Yesterday, Ontario's NDP opposition leaked a draft piece of legislation which would scrap our local health networks and put the province's entire health care system under a new super agency. We've been here before. Under Mike Harris, the government amalgamated municipalities, hospitals and school boards.
Conservatives claim to hate big government. But, when they legislate, they concentrate power in fewer and fewer hands. We have a small hospital in our community, which became part of a larger network. The hospital used to have 50 beds. It now has 15. It used to run in the black. The new octopus bleeds red ink every year.
This isn't wise policy. It's insanity.
Image: jon may
13 comments:
.. this is truly disturbing .. No, its quite shocking.. this is governmental failure.. and I will politely use the word fluckery. It raises a screaming hot issue. Who is coming up with this horsecrap salad 'policy' making ? Is it straight from Doug Ford's arse, his tiny mealy brain.. is it some sort of 'brain tryst'.. a wonk we never elected who crept into Doug's basement rec room ? This is some sort of 'efficiency' ?
"Efficiency" is the justification, sal. Greed is the motivation.
Good to see you back, Owen. The story is disturbing; I wonder, however, if it will provoke the public outrage it richly merits.
As long as the public sleeps, Lorne, Ford will succeed.
Are Ontarians finally turning on this jackass? I expect there are plenty within the OPC who would happily sharpen their knives if his support goes wobbly.
These days he's suggesting that all day kindergarten may be a thing of the past, Mound. If he cuts the progra,m there will be lots of parents who'll want his head. I wonder if his supporters are beginning to think they put their money on the wrong horse.
The Liberal brains trust running Nova Scotia under Premier Stephen McNeil has done precisely this over the last six years.
He has but one health board for the entire province, and no more local school boards just the Dept of Education in Halifax. People are not happy, and Cape Breton Island is in revolt.
It's the neoliberal austerity way - faceless ranks of centralized bureaucracy issue edicts, expect obedience, and only work 9 to 5 at that with all the interest civil servants generally show for their jobs. They are insulated from irate groups of parents concerning schools and curriculum banging on their doors, and slough off the lack of doctors to the pols who issue the usual platitudes about recruitment. It's MEDIOCRITY writ large. Add to that an incredible reliance on "privacy" and black marker pens for redaction on freedom of information requests, and we might as well have a dictator in charge. It's all a secret.
I don't know how Ontario escapes this fate - perhaps Doug Fraud is so ignorant he'll ignite some real passion in disssenters, but here in NS we have been captured by the spider web, slowly but surely. and we're being digested.
BM
I'd like to publish your comment, Anon. But it needs to be initialled.
Regardless of where this agenda is planted, BM, the harevest is chaos. Yet we refuse to see the evidence before our eyes.
They voted for him and now they will have to live with it or in some cases they may die because of it.
Once its all in one big ball of string, he can contract it all out. when el gordo, the former premier of b.c., now lard ass ford's "advisor", was premier here, was big on contracting out. fired all hospital cleaners and in 2 1/2 yrs. 86 people died in Burnaby General hospital of il deficile. had an inquiry, nada.
once it is under one person's control and its contracted out, expect a nice big American corporation to take it all over. with the ACA still being popular the American health care corporations would like to expand their reach and there is all that nice Canadian money.
when they go for that, they'll use 25 and 30 year contracts as they did in Britain and in B.C. Some services were privatized, eliminating hospital workers and sending the jobs in to the private sector for lower salaries. So looking at the B.C. experience, from where el gordo came, the top 177 donors to the B.C. Lieberals gave $155M and they were rewarded with $15B in contracts, subsidies and other special favours.
Lets hope the people of Ontario realize once this begins, all those hospitals will look like the long term care homes we saw on CBC's Market Place this evening.
Your hospital is lucky to still have 15 beds, in B.C. some communities weren't that lucky. Try waiting 2 hours for the ambulance to get to your community, pick you up in B.C. and take you to Alberta. My advise, have the local community buy their own ambulance so they don't have to wait to start transporting patients to hospitals. Ford has a majority and there is nothing the people of Ontario will able to do. The federal Liberals may be able to say some of Ford's actions violate the Canada health act., but their focus will be on the up coming federal action and if the Conservatives are elected, the whole country will go that way.
It's a sad state of affairs, e.a.f. B.C.'s experience should have guided Ontario's voters. But, as is the case in so many places, Ontarians didn't look beyond their own borders.
yes, and they didn't know Ford was going to hire Gordon Campbell, B.C.'s former premier who brought all the darkness to B.C. About all people can do is ensure Ford is not re elected and to keep working on ensuring the stories get out there. Don't expect too much from the MSM because during the reign of el gordo and Christy Clark, they acted more like press release companies than a free and democratic country's media. Never a dark word. Finally when the B.C. Liebercons were out of office they started publishing about the money laundering. articles by Sam Cooper. not much, but some. It will be up to blogger and writers of letters to the editors in small towns to get the real message out.
And let's hope, e.a.f., that people will believe what their own eyes tell them.
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