As two Liberals on the (presumed) left of the party declare their intention to run for the leadership, it bears recalling that almost all of the major problems the Liberals have faced in the last few years have come from attempts to re-position the party to the right. First, Premier
Continue readingAuthor: Doug Allan
Defending Public Healthcare: Public sector health care funding shrinks – again
Private funding of health care is increasing faster than public funding. Now the Canadian Institute for Health Information reports that public funding is expected to fall to 69.7% of total funding in 2012. Public funding has been much higher — in 1976 it provided 77% of all health care
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: P3 hospital debts threaten quality of health care
Patients in Britain could see their health care services cut as a result of botched public private partnership (P3) hospitals. The Public Accounts Committee of the British House of Commons has flagged special concern about the “unaffordable” P3 deals. Public Accounts Chair Margaret Hall said, “We are particularly concerned
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Finding appropriate care for ALC patients in hospital
Today, in the Ottawa Citizen, the Queensway Carleton Hospital in Ottawa reports a big decline in the number of “ALC” patients (down from 50 patients a day to 20 or 25 — a 50% to 60% decline). The Citizen also reports a smaller decline in the number of people waiting
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Homecare funding finally announced (and it falls short)
The Minister of Health and LTC has finally (7 months into the year) gotten around to making an announcement about the increase to home care funding for this year, at least for the Hamilton Niagara Community Care Access Centre (CCACs fund home care providers). Aside from the long delay, the
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Will Liberal leadership candidates support free collective bargaining?
Both of the key architects of the Liberal government’s attack on free collective bargaining are as good as gone. McGuinty will be gone January 26 and Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has indicated he will likely be gone from the Finance Ministry right about the same time. The Liberal party has
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Funding crisis forces hospital to cancel surgeries
Quinte Health Care is simply stopping elective surgeries for a week to deal with funding shortfalls from the provincial government. The hospital’s CEO Mary Clare Egberts told The Intelligencer that the cuts weren’t in keeping with QHC’s new “patient-first” strategy but a lack of provincial funding leaves few options. The Intelligencer
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Politics, not deficits, behind attack on collective bargaining
Before the Liberals started attacking collective bargaining, they proposed a wage freeze in the summer of 2010. The unions duly met with the government over the summer of 2010 to discuss this. While there was no agreement, settlements funded by the province have now moderated significantly. But since that time
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Upcoming collective bargaining may test new Liberal strategy
The Ontario Liberal government’s brand was built on creating social consensus after the harsh discord of the previous Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government. That worked well for the Liberals until this past few months when they moved to crush free collective bargaining and unilaterally impose not just a wage freeze
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: $9 M hospital settlement for law-suit alleging poor cleaning
Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital has agreed to settle a law-suit by approximately two-hundred victims of a C. difficile outbreak at the hospital for $9,000,000, the Hamilton Spectator reports. That is an average of about $45,000 per claimant. The law-suit alleged the Burlington hospital was not properly cleaned, maintained and disinfected. OCHU has
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Ambulances spending 21% more time in hospitals
The new Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative public report indicates that ambulances (and by extension paramedics) are spending more and more time in hospitals. For the thirteen (mostly large) Ontario communities included, the median percentage of time ambulances spend in hospitals has increased from 15.5% in 2009, to 17.8% in 2010,
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: How much cash do Liberals want to take from workers?
The association representing almost 12,000 professionals and supervisors working for the Ontario government claims its recent tentative agreement with the provincial government calls for a 1.83% permanent reduction in compensation. The association adds that the Catholic teachers deal reduces teacher compensation permanently by 2.5%. For someone whose total compensation was
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Is the attack on public sector workers justified?
Dwight Duncan has justified the government’s proposal to remove collective bargaining rights in the broader public sector by suggesting that the private sector has had it much worse. Earlier, I looked at wage settlements as likely the best test to determine if this was true (it wasn’t). But certainly another
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Bad health care practices follow bed cuts
Since closing 30 beds designed for non-acute patients in March, the number of non-acute patients occupying acute care beds at Health Sciences North in Sudbury has more than doubled. In February only 44 non-acute care patients were occupying acute care beds. But since the bed closures that number has increased:
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Will PCs give Liberals a blank cheque?
Tim Hudak’s concerns about the proposed Liberal public sector bargaining legislation are numerous. The legislation fails to impose an immediate pay freeze on workers. (“It’s not a wage freeze, it just kicks the problem down the road until 2015 and then maybe gets around to freezing wages at a higher level.”) It exempts municipal
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Liberals conceal ugly concessions (as other wages rise)
The proposed public sector “compensation restraint” legislation floated on Wednesday by the Liberals is neatly silent on whether the government will impose contract concessions on 500,000 working people. The government consistently talks of a “compensation freeze” or “compensation restraint”. Obligingly, the (corporate-owned) media has usually repeated that framing of the
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Hudak keeps open option of alliance with Liberals
Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak has kept his powder dry and has reframed from personally criticizing the Liberals’ proposed public sector labour legislation. Or even commenting on it. Instead, he sent out Monte McNaughton, who faulted the proposed legislation in all sorts of ways: the legislation “is clearly lacking
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Are public sector cuts ‘tame’ compared to private sector?
Dwight Duncan claimed yesterday that compared to the belt-tightening endured by workers in the private sector, his legislation restricting collective bargaining in the public sector “is tame stuff”. Sounds like a claim worth investigating. Wages are the most important single item bargained — for both workers and employers. So it’s
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Corporate bosses excluded from cuts. But not their employees
No surprise here — but the bosses of the for-profit corporations that provide long term care and home care services funded by the public sector are excluded from the Protecting Public Services legislation proposed today by the Liberal government (as set out in schedule 1 of the Public Sector Compensation Restraint
Continue readingDefending Public Healthcare: Is Shouldice Hospital sale actually a real estate deal?
The owners of the Shouldice Hosptial may sell the eight hectares of land that the hospital sits upon. Centric, the prospective buyers of Shouldice Hospital, say they will likely move to a new location after the four year lease is up. “I think the vendors possibly have other ideas for
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