Why are William Osler Health Centre board meetings a fiasco of citizen participation where both members of the public and press are not permitted to ask questions and have to leave after the hour's routine agenda has been gone through and the real business of management begins? And why, when a doctor on that board queries management decisions, is he speedily told these will be discussed in camera?

The board has stated there is a $27 million deficit in regard to the present hospital, and staff continually hear rumours of imminent drastic cuts in patient services. If the board is in such a quagmire, how in the name of financial common sense can they be judged competent to manage the new hospital? It would also be to the point if the board CEO's huge paycheque was based on getting the hospital out of the present mess rather than on the customary slash and burn which passes for business management in today's corporate world.

Canada prides itself on being a democracy. However, there is nothing democratic about undercover deals with for-profit corporations whose sole purpose is financial rather than patient well-being: about keeping in the dark the very people who will both use these desperately needed services and pay a horrendous price for them; about cutting vital services without first inviting the public to the table for consultation; about landing taxpayers with a new hospital which will cost $175 million more than a publicly funded hospital.

As Carol Goar, in a recent Toronto Star article points out, "A generation that is richer than any in Canadian history has somehow lost its ability to pay for hospitals schools, universities, subway lines and affordable housing." The social breakdown that will result will, of course, cost us a frightening lot more. Both us and our descendants.

When citizens and media alike are effectively silenced at board discussions vital to the future of those citizens, then democracy is clearly down the spout. At least in Brampton.

Eva Davis

(Letter to the Brampton Guardian, November 2004)