Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced a return to a 75/25 provincial/municipal cost-sharing arrangement for public health, earning her a round of relieved applause from civic leaders gathered in London on Tuesday for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) annual conference.
The PC government cut its share of costs to 70 per cent in 2019, much to the chagrin of local governments, whose backlash prevented the Tories from making that cut retroactive, and prompted it to add mitigation funding to transition to the new formula.
Public health units will also get a one-per-cent annual funding bump for the next three years, Jones said in her speech.
Jones suggested there may be more changes in the future, but they won't cost municipalities more.
"This will give us time to work together with municipalities and public health partners on a longer-term approach, and I can guarantee you that any approach will not result in more financial burden on municipalities," she said.
Jones' government doesn't appear to be done looking for savings in public health. It will review "roles and responsibilities" for public health units "to reduce overlap and ensure public health care is aligned with provincial priorities," she said.
Public health units that choose to merge will get one-time funding, she said.
Despite the reversion, the government is still spending less on public health than before the pandemic, NDP health critic France Gélinas said in a statement, pointing to an "alarming" 12.1-per-cent decrease in public health funding this year.
"What will it take for this government to acknowledge the dire needs of our communities? For years, the NDP has been calling for comprehensive, sustainable funding solutions to address these issues," she said.
Jones also spoke to one of the top municipal concerns: a lack of access to primary care. This fall, the government will announce successful applications for new and expanded interprofessional primary care teams, she said.
"We are also improving access to primary care by increasing the number of nurse practitioners across Ontario," she said.
A handful of municipalities have proposals on Jones' desk for nurse practitioner-led clinics, which nursing advocates have been pushing the minister to move on for months.
Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre met with Jones on Monday. He said a lack of family physicians is a "crisis situation" in his city.
A slew of retirements and some physicians who have died have left thousands of "orphan patients," he said.
One way to attract and retain these doctors in the North could be reinstating financial incentives, he said. Physicians could get a $20,000-a-year stipend for committing to five years of working in a northern region, he said.
"So we're asking the province to see if we can kind of look at trying to provide funding to attract them to areas that are very underserved," he said.
Lefebvre said he didn't get any commitments from Jones in his 15-minute window, but he didn't expect to.
"It's basically, this is an awareness piece," he said, adding that the PC government has always made time for him.
Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy said she also had a good chat with Jones on Tuesday. Her primary concern was the ongoing shortage of health staff. Sometimes there are no ambulances on the road in her town, she said.
There are 1,600 unattached patients just in the southern half of Essex (population 21,000), Bondy said.
"So we do need more front-line health-care practitioners to help. It's a problem that we need a whole bunch of solutions for," she said.
Jones clarified that all Family Health Teams must have after-hours availability, which Bondy said was unclear before.
"FHTs, as part of their agreement with the Ministry of Health are required to have after-hours availability," Jones' spokesperson Hannah Jensen confirmed.
Whitby Mayor Elizabeth Roy also chatted with Jones on Monday to press her on the proposed new hospital in Durham.
Roy said Jones left her with the impression that the hospital, which has been in the works for more than a year, is still a priority.
"She didn't commit to the location but still was very positive in the sense [of] working alongside Lakeridge," the health system slated to run the hospital, Roy said.
