SIOUX LOOKOUT – A third-party consultant will look into the feasibility of a proposed merger of the Northwestern Health Unit and its Thunder Bay district counterpart.
Northwestern Health Unit board chair Doug Lawrance, who is also mayor of Sioux Lookout, said Monday the feasibility study to which both health units have agreed is in response to provincial priorities.
The Ontario government broached the subject of health unit mergers across the province as part of “public health modernization” in 2019, saying greater efficiencies could be found by consolidating the province’s 34 health units into 10.
“And then COVID interrupted that, and it was brought back to the table just in the last six or seven months through a program that the province is now calling Strengthening Public Health in Ontario,” Lawrance said.
“And as part of that, they are looking at fewer public health units and they have put out information and had webinars and meetings with public health agencies related to mergers and the suggestion – the encouragement – to explore voluntary mergers,” he continued.
“We’ve agreed to do a viability assessment of it and find out what the benefits are and what the challenges would be,” he said.
Geography is one factor that must be considered, he said, noting that the Thunder Bay and Northwest units cover a large percentage of Ontario’s land mass.
The two units’ jurisdictions go as far west as the province’s border with Manitoba, east past Marathon, and north to Hudson Bay. Combined, the two regions cover roughly 400,000 square kilometres or nearly 40 per cent of Ontario’s 1.08 million square kilometres.
“There’s great geography between the communities in those health units,” Lawrance noted. “Sure, there are a few people, but there are vast distances between them.”
Those distances present service-delivery challenges that might be amplified by having one enormous health unit headquartered in one urban centre, he said.
The cities, towns and other municipalities in the two health units vary greatly, Lawrance said.
“So how am I feeling personally? I’m open to doing an assessment and don’t want to predetermine the results, but it will be very interesting to see what the benefits are.”
No date has been set for completion of the consultant's work.
Lawrance said in a news release from the NWHU that the health unit’s board is “not committed to a merger; we believe that local relationships and understanding of each community’s needs and demographics are key to providing high-quality, relevant care and programming. These factors and more must be considered when assessing a merger of the two health units.”
