QUEEN'S PARK — Thunder Bay-Superior North MPP Lise Vaugeois says people's lives would be put at risk if Ontario were to implement a proposal to merge health units and EMS services across the province.
In 2019 the government of Premier Doug Ford announced a public health modernization plan that would reduce the number of health units from 34 to 10 while reducing government funding.
Municipal representatives in the Northwest were quick to criticize the proposal.
The restructuring was initially expected to combine the Thunder Bay District Health Unit and Northwestern Health Unit, but since then there have been concerns that the government might try to create one health unit for all of Northern Ontario.
The chair of the TBDHU board said having one health unit serve the region between Greenstone and the Manitoba would be "too much for anyone to coordinate."
Local officials warned, in addition, that funding cuts would make it impossible to avoid cutting some programs.
The province in 2019 also proposed merging 57 paramedic services into just 10 services across Ontario.
In the legislature Tuesday, Vaugeois raised ongoing concerns about both initiatives as she posed questions to Health Minister Sylvia Jones.
"In the Ontario northwest, we already face enormous geographical challenges to manage health care. The proposed mega health unit would serve an absurdly large geographical area with distinctly different communities and distinctly different needs that no single health unit or paramedic unit could possibly manage without putting people's lives at risk."
Northwestern Ontario currently has three paramedic services.
The NDP MPP noted that the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association recently asked government ministers to reconsider the public health modernization plan and consult with municipalities to determine an appropriate course of action.
She asked Jones "Why is this government making our health care challenges in the North greater by reducing available services?"
The minister replied that at this month's meeting of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, she had in fact announced an expansion of a program that allows paramedics to avoid taking patients to hospital emergency departments on every call.
Details of the expansion of a pilot launched in 2020 – which lets paramedics treat some patients on the scene or take them to a mental health facility or other alternative to an emergency department – have not yet been released.
When Vaugeois asked Jones if the government would "listen to community members, health professionals and local mayors [and] stop the amalgamation of health units," the minister's reply focused on the government's response to COVID-19.
"There has been no underlying decrease in health funding in Ontario...We did everything that we could to protect the people of Ontario, and we should be proud of those investments, because they paid off by having Ontario and Canada second in the world in protecting our citizens," she said.
It's not clear whether, when or how the government plans to implement the restructuring of health units and paramedic services.
In response to an inquiry from TBnewswatch, a spokesperson for the health ministry said that Jones had "reaffirmed" that the proposals are not currently under consideration.
