PROVINCIAL MINISTRY OF HEALTH OPTICS ARE HORRIBLE

Today's Waterloo Region Record carrys this story "eHealth CEO Greg Reed takes $81,250 bonus while staff sues". There will be and should be a poitical price to pay for this situation. Two years ago then provincial Minister of Health, David Caplan resigned over the e-Health scandal. Essentially a billion dollars of taxpayers money went down the tubes in a futile attempt to develop electronic health records for Ontario citizens. Obviously one can see the medical benefits to having a centralized, computerized system which health professionals across Ontario could immediately tap into in case of accident, collapse, unconsciousness etc..

Now two years later while still working towards that goal and in the middle of cutbacks and austerity for Ontario/Canada citizens we learn two shocking things. Firstly the new CEO gets a $81,250 BONUS on top of his $329,000 annual salary while the rest of us get hours cut and wages frozen or reduced. Meanwhile we are paying for his wages and bonus out of our pockets. Secondly the rest of the staff at e-Health are suing to have their promised bonuses restored. WTF ! Who other than governments are making promises and commitments for financial increases ahead of time to employees? Similarily who other than politicians and governments are so out of touch with reality that they leave themselves exposed to legal action for undelivered wage increases? Private industry would readily advise suing employees to take their services elsewhere while they are suing their employer. While I'm not justifying harsh private sector reaction to unappreciative employees I am saying that there is a happy medium but apparently our governments can not and never have been able to find it.