Tag Archives: Rick Janson

Towards a new health accord: Make a video, share your Medicare story

Posted on June 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

The Council of Canadians is asking you to share your experiences with the Medicare system by making a video and uploading it to their YouTube channel.

It doesn’t have to be polished – just sincere.

The Council is not just looking for stories where the system has failed, but also where our public system has succeeded. For many Canadians our public system continues to save lives and improve quality of life.

The goal is to make the system work for all Canadians and to protect and improve the quality of care.

The video stories are being collected in the run up to this summer’s meeting of the Council of the Federation – the last get together of the provincial Premiers before the 10-year 2004 health accord with the federal government expires. (See activist’s calendar at right).

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Kingston P3: John Gerretsen should know better

Posted on March 5, 2013 | 2 comments
Carleton University's Hugh Armstrong speaks about P3s in Kingston March 4.

Carleton University’s Hugh Armstrong speaks about P3s in Kingston March 4.

KINGSTON – As a Minister of the Crown, Kingston MPP John Gerretsen should know better.

At yesterday’s anti-privatization rally in front of his Kingston constituency office, Gerretsen was steadfast in his assertion that the deficit rendered the government unable to build new hospitals without private involvement in the finance, design, construction and long-term maintenance of the building.

The protesters are upset by the government’s plans to use a public-private partnership (P3) deal to build a new hospital in Kingston. The new facility will replace the aging psychiatric and rehab hospitals.

At the same time, Gerretsen surprised the protesters by telling them he knew the P3 option was more expensive.

The suggestion is that somehow using the private sector takes the costs of doing these projects off the government accounts. This is completely untrue.

It’s a little like taking out your high interest VISA card as a solution to your debts.

You don’t have to take our word for it.

The Conference Board of Canada issued a report in 2010 funded largely by pro-P3 groups such as the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships, PPP Canada and Partnerships BC. To say the report subsequently contains a pro-P3 bias is a massive understatement.

Despite this, the report acknowledges that the idea of taking these financial obligations off-book has no value.

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Are health services really shifting, or is the health minister being shifty?

Posted on December 6, 2012 | 1 comment
OPSEU's Rick Janson joins OHC Director Natalie Mehra for the release of the coalition's "Austerity Index."

OPSEU’s Rick Janson joins OHC Director Natalie Mehra for the release of the coalition’s “Austerity Index.”

We can all relax now. All those hospital cuts we’ve witnessed recently – Health Minister Deb Matthews says they are not happening.

She says these services are instead being shifted. Evidently we are all fools for not realizing that the 22 beds cut at the Chatham Kent Health Alliance just represent a transfer of services to entities like the Erie-St.Clair Community Care Access Centre, which is itself cutting $8-$10 million after the LHIN refused to allow them to run a $5.2 million deficit.

Hamilton Health Sciences says $25 million in cuts are planned and expects 140 jobs will be impacted. Perhaps Ms. Matthews can tell us where these 140 jobs are re-emerging in the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN? And while she’s at it, where did the LHIN reallocate the 69 beds the Niagara Health System cut in the fall of 2011 and spring of 2012? We can’t seem to find them anywhere. Neither can the hospital, which had to cancel or postpone 758 surgeries due to “bed pressures.” Maybe those beds were needed after all.

Perhaps she can tell us where the after-hours clinic, pain clinic, audiology clinic and cardiac rehabilitation program closed by Toronto’s St. Joseph’s Health Centre shifted to? We can’t find them. Can she?

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Operation Maple: Lack of inspection, staffing a cocktail for disaster in Ontario’s nursing homes

Posted on August 13, 2012 | 8 comments

Ontario has too few staff caring for residents in its long-term care homes. Coupled with too few inspectors — most homes have not had a detailed inspection since 2009 — it is a cocktail for disaster. How many scandals will it take before the province keeps its words and really protects some of our most vulnerable citizens?

OPSEU’s Rick Janson speaks about the lack of staffing and inspection at Ontario’s long-term care homes in this new Operation Maple video. Also featured is OPSEU member Tamara Lazic, who speaks about her grandmother’s last days in one of these homes.

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