Public health units looking for more taxdollars in Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury

While COVID cases have been surging in Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury, local public health units are thinking about the new year and looking for a budget bump from municipal taxpayers. 

Sault Ste. Marie city council voted Tuesday night to give an extra $470,000 to Algoma Public Health in 2022, bringing the total health unit budget to $19.6 million, up from $15 million in 2019.

"It's 46 cents per  person per day or $13.88 per person per month, which I think is still the cost of standard Netflix," medical officer of health Dr. Jennifer Loo said of the increase. 

The money will mostly go to hiring 15 new employees.

But Loo also explained that it helps make up for a lack of steady provincial funding, not just the "extraordinary" one-time funding for COVID response. 

"Local public health has not seen an increase to our base funding for a number of years now, which essentially amounts to a cut," she told council this week.

"We continue to look at the world that was and review our programs that make sure they fit the world that has become."

Overtime hours by unionized workers at Algoma Public Health were up 166 per cent this year compared to 2019 and non-union employees have logged over 3,200 hours of overtime in 2021.

Sault Ste. Marie city councillor Corey Gardi says it's distressing to hear how "woefully underfunded" the health unit is given the pandemic and the ongoing addiction crisis. 

"It's my opinion the government hasn't been as responsive or responsible on both of those files as they should have been," he said. 

"If we want to keep our community as safe as it needs to be, especially in light of the surge as of late, I'm supportive of Dr. Loo's ask."

The frozen base funding from the province is also being blamed on tight finances at Public Health Sudbury and Districts, which like other health units gets 30 per cent of its money from the Ontario government and 70 per cent from cities and towns. 

"So therefore every year since then we are substantially getting less and less to operate the same things," said Rene Lapierre, a Sudbury city councillor and chair of the board of health. 

The health unit seeking $593,000 more municipal taxdollars in the new year, $510,000 of which would come from Greater Sudbury.

The public health budgets in Temiskaming and North Bay-Parry Sound have yet to be tabled at the local boards of health.

However, North Bay city council has called on the provincial government to increase base funding for health units.

Before the pandemic, the Ford government was critical of public health spending and planned to amalgamate the five health units of the northeast into one mega agency. 

In a statement, Ontario's Ministry of Health says its funding for Public Health Sudbury and Districts has increased by approximately $1.8 million since 2018, plus $21.9 million in COVID response funding since 2020. 

"The government acknowledges the extraordinary and continuing efforts of the public health sector, including public health units, to prevent, monitor, detect, and contain COVID-19 in the province," reads the statement. 

"Our government continues to make significant investments to support Ontario's public health sector."