Grey Bruce Public Health will not be merging with another health unit.
The idea of a health unit merger has been floated for a few years now, even before the pandemic.
Back in 2019, the provincial government directed the Grey Bruce Health Unit to merge with the Perth District and Huron County Health Units with an aim to reduce healthcare administration in Ontario.
A regional health entity was supposed to have been created by April of 2020 and it would have downloaded an extra five per cent of the funding responsibilities (25 per cent would become 30 per cent) onto municipalities rather than the province. The global pandemic was declared before that merger happened.
On Thursday, Medical Officer of Health Dr. Ian Arra updated Grey County Council about the latest in the merger discussion which is now a voluntary option, saying, “Our board explored the opportunity with the neighbouring health units and the decision was not to proceed with any merger on that front.”
That merger could have, at one point covered an area from Blue Mountains, north to Tobermory down the Bruce Peninsula, along Lake Huron to Lambton and the edge of Wellington County with three small urban centres of Goderich, Stratford and Owen Sound.
Meanwhile, Arra’s update to council noted, “Public health standards are being reviewed and the ministry has offered the field opportunity to have an opinion on the changes that are coming.”
It’s part of the provincial government’s ‘Strengthening Public Health’ program that has walked back the 2019 plan to make municipalities fund 30 per cent of the public health budget, keeping it at 25 per cent. In the summer of 2023, Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones said in a statement the pandemic showed there was a need to strengthen public health.
Arra noted Thursday as part of that plan, there is now a provincial funding increase of one per cent for three years, though he notes when you take inflation into consideration, that still means budget cuts are necessary.
“It’s better than the zero per cent for the past few years,” says Arra. ” A number of health units had to have group layoffs, Grey Bruce weathered the storm without any group layoffs.”
