Former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae has weighed in on the turmoil within the Ontario Medical Association, referring to the organization as a “union” with a primary objective of boosting doctors’ pay.
He tweeted the remark Tuesday after hearing Georgetown family doctor Nadia Alam on CBC’s Metro Morning discussing how the OMA needs to do a better job of going to bat for patients. Alam played a key role in organizing a non-confidence vote of the OMA executive, which led to Monday’s resignation of all six executive officers.
“On @metromorning doctor kept saying ‘we’re fighting for better health care,’ ” Rae tweeted. “OMA is a union fighting for higher incomes for docs. Period.”
In an interview later, Rae said he was “annoyed” by Alam’s comments. “She’s not asking for money for health care, but for members. That’s fine, but don’t dress it up as something it isn’t,” he said.
Alam was unavailable for comment but Dr. Sohail Gandhi, who was also involved in organizing the non-confidence vote, responded in her defence.
“Look, the people of Ontario spend a lot of tax dollars on health care. They deserve a system where physicians and government work co-operatively in the best interests of the people of Ontario,” Gandhi said.
The OMA does not refer to itself as a union but it does represent Ontario’s 34,000 physicians and medical students in contract talks with the provincial government.
The doctors have been without a physician services agreement for three years, during which time the government has imposed two rounds of unilateral fee cuts.
A tentative contract negotiated by the OMA and province was soundly rejected by doctors during a ratification vote last summer. The defeat shook the profession’s confidence in the executive, which had endorsed the deal.
At a special meeting of the OMA’s governing council just over a week ago, Alam and 24 other doctors attempted to overthrow the executive. But votes calling for the removal of six elected executive officers, including president Dr. Virginia Walley, failed.
However, a vote of non-confidence in the executive passed with 55 per cent support.
The executive was then widely viewed as a lame duck and on Monday, all six executive members stepped down on their own accord.
They will be replaced in a new election, the date of which has yet to be set.
Meanwhile, Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins is continuing to urge the OMA to get back to the bargaining table.
“We remain hopeful, as a government, that we can achieve an agreement with the OMA, with the doctors,” Hoskins told reporters at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where he announced funding for a new stem cell transplant centre to help patients with leukemia and other blood cancers.
“. . . The government (and I) remain ready and ask . . . the OMA to resume negotiations. We’re ready to continue that conversation. I believe with the proper spirit of intent and goodwill . . . we can reach an agreement that will accommodate their priority concerns as well as allow us to continue to make important investments like this one,” he said.
Hoskins, a physician, declined to comment on the trouble at the OMA: “I’m not going to talk about internal matters in terms of the OMA.”
Premier Kathleen Wynne tried to reassure patients that despite a tense relationship between doctors and the government, health care will not be affected.
“Of course there are political discussions, of course there will be funding discussions but that has no impact on the professionalism of the practitioners all across the system.”
But an email sent from the OMA to doctors on Tuesday stated that a working group within the organization is exploring job action.
It also warned of concern that the government is coming down with more unilateral fee cuts.
Hoskins proposed a new fee agreement to doctors in December that would see cuts to 500 specialists making more than $1 million annually, but would increase the overall physician services budget by 2.5 per cent.
Rae said giving doctors more money won’t fix the health system.
“No one should think by giving the OMA more money for doctors, it’s going to resolve the health-care challenges facing the country or the province,” he said.
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