Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Potential regional health units were a topic of discussion at Lennox and Addington County council last week.
Responding to a report that proposed Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Public Health could be merged with Ottawa Public Health in the spring of 2020, L&A County CAO Brenda Orchard informed council what that could mean.
“Currently we’re with Frontenac, Kingston units with about 200,000 population,” said Orchard. “This new grouping, anything east of us, all the way to Quebec including Ottawa, puts us in a group of 1.7 million. We’re starting to hear rumblings that now they’re open to consultation and it might not be written in stone, so there may be a glimmer of hope.”
Around the table councillors expressed their objection to merging with Ottawa, suggesting if they had to merge with any centre, they’d prefer an area similar to theirs, such as Peterborough.
“There seems to be a little bit of withdrawing on the part of the government from the proposed regional redesign,” said councillor John Wise, deputy reeve of Stone Mills. “What we want to avoid, and obviously some things are going to change, we’re not expecting everything to maintain the status quo, but we’re really trying to keep Ottawa out of it. I think Ottawa wants to keep us out of their backyard as well.”
“There are regional differences in health needs,” added Wise. “You may have a prevalence of HIV, or you may have more Lyme Disease in some areas. There’s a lot of variation which is why local public health is so uniquely tailored so we want to avoid this mega bureaucracy that’s being proposed.”
Wise says it’s not only the specialized health care they provide that makes staying local the preferred option, but there could be a rise in cost as well.
“As far as costs go, we really want to stay under that one million (population served),” said Wise. “Right now it’s about 70-30, right now the province provides about 70 per cent of money and we supply 30. If you’re over a million, it’s going to be 60-40. We’re hoping whatever restructuring happens, we’re less than a million.”
Wise noted that there has been some ‘courting’ from Peterborough to try and merge with KFLA as well.
“I can’t imagine any county wanting to be grouped with Ottawa,” said Orchard. “You don’t want your rural population to be lost in the mix. They don’t want to be partners anymore than we want to be. The push from the EOWC (Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus) is going to be sort of keeping the rural standard, keeping counties together.”
Councillor Max Kaiser, deputy mayor of Greater Napanee, agreed that they should look to Peterborough and voice displeasure against any option that lumps them with Ottawa to the east or Durham to the west.
Orchard said the EOWC was to meet on May 24 and she would bring more information about the proposed merger to the next county meeting on June 12. In the meantime, several eastern region municipalities have already sent a letter to the province objecting to any plans that include being merged into Ottawa’s catchment.
Currently there are 35 public health units across Ontario. Budget cuts proposed by the provincial government could see that number whittled down to 10 larger regional centres.
-Council was given an update on the community hub projects in Amherstview and Yarker.
“We have engaged with Heather Kembel through Colbourne and Kembel, Architects (Inc.) to complete phase one of the drawings (for the Yarker project),” said Pam Kent, manager of children’s services for L&A County. “It also creates some efficiencies for us because she is the architect working on the Amherstview plan. Both projects are very similar.”
The two projects aim to increase the amount of child care services that will be available within Yarker and Amherstview.
Kent’s report was received for information.