Addiction
and mental health privatization in Ontario?
Leaked
memo indicates Tories plotting another P3
give-away
Toronto
- The privatization zeal of the Ontario Tories knows no bounds: now
they are apparently ready to let business make a buck on the backs of
citizens requiring addiction and mental health treatment.
The Toronto Star reports that the province is quietly considering a plan to amalgamate four Toronto addiction and mental health treatment sites - with a big role for their favourite friends - the private sector.
The role of business would be to rebuild, equip and (bingo!) "lease back" to the government a central site located at its existing Queen Street facility, the paper reports.
The Star says it has obtained a confidential memo anticipating that "much criticism" is likely to arise as a result of such public-private partnerships (P3s) and advising hospital brass to try to deflect attention away from the issue.
Nancy Pridham, president of an Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU/NUPGE) local at the centre, has taken issue with the way the government plans to promote the plan.
One section of the communications strategy reads:
"Transforming the clinical care environment from the asylum era of the past to a more normalized home-like and less intimidating setting ... is a critical step toward destroying stigma and boosting treatment success. We can't afford to wait."
The word "normalized" is pejorative to patients with emotional problems, Pridham says. "Knocking a building down and applying esthetics is not going to relieve the burden of stigma," she argued.
source NUPGE: 11 July 2003
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Page last updated July 11, 2003