Elliot Lake Councillor Tom Turner said 10 minutes face time with Deputy Ontario Premier Steve Clark at the ROMA (Rural Ontario Municipalities of Ontario) Conference in Toronto last week left him feeling better about Elliot Lake's chances to get more from the province's funding stream.
Speaking Monday night at Elliot Lake City Council he said, "I have to say I walked away a little more confident than I was at the start of the conversation that they're interested in Elliot Lake. They're (the Ford government) interested in the north and they are making adjustments to accommodate some of the things that we need."
Turner and a city delegation, including Mayor Dan Marchisella, Councillor Norman Mann and City of Elliot Lake CAO Daniel Gagnon attended, the ROMA sessions. Turner sat in on economic development and asset management. There were some 1,300 delegates from Ontario's small and rural municipalities on hand for the gathering.
Regarding Mr. Clark, Mayor Dan Marchisella opined, "Yes, he's very down to earth. He spent quite a few years in municipal politics so he feels the pain when you have conversations with him about some of the issues."
The mayor also commended Algoma-Manitoulin New Democrat MPP Mike Mantha for his help in getting the City of Elliot Lake delegation more face time with cabinet ministers and parliamentary assistants at the ROMA conference.
City of Elliot Lake CAO Daniel Gagnon said he learned more about the time frame for Elliot Lake finding out about provincial funding approvals for the Community Recreation Hub project. He told Council they won't likely be known until late this winter or early spring.
The Rec Hub is planned for land the city bought at 151 Ontario behind City Hall. Whatever the Ontario government decides to pony up will trigger similar federal funding. The Rec Hub was priced out last year at $38 million. It would include an indoor arena, five sheets of curling ice, an indoor track, swimming pool and other facilities.
Also at Monday night's meeting, Councillor Ed Pearce made a presentation with an update on changes at the Algoma Public Health Board following a presentation earlier this month in North Bay.
He told council the focus of the meeting was dealing with challenges in rural health care, specifically as it relates to public health and emergency health services in northern Ontario.
The gathering in North Bay also delved into changes in the position of municipalities in the mix during the ongoing reorganization of the Ontario's healthcare system.
"The Emergency Health System (EHS) went through a reset in the late 1990s. Now $1.67 billion a year are allocated for all emergency services in Ontario. The number of units of public health is not settled. They're now looking at three (in northern Ontario) north, central and northwest,” Pearce said.
"One of the things that was brought up by the technical people from the boards, was that there should not be so many municipal representatives on the board,” he continued. “They'd much rather have a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, rather than somebody who is responsible for the spending of the money by the municipality. They got a lot of pushback from us on that one."
"One of the problems we have from my perspective with Algoma Health is all of the provincial appointees are medical people. Nobody has any other background, other than being a medical person and they're not public health people," Pearce complained.
As well, the cost of health for municipalities is going up. Pearce said it doesn't look to be a huge problem for Elliot Lake, but for some of the smaller communities, it is a major problem. "They're looking at increases as much as 70 per cent in their assessment from Algoma Public Health."
He said non-urgent transportation for medical staff who accompany patients by ambulance to Sudbury or Sault Ste. Marie hospitals remains a major problem in Elliot Lake. Often paramedics, a nurse, and a doctor accompany patients on the two-hour trips. That causes chronic medical understaffing problems at home.
"It's extremely expensive for us. And it puts us in a bit of a situation,” he said. "But the one thing I would like to emphasize is that there's changes coming whether we like it or not. The government of Ontario seems to be listening. I think the amount of pushback surprised them greatly. The fact that they are now able to sit down with communities and frontline workers and talk about this I think is a positive step going forward," he concluded.
Councillor Norman Mann said, "Yes, the province has heard us and they've backed off a bit. However, what does that mean?"
"There was such an outcrying last year about the changes without consultation. I think that is what has happened. They (the province) have hit the pause button. They've reset and now they're doing consultations. What tomorrow holds, we're not sure," said Mann.