TORONTO – Today, Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown called on the Wynne Liberal Government to immediately stop the hiring of 84 new expensive health care vice-presidents, and instead re-direct that funding into frontline health care.
“Kathleen Wynne’s obsession with bloating the Queen’s Park bubble continues,” said Brown. “Her new experiment of extending bureaucracy right across Ontario with regional medical bureaus will only make more health executives rich. The real needs are on the frontlines delivering reliable health care to the public.”
Bill 41, which was rammed through the legislature by the Liberal government without proper consultation, allows the hiring of 84 new vice-presidents under the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs).
This is simply inviting unnecessary executive bureaucracy that should be going towards frontline care.
Furthermore, the passage of Bill 41 leaves more questions than answers, including how much these vice-presidents will be paid and which executive allowances they will receive.
“Until the Premier can explain exactly how much this will cost, and how these regional bureaus will improve your health care, she has no business rolling it out,” added Brown.
The government has provided no assurances that these 84 vice-presidents will be accountable to their communities, or will operate in a transparent manner and deliver value.
“We are demanding that she not hire these 84 new Power Suit Paper Pushers, and instead invest in the great talent that patients deserve on the frontlines,” concluded Brown.
In addition to the new vice-presidents, the Wynne government’s plan to introduce 80 new sub-LHINs, or mini-regional bureaus, has raised concerns of unruly growth, and a lack of accountability and transparency.
Background Information:
· Ontario spends approximately $90 million a year on the LHIN bureaucracy.
· Our home care system spends almost $1 billion a year on administration costs – nearly 40 per cent of their entire budget.
· CCAC CEO salaries skyrocketed by 27 per cent between 2009 and 2013, while our elderly or those with debilitating conditions are told they need to be put on a waitlist for a few hours of care a week.
· In 2003, the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care had the equivalent of 5 senior executive officers, now the government has the equivalent of 20.
· Throughout the province we’ve seen the government cut physiotherapy services for seniors, freeze funding for hospitals, slash funding for the services our doctors provide, and fire 1,600 nurses in the past year alone.
