7) Briefing Note on the Liberal government's announcement on the P3 hospitals in Brampton and Ottawa. |
Ontario Health Coalition |
URGENT ACTION |
Please take action on this and please distribute as widely as possible.
We have received word that big lobby campaigns have been mounted to finalize the deals and push through the private P3 hospitals in Brampton and Ottawa.
We have also been told that the Premier's office and the Health Minister's office are actively engaged on the P3 issue & on the private MRI/CT scan issue and will be making a decision in the next couple of weeks.
It is urgent that we act now to counter these campaigns. Please take a minute to contact your MPP and ask them to ensure that the P3s and the private MRI/CT clinics are cancelled and brought back into the public health system.
We are very close to winning on these issues. Our pressure now can help ensure that the campaigns of the privatizers do not prevail. We all need to do a few things quickly that will help:
Contact your local MPP by fax, phone and/or email & copy your letter to Premier Dalton McGuinty and Health Minister George Smitherman. The full list of MPPs with contact information is below along with some talking points to help. Please do this as soon as you can.
Get other concerned groups & individuals to do the same. Explain that it is urgent and needs to be done soon.
If your local MPP is on side, enlist their active help in this campaign. Ask them to take the issue to cabinet/caucus and to push for publicizing the MRI/CTs and building public hospitals in Brampton & Ottawa.
Here are some resources to help:
1) Open letter from OHC to Health Minister George Smitherman .
2) Copy of letter sent by one of our supporters to Premier Dalton McGuinty .
3) Contact information for the Premier & Health Minister.
6) List of MPPs' contact information and a link to find out who your MPP is if you don't know.
1) This open letter was issued by the Ontario Health Coalition to the Minister of Health. You can take some of the main points from this letter but yours need not be so technical if you are not comfortable . Below this letter is an example of a simpler heart-felt message from a coalition supporter to the Premier. Personal letters are more effective, but if all you have time to do is copy or take sections of one of these, please feel free to do so.
Open Letter
George Smitherman
Minister of Health
80 Grosvenor St., 10th floor
Hepburn Block,
Toronto, Ontario
M7A 2C4
By Fax: 416-326-1571, 416-327-3679
November 11, 2003
Attn: Hon. George Smitherman
We are writing this open letter in response to Premier McGuinty‚s comments as reported by Caroline Mallan in the Toronto Star on Friday regarding the for-profit hospitals (P3s) and MRI/CT clinics:
„McGuinty said the deficit will also be a factor when it comes to his party's promises to scrap the MRI and CT scan
clinics set up across the province by the Tories and to bring planned privately owned hospitals in both Ottawa and
Brampton into the public system.
On the private clinics, McGuinty now says his government is looking for "wiggle room" in the signed deals with those
private operators. On the privately owned hospitals, the Liberals have said all along that they will assess any move
based on the cost to taxpayers.‰
As you can imagine, the Premier‚s comments have sparked a flurry of very concerned emails and phonecalls to us. Community members in Brampton and Ottawa are exceedingly concerned about your plans, as are people across the province. For this reason, we are issuing this correspondence as an „open letter‰. We wish to point out several points missed in the Premier‚s remarks:
1) As your party noted in the lead-up to the election, the so-called „saving‰ to the public purse by privatizing the finance, operation and ownership of hospitals is, in fact, a false economy. The world-wide evidence is clear. As public audit offices in Britain, PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Australia and as the former director at the Auditor General‚s office in Canada have found, P3 hospitals do not save money, they cost more. The off-book accounting that characterizes P3 schemes may hide the debt from public scrutiny but it does not erase the debt for the next generation of Ontarians. This type of accounting has been entirely discredited by the Enron fiasco.
2) Not only do P3 hospitals cost more, the high costs associated with this model of redevelopment on the capital side lead to cuts to operating and clinical budgets, including, on average, 26% staff cuts and 30% bed cuts, according to the British Medical Association Journal. The hospitals are smaller, have shown up poorly in inspections, lead to new user fees and two tier healthcare and remove democratic control and accountability.
3) A report was released last week by several eminent Canadians including Arthur Donner, Douglas D. Peters, Monica Townson, Armine Yalnizyan and Lewis Auerbach calling for immediate cancellation of the P3 deals and public finance of new hospital infrastructure. Their arguments about increased costs and loss of accountability in the P3 hospitals echo those that we have been making over the last two years. They noted that these hospitals are a threat to the future of Medicare. They also note that your government could move to an accrual accounting system to eliminate the systemic bias against public investment in infrastructure and that low interest rates make it a good time to invest. This report provides the viable public option your government seeks for funding new hospitals in Brampton and Ottawa.
4) As you must be aware, there are few or no penalties associated with cancelling the Brampton and Ottawa P3s and replacing them with public hospitals.
5) The contracts for the MRI/CT clinics and the project agreements for the Brampton & Ottawa P3s still remain secret and shielded from public scrutiny. We hope that you will move to immediately disclose the terms of these contracts and agreements, and that you will work to bring the scanners into public hospitals as promised in the election campaign.
We sincerely hope that you consider the voices of the patients, healthcare workers and caregivers of Ontario who have opposed the loss of public control over our hospitals and clinics as you are making your decision. We look forward to meeting with you at your earliest convenience about these issues.
Yours Truly,
(original signed)
To the Premier:
At 77 years of age I can message you for the simple reason my life was saved when I was a child. Saved by surgeons and doctors who helped. The hospital they worked in was a public hospital, as it should be. And, I hope it still is public and will always remain so.
I also mentioned I have listened to folks from other countries where their health system has become privatized, where only privateers benefit and the doctors and health folk are very poorly paid. The very poor and their children just disappear. We don't want that happening here.
3) Here is contact information for Premier Dalton McGuinty and Health Minister George Smitherman. You could contact your local MPP & copy these two into your letter or email, or write separate letters for each. If you have a Conservative local MPP, you might want to focus on the Premier & Health Minister.
Dalton McGuinty
Premier
Queen's Park
Rm 281, Main Legislative Building
Toronto ON M7A 1A4
Tel / Tél : 416-325-5222
Constituency Office/ Bureau de circonscription
1795 Kilborn Ave
Ottawa ON K1H 6N1
Fax / Téléc : 613-736-7374
Tel / Tél : 613-736-9573
email / courriel: Dalton_McGuinty-MPP@ontla.ola.org
George Smitherman
Minister of Health and Long-Term Care
80 Grosvenor St, 10th Flr, Hepburn Block
Toronto ON M7A 2C4
Fax / Téléc : 416-326-1571 Tel / Tél : 416-327-4300
Constituency Office/ Bureau de circonscription
410 Sherbourne St, Main Flr
Toronto ON M4X 1K2
Fax / Téléc : 416-972-7686
Tel / Tél : 416-972-7683
email / courriel: george_smitherman-mpp@ontla.ola.org
4) Talking Points on P3s
Background: The recently defeated Conservative provincial government announced at the end of 2001 that for-profit corporations would design, build, finance, own and maintain a new Brampton campus of the William Osler Health Centre and a new Royal Ottawa Hospital. The name the government used for this brand new privatization policy was „public private partnerships‰ or „P3s‰. More P3 hospitals were planned for Markham-Stouffville, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and Uxbridge hospital. The Conservatives saw P3s as the wave of the future.
a] The Royal Ottawa and Osler P3 Hospital Projects Must be Cancelled and Replaced with Public Hospitals.
Increased Costs: While P3 hospitals are new to Canada, Britain has experimented with them over the last half dozen years. The British call them „Private Finance Initiatives‰ or PFIs. The prestigious British Medical Journal gave it a different name: „perfidious financial idiocy‰.
With P3s, hospital funds are diverted to profits: shareholders in British P3 projects can expect returns of 15-25% per year. In fact, the British construction industry has admitted that construction expect to make between three and 10 times as much money on P3s as they do on traditional contracts.
Decreased Service: The increased costs of P3 hospitals have been met by bed closures and reductions in service. P3 hospitals have resulted in a 30 per cent reduction in beds and a 25% reduction in health care staff. The result of this privatization is that healthcare funding is redirected from patient care to private profit-seeking companies. The scope of services offerred to patients shrinks to make room for profit, consultants, executive salaries, higher borrowing costs etc.
Secrecy: Ontario Conservative government attempts to sign secret P3 deals just before the election outraged voters. But secrecy is inherent in P3 hospitals. Commercial competition requires corporations to keep the terms of the deals secret. Vital public services must be open to scrutiny. In Ontario, the government released a grand total of two media releases until it was forced to release somewhat more information to the Integrity Commissioner after a complaint. The Health Coalition got a little more information when it took the government to court on the issue ˆ but much of the critical information about the deals in process remains secret.
Loss of Democratic Accountability: P3 hospitals are owned and operated by for-profit companies unlike our current hospitals that are governed by non-profit Boards of Directors. P3 private companies' mission is to maximize their profit. The transfer of control over our hospitals to for-profit companies amounts to a massive loss of democratic control and accountability.
b] Build the Royal Ottawa and William Osler as Fully Public Hospitals Now
The Liberal Party campaigned against P3 hospitals. Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty noted in writing that „P3 hospitals cost taxpayers more, while providing lower quality of services.‰ He committed to stopping „creeping privatization‰ and added „I am committed to ensuring that all Ontario hospital facilities are publicly owned. In terms of P3 projects already underway, a Liberal government would work to make these new facilities publicly owned as quickly as possible.‰
At the end of October 2003, the Royal Ottawa admitted that because the P3 contract had not been approved by the province, no penalties would prevail. The Osler has also stated that it is awaiting government approval for its project.
The Liberal government is in an good position to meet its promises: [1] No P3 hospitals exist, so the Liberals do not have to worry about returning them to the public system. [2] There are no penalties for turning the P3 projects into public hospital projects. So Premier McGuinty can keep his promise to build a public Royal Ottawa „as soon as possible‰:
"I'll tell you one thing, and this is very important news for the people of Ottawa, we're going to move ahead with that hospital as soon as possible," Mr. McGuinty said yesterday. "But I am not going to do it in the form of a private hospital. I want a public hospital for our city." this quote was from the election campaign.
c] Don‚t sneak privatization in through backdoor compromises
While the Conservative government paid the price for its policies, the Liberal government has a chance to establish its integrity. Sneaking privatization in through the backdoor will shatter Liberal credibility and lead the Liberal government into protracted fights with the people who helped them defeat the Conservative government. For example, the Health Coalition and trade unions have launched a legal action to stop the P3s ˆ and all of this may come back to haunt a government that tries to sneak a privatization deal in through the back door.
There is also the question of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Once hospital services are turned over to for-profits corporations, corporations may claim huge compensation if they are brought back into the public domain. Privatization compromises could be expensive mistakes.
Its much better to stick to promises, keep costs down, and build the Osler and the Royal Ottawa as public hospitals now. But Premier McGuinty and Health Minister Smitherman need to hear this from all of us.
What we want from MPPs
1] Will you help us fight for a public hospital?
2] Will you call on Premier McGuinty and Health Minister Smitherman to cancel the P3 deals immediately and build a public hospital instead?
3] Will you let us know their response as soon as you receive it?
5) The Ontario Health Coalition web page has a variety of fact sheets and media releases on the P3s and MRI/CT clinics. To access them from the main page, click on the topic headings for P3s & MRI/CTs. Also on the website is a recent report on P3s by eminent economists released last week. The OHC website is here: www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca <http://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca>
6) Here is a contact list for Ontario MPPs. The information is from the legislative assembly web page and may have some mistakes as it is very new. The MPPs listed as "Independent" are actually NDP members. If you don't know who your MPP is, click on the following link and scroll down to "Who is my MPP?" http://www.olaap.ontla.on.ca/mpp
Contact Information for Ontario MPPs is available at http://olaap.ontla.on.ca/mpp/contact.jsp
Ontario Health Coalition
15 Gervais Drive, Suite 305
Toronto, Ontario M3C 1Y8
www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca
phone: 416-441-2502
fax: 416-441- 4073
email:ohc@sympatico.ca