Municipalities urge province to fund health care
Local leaders insist Ford government needs to do its job
Local politicians are getting fed up with spending their time, energy, and your taxpayer dollars to provide health care services that should be funded by the province.
This is one of the top issues that will be discussed this week in Ottawa at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s annual conference. Premier Doug Ford is addressing the gathering today, but it’s unlikely that he will announce anything that will satisfy the audience.
For example, last week health issues were on the agendas at the meetings of Northumberland council and Trent Hills council. In both cases, councillors expressed frustration and offered no money to deal with the problems.
On Wednesday, county council approved a resolution on the shortage of family doctors that was drafted by the municipal association and the Ontario Medical Association.
The resolution says:
“Whereas the state of health care in Ontario is in crisis, with 2.3 million Ontarians lacking access to a family doctor, emergency room closures across the province, patients being de-rostered and 40% of family doctors considering retirement over the next five years. ...
“and Whereas per capita health-care spending in Ontario is the lowest of all provinces in Canada. …”
It concludes by asking the province to “fund health care appropriately” and ensure every Ontarian has access to physician care.
County council also considered a proposal by the Ontario Health Team of Northumberland to spend $45,000 to develop a count-wide physician recruitment plan that would co-ordinate the work of the existing three recruitment projects, including Trent Hills.
That proposal got shelved and sent back to the county’s community health committee after Councillor Mandy Martin said the three groups were already working together and there was no need for the health team to take over.
“The $45,000 would be better spent on actual health care services that we are mandated to provide such as community paramedics and social services,” Martin said.
Trent Hills Mayor Bob Crate noted that his municipality is already spending $150,000 this year on physician recruitment and the day before at its council meeting had a request to help fund a mental-health program. (More about that shortly.)
“We should be telling the province to look after what it should be looking after, so that we can look after what we’re responsible for,” Crate said.
Warden Brian Ostrander responded with a sigh: “You are preaching to the choir, Bob.”
The day before, Kirsten Armbrust, Executive Director, Community Counselling and Resource Centre based in Peterborough, had asked Trent Hills for help financing a $15,000 shortfall in its budget.
Armbrust said her group started providing one-on-one counselling for people with mild to moderate issues in Campbellford last fall. Her group started seeing patients in Northumberland in 2022 after the Northumberland Community Counselling Centre was closed.
“We currently rely on funding from Northumberland United Way, Northumberland County and Cameco to provide this service,” she said. “We received $25,000 less than anticipated from Northumberland United Way for this fiscal year (Apr 2024 - Mar 2025). We have secured a private donation of $10,000 to offset this gap, but we remain $15,000 short.
“Without receiving further funds, we will have to reduce services at a time when the waitlist for services in Trent Hill is actually increasing,” Armbrust said. She noted that the waitlist had recently jumped from 22 to 30 people.
She said that patients who her centre cannot see often wind up going to the hospital emergency department, but it is focused on helping people with acute needs.
“You get no funding from the province?” Councillor Rick English asked.
The answer was no, not to provide service in Northumberland. The centre does get funding to serve Peterborough.
Deputy Mayor Mike Metcalf suggested the centre should approach the county, since its budget is much larger than that of Trent Hills.
“Health care is supposed to be a provincial area,” Crate noted at the Trent Hills’ meeting, the same message he delivered the next day. And probably every day.
Was just told that it may take up to nine months to get a M.RI. This is health care.
A nurse told me a few years ago that there should be more nurses should be wearing running shoes instead of high heels. I think it is like all govt. org. there is too much bureaucracy and not enough workers.