2,000-signature petition into the Ontario legislature today calling upon the government to use its influence to reopen the Canadian Blood Services Thunder Bay Plasma Donor Clinic.

The clinic closed its doors back in April after CBS claimed it had an oversupply of plasma for transfusion.

In fact, Thunder Bay had also been a contributor to a high-demand plasma product called intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG). Canada is amongst the highest users of IVIG in the world.

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Zero tolerance for abuse and neglect? Hardly.

Posted on June 13, 2012 | 3 comments

Health Minister Deb Matthews talks about zero tolerance of neglect and abuse in Ontario’s nursing homes. Her actions would suggest the opposite.

Yesterday Matthews said that inspection of long-term care homes will be based on complaints and critical incidents only. If the home doesn’t get complaints or critical incidents go unreported, it doesn’t get inspected.

This is despite a requirement in the Long Term Care Homes Act that requires an annual inspection of each home.

Jane Meadus of the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly says the intent of the Act was that each home would receive an annual resident quality inspection (RQI) – a detailed inspection conducted by a team of specialists, including an RN, a dietitian and an environmental inspector. An RQI can take as long as 17 days to conduct.

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When the shift hits the fan

Posted on June 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

Dr. Danielle Martin has practically catalogued the various attacks on Canada’s Medicare system over the last two decades. The Chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare says that while the arguments continually “shift,” the prescription from the right is always the same – two tier health care and privatization is the answer no matter the question.

She says this shift is part of an ongoing attack that has never resonated with Canadian values, but shows signs of making inroads with Canadian politicians.

At first it was the argument that the rich should have the right to use their money how they see fit and buy their way to the front of the line. Clearly Canadians saw the unfairness and lack of equity in that argument. Then the privateers argued the public system was broken, until the 2004 federal-provincial accord brought down wait times across Canada. Then the story became an aging population would break the bank, until health care economists noted aging only accounted for less than one per cent of health care cost increases, well within the normal capacity of economic growth. Now the latest argument is that health care is unsustainable and about to consume provincial budgets.

Martin tells a story that many progressive health care advocates have been using recently. A family of four sends a child away to university in another province. The remaining child is told they are no longer sustainable as a result. The parents argue that the child used to eat one-fourth of the family food. With the other child gone, now they are consuming one-third of the dinners. When someone argues health care is taking money away from other services, this is essentially what they are arguing. Health care is not unsustainable – tax cuts are.

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Docs take McGuinty to court – case likely to decide whether government can unilaterally impose fee schedules and wage freezes

Posted on June 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

Ontario’s doctors are fighting back after the government unilaterally cut $340 million in fees last month.

The Ontario Medical Association is applying to the Ontario Supreme Court of Justice for a review of the government’s negotiations tactics and the imposition of fee cuts.

The doctors are arguing the landmark BC case in which the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the right to collective bargaining should be extended to the OMA, which has negotiated the fee schedule with government since the beginning of Medicare.

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Frail and elderly asked to pay more in Ontario

Posted on June 11, 2012 | 3 comments

Frail and elderly residents in Ontario’s nursing homes may be paying in more ways than one for the province’s budget shortfall.

While Health Minister Deb Matthews is holding the line on increases to long-term care funding to 2.8 per cent (only 1 per cent dedicated to direct care), she is asking residents to kick in a lot more than that.

On May 30th the Ministry issued a bulletin to say the basic co-payment rate is increasing by $1.81 per day. That amounts to a 3.4 per cent increase.

The premium rate is also increasing from an additional $8 a day to $9 a day for semi-private (8.8 per cent) and from $18 to $19.75 a day for private (9.1 per cent).

Depending on the accommodation level, that could mean a hike of between $54 and $106 per month.

This comes at a time when Deb Matthews is also holding the line on the Ministry’s complement of inspectors, who say they are so short-staffed that homes will be waiting as long as five years for a detailed inspection.

While business is being told to wait for another cut in their taxes, frail and elderly residents are being asked to pay more for their care.

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Vulnerable seniors: Nursing homes could wait five years for a full inspection

Posted on June 11, 2012 | 2 comments

It could take more than five years before all of Ontario’s nursing homes receive a full inspection by the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. Further, the complaints hotline overwhelmed inspection teams with 2,719 complaints last year, leaving many families to wait anywhere from 30 days to a year to get their complaint investigated.

Inspectors say that it is taking so long to investigate that they are sometimes arriving to find the resident who issued the complaint has passed away.

The 2007 Long Term Care Homes Act was meant to address incidents of abuse and neglect in Ontario’s nursing homes, but the government is considering any visit to the home an “annual inspection,” even if it is only for a specific complaint. Prior to 2010, homes were subject to a full inspection of all programs and services.

Each office of the Long Term Care Unit presently has an informal goal of completing two “resident quality inspections” (RQI) per month. RQIs are the new version of what used to be considered an annual inspection. That means the province has a goal of conducting 120 RQIs per year. Ontario has 630 licensed nursing homes.

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Briefs: Budget bill paving the way for privatization? / Chaos in the absence of patient transfer regulation

Posted on June 6, 2012 | 1 comment

There has been much press coverage of what the Federal government has quietly inserted into its omnibus budget bill, including considerable environmental deregulation. Hiding sweeping legislative changes inside these large budget bills isn’t the exclusive domain of the Harper government.

The McGuinty government has inserted into its omnibus bill sweeping powers to authorize contracting out or privatization of public services without public oversight. The government claims it is to facilitate privatization of Service Ontario, however Schedule 28 is much broader in scope.

“Once that authority is given, there is no requirement for transparency or accountability for privatization decisions made by the Minister or the quasi-Crown corporations similarly empowered under the Act,” states Steven Shrybman in a legal assessment written for CUPE Ontario.

Further, when the privatization comes in conflict with out statutes, the new Bill takes precedence, meaning the objectives set out in hundreds of pieces of legislation would be set aside.

Today OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas and legal counsel Paul Cavaluzzo will appear before the legislature’s budget committee to address this issue.

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Bruyere cuts 28 jobs – tip of the iceberg?

Posted on June 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Bruyere Continuing care is the latest hospital to announce cuts to balance its budget. The Ottawa hospital is cutting 28 jobs as part of its efforts to eliminate a $3.1 million deficit.

Calculating government revenues are not an easy task this year. Hospitals have been told they will receive no increase to their base budgets. The government is also implementing a new funding formula that will negatively impact 36 hospitals. Then the LHINs will be invited to tinker further. There will be modest increases for specific hospital funding envelopes such as wait times initiatives. Bruyere has calculated the net funding impact will be an increase of just 0.2 per cent.

Support staff will take the brunt of the cuts, including rehab and palliative care orderlies. Two managers will also lose their jobs. Bruyere also intends to shorten its cafeteria hours and eliminate laundry for long-stay patients.

Michel Bilodeau, the interim CEO, told the Ottawa Citizen “if we still get around zero (per cent) next year, it’s going to be a very difficult year. I can’t see that we would go another year like this without closing beds.”

The layoffs and service cuts will not entirely close the gap – Bruyere is still looking for another $500,000 in cost reductions.

Bruyere’s announcement is likely to be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hospital cuts this year. Last summer the Auditor General of Ontario warned in his pre-election report that a 3.6 per cent funding increase for health care would challenge hospitals to either cut services or run larger deficits. The McGuinty spring budget has instead proposed even less – an average of 2.1 per cent for health care, most of that being distributed to home care and long-term care.

Bilodeau recently made headlines by advocating for private two-tier health care.

In mid-May The Ottawa Hospital announced it would be shedding 96 jobs due to budget restraint.

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