On Saturday January 18, approximately 300 representatives of OHC member groups gathered in the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Toronto to set the Health Coalition’s strategy for the next several months. Attendees planned an aggressive outreach and mobilization campaign to win the implementation of the Romanow recommendations and to stop for-profit healthcare and discussed pre-election materials to assess election candidates’ platforms. After a morning of briefings and discussion, delegates joined the anti-war march and then reconvened for regional groups to continue planning. Health coalitions and member organizations sent representatives in from every corner of the province — from Kenora and Thunder Bay in the Northwest to Windsor in the Southwest and Ottawa in the Southeast. The coalition is now in the final planning stages for the action strategy. Look for the kick off in February.

Health Minister Tony Clement has reduced the number of for-profit MRI/CT clinics to less than half of the 25 announced last summer. But the Ministry is racing ahead using bonuses and other incentives to get the clinics up and running by the end of March. Opposition to the clinics has heated up: the Ontario Health Coalition released a damaging report "Scanning for Profit" which received a great deal of media attention last fall. The Ontario Association of Radiologists have taken out newspaper ads featuring an MRI of a brain and asking why Ernie Eves won’t use his. Most recently the Ontario Hospital Association weighed in with a public announcement of their opposition to the "poaching" of hospital radiation technologists and radiologists.

Critical decisions about the future of Medicare will be made at next week’s First Ministers’ Conference in Ottawa. Meanwhile, the movement to win the implementation of the progressive Romanow recommendations is just hopping. A massive national e-petition has been launched by the Canadian Health Coalition. Local coalitions and member groups have been actively lobbying and pressing M.Ps for commitments. Seniors’ groups, health centres, unions, professional associations, community agencies and ethnic & cultural organizations have contributed through their own petitions, letters, articles and lobbying.