The Ian Arra affair is not going away. At last Monday’s Owen Sound City Council meeting a letter was read from the Chair of the Grey Bruce Board of Health, Sue Patterson. It was a classic case of 'shoot the messenger' rather than address the essence of a problem.

Let’s start with the problem: Dr. Ian Arra, the Grey Bruce Medical Officer of Health, was paid $631,510 in 2020. This outrageous salary was bluntly challenged in a letter to the Board of Health from four regional councillors - Owen Sound's John Tamming, Georgian Bluffs Councillor Cathy Moore Coburn, and Arran-Elderslie Councillors Melissa Kanmacher and Ryan Greig. They complain that Arra's pay was 64% more than he received in 2019 and almost twice as much as most Ontario medical officers were paid in 2020.

I side with the Councillors. In my view, Dr. Arra’s 2020 compensation was outrageous and intolerable.

Look at it this way: most nurses, public health workers and other essential healthcare workers make at most one tenth of what Dr. Arra pulled down - if they’re lucky. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of essential workers in retail and long term care make about $15 per hour, maybe one-fifteenth of Dr. Arra’s compensation. Do the math: if Arra worked 60 hours per week for 50 weeks last year (he worked hard with a lot of overtime), his average pay was $210 per hour. This a gross but all too common example of income inequality, of haves and have nots, winners and losers. And most of us, Grey-Bruce taxpayers, are losers!

While expressing appreciation for the diligence and hard work of front-line staff, the Councillors’ letter voiced serious concern about the very high rate of management and staff turnover since Dr. Arra was appointed in 2018. According to the letter-writers, ten senior management positions were vacated, and many other experienced staff resigned. They conclude that "this loss of management and other staff raises the issue of organizational dysfunction.”

The Councillors put twenty questions to the Health Unit Board including the rate used to pay Dr. Arra overtime. Did the Board approve the overtime scale in advance? Did Dr. Arra travel outside Canada last year, contrary to Public Health guidelines, as has been reported, and if so, when and how did he quarantine when he returned? Given that the provincial government provided Covid overtime funding, did the Board consider sharing these funds among all staff? Their primary suggestion is that the Board ask Dr. Arra to return the excess money he was paid, which so far he has not done.

One would expect that the GBHU Board would assess these issues and questions very seriously. However, with her letter to Owen Sound Council, the Board Chair, Sue Patterson, as reported in the Sun Times, decided, instead, to attack what she calls Councillor Tamming’s “misleading assertions”. She says that "Councillor Tamming has stepped outside the rules of decency”, reducing confidence in the health unit when it is coping with the Covid emergency. She links this to a rise in Covid cases, in effect blaming Covid cases and deaths on Grey Bruce councillors who dare to question the MOH and the Board. As for the Councillors’ twenty questions, neither Dr. Arra nor Ms. Patterson have had much to say. She obviously approved Dr. Arra’s exorbitant payout, so now she is in aggressive damage-control mode. That is not acceptable, and neither is her refusal to answer legitimate, fact-based questions.

Michael Craig
Owen Sound