Opinion | Doug Ford’s new health minister staggered out the door. This is what you need to do now

Back to school. Let’s go back to the legislature.

Back to COVID-19?

Our long-awaited summer respite didn’t last long, not because of students, politics, or pandemics.

Politicians returned early, ready to vote on a pre-election budget that never passed, drafted for a post-pandemic world that has gone unfulfilled: COVID-19 case counts are higher, lineups are longer, and debates are stronger.

Students and parents are understandably anxious about the return to classrooms and the stress in emergency rooms. Unsurprisingly, teachers and nurses are nervous about pay and working conditions.

Newly appointed Health Minister Sylvia Jones is supposed to be solving problems and reassuring the public, not unsettling people by speaking ill in public.

Jones has come to public health work as if she were still in her previous job as attorney general, accustomed to hiding behind terse statements about police cases in court. In the court of public opinion, she has presented herself as a peekaboo politician.

By all accounts, Jones is an intelligent minister who wins praise from public servants and health professionals for her good sense and good humor. But at the time of greatest need for it, the $70 billion health portfolio is headed by a minister who is still learning on the job and struggling to articulate a plan.

A politician who has never known a microphone she liked, Jones stumbled this month when asked about the privatization of health care. The question invites confusion, because people automatically associate it with additional billing and two-tier systems that are prohibited by the Canada Health Act, and Jones failed to make that distinction.

Two-tier fees are Medicare’s third rail and a dead end for politicians. That said, the temptation of privatization tends to be dramatically exaggerated by critics who conveniently overlook the historical reality that our health care system has never been focused on public provision, but only on universal accessibility for anyone with an OHIP card.

Most doctors are private operators who bill the public system for medically necessary services they provide to the public. Many of the best clinics in Ontario, offering cataract replacement or hernia surgery, are privately run but publicly reimbursed. The large pharmacy chains that inject your COVID-19 or flu shots are compensated with public funds, not paid by the patient.

We’ll see if the minister can recover from her misstep. She is expected to offer more insights in the coming days for a system that is clearly overwhelmed by the cumulative weight of COVID-19 stresses, fiscal strains, staffing shortages, patient surges and deferred surgeries.

But after his first missteps, there is one direct step Jones could take to make up lost ground and get ahead of the curve: COVID-19 vaccines, more of them for more people.

Despite all the criticism and analysis of the statistics, despite all the misinformation and missed opportunities, more than 12.7 million Ontarians received at least one dose (and 12.2 million received the second) . That’s a staggering 94 percent of all adults.

What’s less encouraging are the consequences: Only 7.5 million Ontarians have received the recommended third dose (also known as the first booster) to keep their immunity up to date, which is only half the total population.

That willingness to get the first two shots, but not the next two, suggests that fear of vaccination isn’t so much the problem. It is hesitation and fatigue.

With the peak efficacy of mRNA vaccines waning after a few months, people can reduce their susceptibility to infection and hospitalization by recharging sooner rather than later. Ontario has made the fourth dose (second booster) available to all adults since last month, but uptake remains disappointing, especially for older and more vulnerable age groups who have been eligible for many months.

At least some of the recent reluctance is due not so much to vaccine hesitancy as to mixed signals in the media. Some Ontarians may be waiting for a newer iteration of the vaccine now in development (and approved this week by British health authorities), the so-called bivalent vaccine that combines the original formulation with an updated version that targets subvariants. Omicron more communicable.

Realistically, however, the availability of that new vaccine is likely to be within a few months for the majority of the Ontario population. It’s also unclear how much more effective the newer version will be in terms of overall protection (immunity is not simply a mathematical measure of antibodies) to justify the continued delay and vulnerability.

Jones must step up to the plate by emphasizing the benefits of vaccination now, not later, for Ontarians who have yet to receive their second, third or fourth dose. Now is the time to mobilize public opinion on the risks of both COVID-19 and the flu, and the benefits of inoculation.

After all, Quebec began rolling out a fifth COVID-19 vaccine for eligible long-term care residents this week. The University of Toronto has already upped its game by requiring that students living in residence get a boost with a third shot.

For all the media hype about alleged missteps, what is most missing is a communication strategy from Jones and Ford to ensure gunshots are fired as classes resume and the holidays end.

Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist who focuses on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn

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