The Incorrigible Deb Matthews

That Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews, who presided over the Ornge scandal, remains in her portfolio in the new Wynne government is unfathomable to me. A woman of breathtaking incompetence who steadfastly refused all calls for her resignation as each sordid detail of corruption and sybaritic spending within the air ambulance was revealed, Matthews continues to oversee the agency with her consistently deftless hand.

The latest revelation comes in today's Star, which further solidifies Matthews' reputation for ineptitude:

Ontario Ombudsman André Marin warns there will be no “credible accountability” at ORNGE unless long-awaited new legislation to reform the troubled air ambulance service gives him oversight powers.

Instead, Matthews has opted for a patient advocate's post which, according to Marin,

will be seen as toothless because the patient advocate’s office reports to the health ministry.

“They would not be independent of government. Far from being watchdogs, they would operate on a ministerial dog leash,” Marin wrote in the two-page letter. “The ombudsman is a fully independent officer of parliament . . . by contrast, the patient advocate reports to an ORNGE vice-president, not even the board of directors.”

And exactly what will be the function of this patient advocate? Apparently, according to the job description posted last year, the advocates’ office will “investigate, resolve, document and report organization-specific patient and visitor compliments and concerns.”

As Marin tartly observes, “... a position that involves reporting compliments back to management ought not to be confused with the role of the Ombudsman.”

So, brickbats and bouquets, rather than substantive legislative oversight of the deeply-flawed ambulance service with the profligate misspending problem, seems to be the order of the day.

With regard to Health Minister Deb Matthews, I rest my case.

Words, Words, Words

As a retired English teacher and a lifelong lover of books, I have always been fascinated by words, both what they actually mean and how they are used to influence and manipulate. As the years have gone by, I have become especially interested in the political uses and abuses of language along the lines described in George Orwell's seminal essay, Politics and the English Language, the latter of which I would explore every year with my senior classes.

As I noted in an earlier post, the power of language to curb liberty and undermine free and critical thought is something we are witness to on a regular basis, and it is only by being familiar with these techniques that we can, to some extent, guard against them and recognize perversions of truth when they occur.

Orwell was well-aware of these dangers when he wrote his essay 56 years ago, and the problem has become so extensive that many of us almost automatically tune out when politicians or other 'leaders' open their mouths.

In Ontario, we are currently witness to a barrage of demagoguery and euphemisms from the McGuinty government in its battles against teachers and doctors. Take, for example, Education Minister Laurel Broten, whose government insists on a two-year pay freeze for teachers and the elimination of the retirement gratuity that exists in lieu of any post-retirement benefits. When she says she is choosing full day kindergarten and smaller elementary class sizes over teachers' paycheques, she is awakening latent public antipathy against 'greedy teachers', a pretty obvious subtext of her public pronouncements.

When she says, “I am asking the unions and the teachers to come to the table and work with us,” insisting she is “not negotiating in the media,” that is precisely what she is doing, of course.

And then there is her strange use of the word 'negotiation', which denotes a give and take to arrive at a reasonable solution. However, in this context, since she and McGuinty have made clear there is to be no give, only take, (OSSTF, for example, did offer to accept a two-year-wage freeze but not the end of the gratuity) 'negotiate' becomes a euphemism for saving the government the political embarrassment of having to strip away collective bargaining rights at some political cost to the party.

The same, of course, applies to the 'negotiations' the province is conducting with doctors. When Health Minister Deb Matthews says she’s disappointed that the OMA rejected her offer, what she is really saying, since the word 'offer' is a euphemism for 'ultimatum', is that she is sorry that the medical profession has not capitulated to her government's demands. That negotiation is not possible is attested to by the fact that she and McGuinty rejected the OMA's offer of a pay freeze.

No matter where we might stand on the direction being taken by the McGuinty government, it is imperative that all of us recognize and decry tactics that take us further and further from a healthy state of democracy.

A Followup On Diana Swain's Report

My last post dealt with a disturbing investigative report done by the CBC's Diana Swain.

I am convinced that the only way to move the Ministry of Health to ensure that similar tragedies don't happen in Ontario is to spread the word of the report to as many people as possible and to subject the Ministry to a barrage of letters demanding fast action. Here is the letter that I am sending off to Deb Matthews, the Ontario Minister of Health, with copies to Premier McGuinty and my local MPP:


Dear Ms Matthews:

Having viewed Diana Swain's disturbing investigative report on the CBC about Rose McKenzie, the Ontario nurse whose negligence in California resulted in a patient's brain damage and quadriplegia, I am writing to request that the Ministry of Health take immediate action.

According to the report, Nurse McKenzie, despite having been stripped of her nursing license in California, had no trouble finding another nursing job in Ontario; she simply omitted any reference to what had happened on the self-reporting form used by the Ontario College of Nurses.

I am sure you will agree with me that, for the sake of patient safety, changes need to made with all urgency, lest a similar tragedy occur here. In this age of technology, measures to ensure the full and free exchange of pertinent personnel information internationally are undoubtedly both feasible and relatively easy to initiate.

I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience as to how your Ministry plans to ensure the safety of all patients in Ontario.