by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
December 2, 2004
Ontario Health Minister, George Smitherman has gained the reputation of being quite the big bully. He seems to thoroughly enjoy intimidating senior hospital staff while dropping hints to unionized workers that he might outsource their jobs with lower paid "floor sweepers" as he refers to them.
Smitherman should be dumped from cabinet. He is one of those politicians who simply cannot make the transition from opposition to government. Politics is no different than baseball. While some players can switch from the outfield to third base and appear to have played third for their entire career, some take longer to be able to play the new position. and some are simply incapable of ever becoming third basemen. Smitherman is in the last category and simply cannot understand that the tactics that are used in opposition have no place in government.
It is difficult for a premier or a prime minister to admit a bad appointment and drop a minister from the cabinet. It is even harder to do it when the reason for removing a cabinet minister is not for corruption or other improper actions, but simply because the minister, to quote a phrase, isn’t up to the job. and as Dalton McGuinty has demonstrated since coming to power last year, he will never do anything that’s difficult when there is an easy way out. Short of money--take the easy way out and raise taxes. So it looks like the province will be stuck with George until McGuinty feels it’s time for a complete cabinet shuffle.
The government offered the province’s 20,000 doctors $6.9 billion over four years. The initial offer provided that pay increases for the doctors didn’t kick in until the end of the period. More money was to be paid to doctors who agree to form a collective (or a group practice as it is known in polite circles) and more money for those who agree to work in under-serviced rural areas.
The Ontario Medical association (OMa) rejected the initial offer. Smitherman came back with the premier in tow and a new offer that moved the pay increases to earlier in the contract. But there was no new money. The Dolt and the Dalt announced to the Docs that this "agreement" was going to be imposed upon them whether they liked it or not.
The OMa and their members were naturally fuming that the government would give them no further say in their livelihoods but they should have seen it coming. after all, Dalton McGuinty is not your run-of-the-mill politician who, when elected, breaks the occasional election promise. Nor is he a Jean Chrètien who promised to scrap the GST. Few got upset when he never did break it because no one other than Sheila Copps and John Nunziata ever took it seriously. The rest of us were just glad that the GST wasn’t increased. We all knew that Jean was just funnin’. McGuinty on the other hand said anything and everything to get elected and was not reluctant in the least to break major promises. The doctors’ mistake was to negotiate in good faith with a self confessed liar.
McGuinty doesn’t care about the practicalities of Ontario’s health care system--he only cares about his liberal left wing ideology. That is why he increased health taxes or premiums, or whatever he is calling it these days to buy back MRI machines as if the ownership of these machines made any practical difference to the health care of Ontarians. and McGuinty and his trusty sidekick couldn’t care less about what effect their policies or their actions have on the many aging boomers in the medical profession who may opt to retire rather than work in a system that the Dalt and the Dolt are devising.
McGuinty is so obsessed with reducing wait times that he doesn’t seem to realize that the wait times will not come down if the shortage of doctors increases. and he can’t look to the feds to bring in foreign doctors either. although foreign medical practitioners are needed in Canada they hardly have the priority that Romanian table dancers have. and those that do head to Canada will undoubtedly need more training, after which they will leave Ontario quicker than a Romanian stripper can disrobe.
Ontario’s health care system is under the control of a liar and a bully--it doesn’t look good.